X People Ago and Technological Displacement
Hype
There is a lot of hype surrounding AI. What is less recognized is that AI is also under hyped. This is counterintuitive.
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google's Deep Mind AI lab, frames it best, "AI is over hyped in the short term and probably underestimated over the long term". I subscribe to this thinking.
We don't know the time frames but we can use history as a guide to better understand what is happening today. The X People Ago and Technological Displacement app below is an interactive deep historical analysis aiming at precisely this. Humans have invented countless step change technologies that resulted in displacement of labor, institutions, and other technologies. From this lens, AI is nothing new, but it sure feels new.
Concern
Individuals—including myself—naturally have concern with how AI and related automation might displace us. I envision two core futures as likely outcomes:
- individuals are empowered with powerful new tools in their tool belts
- individuals are replaced with agentic software systems...and embodied variants to follow
Both of these futures are in fact playing out simultaneously today to different degrees. To what extent one or the other becomes the dominant future is the unknown. There are certain types of jobs whose tasks are more or less susceptible to AI and its automation potential. As models (LLM, VLM, VLA, World, and variants) continue to improve, it seems inevitable that the task set agentic software systems can address will only increase in size. Their accuracy and precision will follow suit. Ultimately, their capabilities will increase breadth-wise and depth-wise simultaneously.
Many claim "you won't lose your job to AI, you'll lose your job to someone else who uses AI". This is only half true. It feels better to say "I won't lose my job to AI", but we must seriously consider that we're lying to ourselves. Even founders of leading AI labs like Anthropic's Ben Mann admit they are not immune.
Even for me and being in the center of a lot of this transformation, I'm not immune to job replacement either. Just some vulnerability there, at some point it's coming for all of us.
Ben Mann - Anthropic Co-founder
The proper claim is, "you will likely lose your job to AI eventually or to someone else who uses AI".
This is uncomfortable and concerning.
Is concern warranted?
Technological Displacement
The universe does not care about our feelings.
In short, the concern is absolutely warranted. However—at least for me—the historical analysis below flips what was uncomfortable to comfortable. Reflecting on so many concrete examples eases the mind and aids intuition. Technological displacement happens. This is the norm. Some tools augment humans and some replace them. The humans don't go away, a tool simply becomes the preferred fit for a task. Rinse and repeat. We've done this non-stop since becoming tool wielding:
- reading stones → eyeglasses → laser surgery
- scribes → printing press → digital publishing
- candles → gas lamps → electric lights
- horses → automobiles → autonomous vehicles
- messengers → telegraph → email
We are all placing bets—consciously or subconsciously—with our time. Displacement is inevitable. The time frames are the only unknowns. These are the facts. The question is, how should you change your behavior—if at all—given these facts?
I don't have the answer for you, but my hope is that this article and the below app helps you:
- Understand that AI is Just Another Tool™️
- Reflect on where you are placing your bets
- Improve historical time intuition via the People Ago Heuristic
People Ago Heuristic
The People Ago Heuristic is very simple and originates—of all places—from a stand-up comedy bit:
We always like to say, "The long, great history of the United States." Listen, that's not real. The United States was founded in 1776. People live to be a hundred. That's three people ago. [laughter] You're like, "Is he right?" Yeah! The Fear Factor guy just hit you with a fucking math quiz! [laughter] Three people ago!
Joe Rogan - Strange Times
Generally speaking, humans have a very poor intuition of long time horizons—myself included. The fact we can live to be 100 and that 100 is a useful historical counting unit means we have a simple heuristic for gauging relative history. Since personally adopting this heuristic I have a much better intuition and feel for historical proximity.
I use this heuristic in the below app in hopes you also benefit.
Here are a few warm-ups:
- 1 People Ago: Man on the Moon
- 3 People Ago: Industrial Revolution
- 4 People Ago: Age of Enlightenment
- 5 People Ago: The Scientific Revolution
- 20 People Ago: Roman Empire
- 35 People Ago: Egyptian Empire
- 100 People Ago: Human Agriculture
