On 60 minutes special on AI one of the interviews said that AI is like a sewing machine, when the sewing machine came out people thought they would lose jobs but that is not what happened. His point was that it would be the same with AI. I feel that is a very misleading analogy, either he knows that and is being intentionally misleading or else he doesn't want to admit the truth and so is obfuscating.
When the sewing machine came out you could make 25 shirts a day on a sewing machine (on average). Prior to that it probably took 3-4 days to make a shirt. So the ratio is close to 75:1, maybe even as high as 100:1. But the same is true of the machines that make cloth from cotton and other fibers. The same is also true of the truck, train or cargo ship that transports the shirts to market. So even though you only needed 1 person to do what it used to take 75 people to do, the result was that shirts became much cheaper, so much so that everyone bought them and bought many of them. That meant you needed more salesmen, more truck drivers, etc. All of those inventions like a sewing machine made products cheaper, but they didn't eliminate the need for a skilled craftsman and in fact in many cases you needed more skills. So it created more jobs, high skilled and high wage jobs, and increased the standard of living for everyone. But the major reason for this is we kept expanding into new markets. You find developing nations where the people don't have many shirts, now they can buy more shirts. So you have growth and expansion. The basic principle was to take an existing tool (a needle and thread) and super charge it (sewing machine).
But that is not the basic principle of AI. As it is right now AI needs an operator, that is "true". But let's look carefully at that. Suppose I am a tax preparer. I have a small office with a secretary, three accountants and the owner of the firm who is a CPA. But now with AI my customer goes on line and is asked questions by the AI, they answer those questions, provide necessary forms or receipts, and it prepares the tax return. It works much faster, so that in an hour you could start and finish the entire process. Maybe 80% of the returns are standard, the owner might only initial the final copy. The other 20% are flagged because they are more involved. But the issue is not with the whole return it is with one or two of the decisions the AI made which the CPA needs to look at and approve. So the amount of work the CPA would have to do on these 20% is probably only 10% of what it would be if he had done these returns. That means the CPA is really only doing about 10% or less of the work involved. Before when he had four other people working for him he might have been doing 30% of the work. So his work load is not a third of what it was and he doesn't need the four other people. Therefore he can charge less for this work, but what the AI is doing is replacing 80% of the workforce. If tax returns are now cheaper to get someone to prepare will more people pay to have them done? No. So you will see this job market shrink. The same can be shown for lawyers, doctors, engineers, stock brokers, programmers, etc.
Every single job will be impacted. Think of a mechanic. You bring your car in because a sensor went off saying there was a problem. They plug in the computer, it tells them the offending part, they buy a new part, pull out the old one and plug in the new one. The mechanic is no longer this highly skilled job of diagnosing the problem and fixing it. Now you simply ask the computer what part to buy, order it, plug it in, and that is that. One mechanic can do the job of 5 mechanics.
Think about a cashier. At Walmart I see an area with 20 self checkout cash registers being supervised by two people. They are replacing 90% of their cashiers and with online orders you replace 100%.
There is no "new" job being created. No "new" market for cashiers or mechanics.
Also as layoffs hit 80% of the job market they will not be "buying" more shirts. Things will get cheaper and faster, but with every layoff there will be fewer and fewer customers. AI will not be going to the grocery store, it won't be buying a shirt, or a car or a house or anything else. With each person AI replaces it will be one less consumer in the economy.
AI replaces workers, that is what it does. Tell it the job to do, and it can do it. If it can do it faster, cheaper, better than a human then it replaces humans. Also as it does its job it will be learning at an exponential rate. So today it does 80%, next year it does 90% and the year after that it does 95%.