Remember when your biggest career worry was whether robots would steal factory jobs? Well, plot twist: they’re coming for the corner office instead.
We’re witnessing what economists are calling “The Great Decoupling” – basically, AI is doing to knowledge workers what the steam engine did to horse-drawn carriages. Except this time, it’s happening at warp speed and affecting everyone from lawyers to software engineers.
Here’s the uncomfortable math: Corporate profits as a share of GDP just hit 11.55% (near record highs), while labor’s slice of the pie dropped to 53.8% – the lowest since the 1940s. Translation? The money’s flowing to whoever owns the algorithms, not the people using them.
The “Augmentation” Myth
You’ve probably heard the feel-good narrative: “AI won’t replace you, it’ll just make you more efficient!” That’s corporate speak for “we used to need five of you, now we need one.”
Take Chegg (CHGG), the student homework helper that dominated for a decade. ChatGPT showed up and – poof – 90% stock crash. Turns out, when students can get answers for free, they stop paying $15/month for the privilege.
Even the big players aren’t safe. Salesforce (CRM) built their empire on “seat-based” pricing – charging per employee using their software. But why pay for 1,000 seats when one AI agent can do the work of 1,000 people?
Follow the Electricity
So where’s the smart money going? Stop looking at the screen and start looking at the power grid.
Here’s a fun fact that’ll keep you up at night: A single query on OpenAI’s reasoning model uses 10x more electricity than a Google search. We’re not just building computers anymore – we’re building “information power plants” that need massive, constant energy.
Goldman Sachs predicts AI will drive a 160% surge in data center power demand by 2030. That’s why the smartest investors are buying:
- Natural gas companies – The only fuel that can meet AI’s immediate, monstrous energy appetite
- Infrastructure plays – Think cooling systems, power management, anything that keeps AI “brains” from melting
- Strategic materials – The government is throwing billions at Intel (INTC), MP Materials (MP), and other companies critical to AI infrastructure
The New Reality
The U.S. government isn’t trying to slow this down – they’re hitting the gas pedal. Project Stargate ($100 billion supercomputer initiative) and the Genesis Mission (basically a Manhattan Project for AI) prove they’d rather win the AI arms race than protect jobs.
The harsh truth? We’re moving from the “Human Century” to the “Intelligence Century.” You can either own the labor being replaced or own the capital doing the replacing.
Your move: Are you betting on the horse or the car factory?