Why I’m optimistic about AI

Hello Predictable Revenue community,

Book update: I promised to record an audiobook with my own voice and am taking, hopefully, a few days next week to record it. Wish me luck. It also means that I won’t have time for a traditional newsletter so I’m thinking of sharing an excerpt from the book. Did you know you can pre-order it 🙂? (← yes, this is me begging).

A few weeks ago I shared my insight that AI is coming for the schlep - the tedious, repetitive work that drains our energy without adding real value. This week, I dove deeper into this theme by listening to three fascinating conversations: one with Jason Calacanis on job displacement fears, another with Satya Nadella on AI's role as an empowerment tool, and a revealing discussion with Sam Altman about OpenAI's mission and the future of human-AI collaboration.

The contrast was striking - and illuminating. Change is coming and some of it will be painful, but I remain optimistic. Here's why.

tl;dr

• AI will replace the tedious, repetitive parts of jobs (the "schlep") rather than entire careers

• This will create short-term chaos but history shows that technology leads to long-term job growth. 

• New opportunities will emerge in human-AI collaboration, personalized services that become economically viable, and entirely new categories of work we can't yet imagine

The Fear vs. The Reality

Jason raises legitimate concerns about the adjustment period: He predicts Amazon will cut roughly 5% of its workforce annually over five years (totalling a 35% reduction), warns that youth unemployment could hit dangerous thresholds, and suggests social unrest becomes a real risk when joblessness crosses 20%. His prediction aligns with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's recent memo stating the company's "total corporate workforce" will shrink as it adopts AI tools and employees learn to "get more done with scrappier teams." These aren't abstract fears - they're grounded in actual company announcements about how AI will reshape employment.

But here's what the data actually shows: The McKinsey Global Institute's comprehensive 2017 analysis of 46 countries (which notably predates the recent LLM advances) reveals that while 75-375 million workers globally may need to switch occupational categories by 2030, the economy will likely create 555-890 million new jobs through seven key trends - from aging populations needing care to infrastructure investment to the marketization of currently unpaid work.

Altman reinforces this optimism: "This is the best time ever in the history of technology ever period to start a company," he argues. The technological ground is shifting so dramatically that it creates unprecedented opportunities for those willing to build on the new foundation. As he puts it, when the clock cycle of the industry changes this much, "startups almost always win" because they can iterate faster and at lower cost than established players.

The historical pattern is clear: Technology has consistently created more jobs than it destroyed. Personal computers alone generated 15.8 million net new jobs since 1980 - and 90% of those jobs were outside the tech sector itself.

As McKinsey documented in December of 2017: "The growth of computers has generated significant employment: in the United States, we estimate that computers have enabled the net creation of 15.8 million jobs since 1970. We arrive at this figure by tallying employment gains and losses in different sectors and occupations. We find that in total, we can identify 3.5 million jobs destroyed by the introduction of computers, including those in typewriter manufacturing, secretarial work, and bookkeeping. But at least 19.3 million were created in a wide range of occupations and industries."

And that was before ChatGPT changed everything.

The Chaos = Opportunity Equation

But here's where Calacanis gets it exactly right: chaos creates opportunities for founders.

Think of disruptive technologies like kids jumping around in a McDonald's ball pit. The ball pit is the market. The movement of the balls represents markets, customer needs, and opportunities being created as gaps open up everywhere.

When AI displaces workers and reshuffles entire industries, it doesn't just create problems - it creates massive arbitrage opportunities. As Calacanis puts it: "If there were 10,000 DoorDashers available to do something else, what would you have them do?"

His answer - democratizing personal services like chefs, eldercare, and education - points to entirely new business models that become economically viable when you have a surplus of capable workers combined with AI-driven efficiency.

Altman adds a crucial insight: There's currently a massive "product overhang" where AI capabilities far exceed what entrepreneurs have figured out how to build with them. "The products that people have figured out to build is way down here" compared to what's technically possible. This gap represents enormous opportunity for founders who can bridge the divide between what AI can do and what people actually need.

The Four Pillars of Future Work

From these conversations, four clear themes emerge:

1 - Elevation, Not Elimination

Software engineers won't disappear - they'll become software architects, managing AI agents and ensuring system quality. The typist pools of the 1980s didn't vanish; instead, all eight billion of us became typists while secretaries evolved into administrative coordinators handling complex strategic work.

Altman sees this happening already: "For a long time ChatGPT was like a Google replacement... but now you start to see things where you can like really give a task to code interpreter... and you have this thing go off and do a bunch of stuff and come back to you with like a proposal."

