Business leaders are split on if AI will trigger a jobs armageddon or usher in “super interesting” gigs of the future. And Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick believes the veil is finally lifting on the reality of tech-driven workplace disruption: there’s “another side” to the story, where human employees are more powerful than ever before.
“Until we get super [artificial general intelligence], humans are valuable,” Kalanick said recently on the TBPN podcast. “And they are going to become more and more valuable, because they will be the long pole in the tent to progress.”
The serial entrepreneur and CloudKitchens CEO uses one blue-collar profession as an example: plumbers.
If every job in the world was automated except for plumbers, those human workers would be “extremely valuable” because they’re critically essential to the success of expanding infrastructure. New buildings couldn’t be made unless plumbers were readily available—and there would be “so much efficiency everywhere” that they would need millions of people for the task.
Kalanick also confronted the possibility that all human workers could one day be replaced by super AGI. Still, he offered an optimistic, “white-pilled” take on the situation: new “solutions” will emerge, and there’s no need to fret about a work wipeout—for now.
