So everyone’s freaking out about AI stealing their jobs, right? Your LinkedIn feed is probably full of people either declaring themselves “AI-powered professionals” or updating their resumes in panic. But here’s the thing: Andrew Slimmon from Morgan Stanley Investment Management is basically shrugging at all the hysteria.
While the rest of us are doom-scrolling through articles about robot overlords, this guy is out here saying “been there, done that” – except he’s talking about the dot-com era. Remember when everyone thought the internet would destroy civilization as we know it? Spoiler alert: we’re still here, just with better memes.
The latest panic started with some viral Substack post (because of course it did) from Citrini Research predicting a white-collar job massacre. Think “The Walking Dead” but instead of zombies, it’s ChatGPT coming for your spreadsheets. Slimmon’s response? Basically, “Hold my coffee and watch this.”
His argument is pretty simple: we’ve been here before. Back in the early 2000s, everyone was convinced the internet would obliterate entire industries. Book publishers were supposedly doomed, travel agents were toast, and don’t even get him started on what people thought would happen to retail.
“We still work five days a week, we’re just more productive,” Slimmon points out. Which, honestly, feels like both a blessing and a curse depending on how you look at it.
Sure, some companies got steamrolled during the internet revolution. But here’s the plot twist nobody saw coming: new jobs popped up everywhere. Social media managers, app developers, influencer coordinators (yes, that’s a real job now). The economy didn’t collapse – it just got weird in new and interesting ways.
Even as Big Tech companies like Amazon, Block, and Salesforce are laying people off faster than you can say “efficiency gains,” Slimmon isn’t buying the doomsday narrative. He thinks AI will change how we work, not whether we work.
And he’s got backup from an unlikely source: Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO (you know, the guy whose company is basically printing money from AI chips). After Nvidia’s latest earnings, Huang said AI will give engineers different work to do, not eliminate them entirely. It’s like getting a promotion to “human who tells robots what to do” instead of getting fired.
Slimmon’s take? We’re so busy staring at the jobs disappearing that we’re missing all the new ones being created. It’s like watching a magic trick and only focusing on the rabbit going into the hat, not the one coming out of the sleeve.
Look, nobody’s saying this transition will be smooth sailing. Change is messy, and some people will definitely need to learn new skills (hello, online courses). But if history is any guide, humans are pretty good at adapting. We went from horse-drawn carriages to Tesla autopilot in about a century, and somehow we’re still employed.
So maybe, just maybe, we can all take a deep breath and remember that every technological revolution feels like the end of the world until it becomes just… Tuesday.