Is AI coming for your job? Hold on a second before you get too concerned — let’s look at the past to find out.

At the dawn of the industrial revolution, people had the same worry about the steam engine. Not only did the steam engine boost productivity by automating menial tasks, it allowed those people whose jobs were replaced to enter more productive roles overseeing steam-powered contraptions.

Adam Smith, the father of modern economic thought, once said “Every body must be sensible how much labour is abridged and facilitated by the application of proper machinery. By means of the plough two men, with the assistance of three horses, will cultivate more ground than twenty could do with the spade.” This not only applied to the industrial revolution of Smith’s time, but to the AI revolution of our time too.

Using AI, humans will be enough more productive to offset the job loss created by it. Much like the steam engine (or the horse, in Adam Smith’s example), people will be able to move up the hierarchy in white collar roles, managing much more productive tasks instead. Even the basic economic principle of automation does not account for the lucrative jobs created by AI. Just as procuring horses or building steam engines was much more productive (and therefore better paying) than plowing land, procuring data sets and training large language models will be far better than menial office work.