Earlier this week, noted short-seller Carson Block predicted that AI-driven job losses could eliminate 15% of knowledge worker positions within three years — a disruption he warned could rival the worst economic crises in modern history. And just two weeks ago, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a sweeping policy memo doubling down on his warnings that AI will produce labor market disruptions larger and longer-lasting than any previous technological shift. With all the talk about the risk, there’s virtually no conversation about what we can or should be doing to help the next generation of young people survive the specter of mass technological unemployment.
But as it turns out, we’ve been here before. And the antidote may surprise you.
At the turn of the last century, agricultural jobs evaporated — falling from one-third of all U.S. employment to just 8% in 50 years. Nearly 10 million jobs vanished in less than a lifetime. As economist and Opportunity@Work founder Byron Auguste has noted, when policymakers, employers and parents all realized that the shifting job landscape required a different preparatory path, states passed compulsory education laws. And as a high school diploma increasingly became an economic lifeline, the number of high schools grew an average of one per day for 30 years. Before long, America produced a higher percentage of high school graduates than any nation on the planet.