2 - The Schlep Arbitrage Opportunity

This is where the ball pit gets interesting. When AI eliminates the schlep from existing jobs, it doesn't just free up workers - it frees up economic capacity. Services that were too expensive or logistically complex become viable. A community cook serving 10 families. Personal trainers for the middle class. Elder companions watching TV and organizing cooking classes.

The gaps in the market become visible when the balls start moving.

3 - Just-in-Time Software and Interfaces

Altman describes a future where you won't need traditional SaaS applications: "You have your underlying database, you have an API layer... and then the interface is the LLM." Complex workflows will be generated on-demand, creating "just in time software" that codes artifacts and interfaces as you need them.

This doesn't eliminate software companies - it transforms them. The winners will be those who understand that defensibility comes from data, relationships, and domain expertise, not just software features.

4 - Change Management as the Real Challenge

Nadella identifies the actual bottleneck: "You're taking the means of production in every company and saying we're going to change everything about how we work." The technology exists. The hard part is organizational transformation - redesigning workflows, redefining roles, and helping people adapt.

As Altman notes about hiring, the focus should be on people who are "really smart, driven, curious, self-motivated, hardworking" with a "good track record of accomplishment" rather than traditional credentials. The future belongs to those who can "hire for slope not y-intercept."

The One-Person Leverage Revolution

Perhaps Altman's most compelling insight: "One of the things that will feel most different about these next 10 years versus these last 10 years is how much a single person or a small group of people with a lot of agency can get done."

This isn't just about productivity gains. Because "coordination costs are huge," when we empower individuals with AI tools, "we won't just see like a little bit more stuff get built but... a real step change" in what's possible.

We're not just building better tools - we're fundamentally changing the leverage available to human creativity and ambition.

Why I Remain Optimistic Through the Chaos

Despite all the uncertainty and disruption ahead, I remain deeply optimistic that this transformation will be a net positive for humanity. Yes, I agree with both Calacanis and McKinsey that there will be an adjustment period - potentially a difficult one for many people. Calacanis' warnings about youth unemployment hitting dangerous thresholds and the risk of social unrest when joblessness crosses 20% are sobering reminders that the transition won't be smooth or painless. The human cost of these transitions is real and shouldn't be minimized.

But I keep thinking about my Papa Bob, who was a truck driver for most of his working life. It was hard, dangerous, and frankly underpaid work for the type of physical and mental demands it required. Hours alone on the road, constant vigilance, wear and tear on his body, time away from family. If autonomous semi-trucks had existed 30 years ago and displaced him from that job, I wonder how he would have spent his productive time instead.

I like to think he would have found some very interesting things to work on. Papa Bob was curious, resourceful, and had a way of fixing things that seemed broken to everyone else. Maybe he would have turned one of his many hobbies into a career. Maybe he would have started a small business using his deep knowledge of logistics and supply chains. Maybe he would have had more time to spend with his grandchildren, passing on skills and wisdom that can't be automated.

The point isn't that the transition would have been easy - it wouldn't have been. But Papa Bob, like most people, had talents and interests that extended far beyond what his job required him to use. The tragedy of many jobs isn't just that they're dangerous or poorly paid, but that they only tap into a fraction of human potential.

The Bottom Line

The fear that AI will eliminate human work misses the fundamental point. Every major technological revolution has followed the same pattern: eliminate the mundane, elevate the meaningful, create new possibilities we couldn't imagine before.

AI won't replace jobs. It will replace the parts of jobs that humans never wanted to do in the first place - and free up human capacity for work that's more interesting, more creative, and more aligned with what people actually want to contribute to the world.

And for founders paying attention to the chaos? As Altman emphasizes, this is your moment. The balls are moving fast in the pit right now. The question isn't whether there will be enough work for humans. The question is whether you'll be thoughtful enough to spot the gaps opening up and build something valuable in the space that emerges.

As he puts it: "There is so much more space to go after" beyond what OpenAI is building. The product overhang is real, the opportunities are massive, and "this is the best time ever in the history of technology ever period to start a company."

The future belongs to those with the conviction to build it - and the wisdom to build it in service of human flourishing.

What parts of your work would you gladly hand over to an AI agent tomorrow? Hit reply and let me know - I read every response and this helps me understand how these changes are playing out in real companies.

Collin

PS- If you missed last week's newsletter where I shared the VC & PE list, you can check it out here. And if you're finding value in these insights, I'd appreciate it if you shared this with a colleague who's thinking about AI's impact on their industry.

PPS - for all you keeners who read all the way to the bottom, thank you! Here’s a little easter egg: I’m working on the website for the book, any feedback?