"AI does not take away your agency. It gives it to you."
This was the most optimistic take I have heard on AI and jobs in a long time, and it came from someone managing billions, not a tech evangelist.
The argument: before AI, if you were 50 and your industry disappeared, your options were limited to unskilled work. You could not realistically pivot into a completely different field in a short time.
Now you can. The cost of starting something new, building a new business model, reinventing yourself has collapsed.
The pessimistic narrative says capital wins and labor loses. The alternative narrative says: salaried employment might shrink, but only because more people become builders, owners, entrepreneurs themselves.
Crypto has been living a version of this for over a decade. Anyone, anywhere, with an idea and an internet connection, can build something that did not exist before without asking permission from an institution.
The tools are not the threat. Not using them is.
What would you build if the cost of starting were zero?