There was a time when cutting grass was done with scythes, specially shaped swords. All day back and forth swinging the blade to get grass just the perfect length. Swing, take a step, swing. It was backbreaking labor in the sun. So lawns probably were quite expensive and having your own was probably pretty flashy, or maybe they were public, provided by the state to the people, or maybe both.
Along comes the string of inventions that led to lawnmowers. Now, anyone can mow grass in an afternoon. Gone are the lawn-scything jobs! Did the sky fall then?
Of course we know how this played out. Some lawn-scythers lamented the loss of their work, but they’re forgotten to history. Other clever lawn-scythers went and trained as lawn-mowers, while a few even cleverer ones went and became lawnmower mechanics, a few became engineers so they could start to design lawnmowers, and some started lawnmower factories and employed plenty of workers making way more lawnmowers than anyone thought possible.
Lawnmowers aren’t free but they’re super cheap and getting cheaper all the time, they’re abundant, and the real cost now is labor, which is going up all the time. So what do you do? You pay a lawnmowing person to take care of your lawn while you work your high paid office job.
Whenever someone says AI is coming for the jobs, ask them which exact AI model is coming for the jobs; which tool built by which startup it is that’s coming for the jobs, and if so why are they hiring?