Industrial Revolution, to begin with, affected the jobs of the horses. In 1901, 3.25 million horses were at work. By 1924, there were fewer than 2 million working horses. Of course, at low level of wages, they could have remained at work, but that wage is so low that it could not pay for their feed.

These days generative AI has raised the concern about what Keynes called ‘technological unemployment.’ It is the inability of the economy to create new Jobs faster than jobs lost to automation.

AI could lead to automation of a quarter of work done in the US and Eurozone. It exposes 300 million full-time workers.

In previous disruptions, the blue colllar workers bore the brunt. However, the effect of AI is on while collar jobs as well. At least 10 percent of the tasks could be performed by AI of 80 per cent of workforce.

Bill Gates calls AI a white collar worker available to assist the working population to perform various tasks.

Human skills of understanding, translating and pattern recognition are being taken over by the machines. Automation has moved from the shop floor to offices.

Of course, AI augments human intelligence and does not replace it. Clerical and secretarial work will be most affected. There will be new occupations. People should adopt the new technology.

AI has its limitations. It has theoretical understanding of an adult, but real life judgement of a child. It follows instructions, but finds it difficult to figure out the right thing to do. It is poor at grasping the context. There cannot be automation of soft skills, e.g. empathy, relationship building, social intelligence. It can be biased. It is thus necessary to have human oversight.

AI will improve productivity. It will not replace humans. On the contrary, humans using AI will replace humans not using AI.