Who is more likely to be replaced sooner? White collar vs Blue collar workers
2 significant things are circulating on the internet simultaneously this week:
A tweet about how a human beat a machine (a 10-hour livestream in which a human sorted packages and compared it to the productivity of a robot).
Or an announcement of a Microsoft AI chief that predicts AI will automate most white-collar work within 18 months.
While I don't think there will be a complete replacement of humans in either case, I do think we will see mass layoffs. My guess is that it will be white-collar jobs first.
The question is, if one option wins, how do we ensure the energy efficiency of these AI/robotic solutions and how do we ensure that it is cheaper than humans?
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I think the fear of mass layoffs is over hyped, when more people can create more stuff that they couldn't create before (vibe coding for instance) it raises the tide for everyone. Say someone who couldn't make a business before makes one by vibe coding a product and employs people to work in it, then they are creating jobs. If they couldn't make the product before then that business is never created and those people never get employed. I think the mass lay offs fear mongering thing is fueled by those needing to justify a massive capex spend on hardware that suffers from an obscene level of functional obsolescence long before it wears out physically.
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@natew85 It is easier but it doesn't mean that people will do it. Many people have options, but only 2% of them will try to complete something.
@busmark_w_nika Another example is the introduction of compilers, programming in machine code was very difficult and prone to error. Compiled languages lowered that barrier and opened the door to more people not just understanding how to build software, but it also allowed them to give it a try more easily because it looked less intimidating. This made programming more accessible and more software was built because of it, something similar is happening again now so time will tell I guess.
Good topic - I researched this area, and wrote about it on my substack. AI/Robotics are already cheaper - the problem is that they're not good enough... yet. Electricity is a constraint - North American's natural gas abundance will support electricity demand until nuclear replaces it.
The empathetic side of me worries about the psychological effects this is going to have. Human anxiety driven by the exponential change is going to feel disorderly, disruptive and conspiratorial to some people. A lot of people are not going to realize what's up and react in very bad ways.
Folks on this thread are advantaged by the position of your profession - understanding code and digital products.
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@robert_vassov "A lot of people are not going to realise what's up and react in very bad ways." – What do you mean by reaction in bad ways? What can it look like?
My gut feeling is white-collar - people can survive without all the fancy hi-tech and other stuff that is not mandatory for a decent life. A computer won't help you to get some literal food or clothes :)
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@sk_uxpin I should rethink my shift to physical positions then :D
@busmark_w_nika hahaha, I'm not particularly excited about that (I am an absolute dummy when it comes to any kind of work at home), but yeah, I probably need to rethink this as well :D
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@sk_uxpin We can shake with hands there :D
@busmark_w_nika hands shaken :D
TinyCommand
I think the important distinction is that automation does not need to fully replace humans to still massively reduce headcount.
A company does not need an AI to be “better than a human.” It just needs the AI to make one employee handle the work of three.
That’s why white-collar jobs probably get affected first. Software scales much faster than robotics, and the infrastructure already exists.
The bigger question is exactly what you mentioned:
Can these systems become cheaper than humans once you factor in compute, energy, hardware, and maintenance?
Right now AI is heavily subsidized by investor money and infrastructure spending. The real long-term test is whether the economics still make sense once that normalizes.
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@priyanka_gosai1 I am not very happy about this prognoss tho :D
i feel like white collar jobs get hit first... replacing software work with more software is way easier than replacing physical workers with robots... also people seriously underestimate how much energy and infrastructure ai actually needs behind the scene
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@nidaezahraaa It seems that it will be the case. I already felt it back in 2024, when AI started being used massively.
Just a curious observation: people are saying AI would replace software engineers, but most VCs would pass on teams without a technical founder. Is it more because the technology is not fully ready, or that AI's role is compression, not replacement?
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@zanc_zhao Being a VC, I would have to have trust in the team, and they should have some past results.
I think white-collar work gets redefined first because most of it already lives inside software. But the safest people in both categories will be the ones who combine skill with judgment, trust, and adaptability.
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@farrukh_butt1 Those are the skills I need to acquire + some physical too :)
I also think white-collar jobs will feel the impact first.
A lot of digital work:
writing
analysis
support
coordination
can already be partially automated with AI.
Blue-collar work is physically harder to replace at scale because robotics is expensive, slower to deploy, and depends heavily on real-world environments.
But I don’t think it becomes “humans vs AI.”
More likely:
small teams + AI replacing large teams without AI.
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@harithavijayakumar This is a valid point and pretty accur8. BTW, even when AI started, I was asked to lower the price. Now, it is on a bigger scale.
@busmark_w_nika Yes, that’s another huge shift.
AI increases productivity, but at the same time it also changes perceived value and pricing expectations. Suddenly people expect:
faster work
cheaper work
more output
Which probably means the long-term advantage becomes less about “access to AI” and more about:
taste, trust, execution, and unique insight.
Coworker AI
all the collars!
😂 just kidding, we were poking fun at exactly this in our launch video today.
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@kohnigel I love it, perfect work with the video :D
Coworker AI
@busmark_w_nika ty!
I think white-collar goes first, pretty clearly.
Not because every human gets replaced 1:1, but because companies that use AI structurally will either replace a large share of work or, ideally, expand what they can deliver with the same team.
The key point is: the endgame is not “everyone uses this AI tool”. That is just the first step. The real leverage comes when companies build actual workflows around it: skills, agents, guardrails, review loops and so on.
A lot of the intellectual work will shift into designing these skills and agent instructions.
Once those systems are good, they scale insanely well and can work in parallel in a way humans simply cannot.
Even very intellectual jobs are easier to automate than physical work right now. The expensive part in white-collar work is often the human intelligence, and AI is making that much cheaper.
In blue-collar work, the human worker is often still relatively affordable, while the automation itself is expensive and hard to deploy.
So economically, it seems obvious to me that white-collar gets hit first...
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@christian_dubray What kind of white-collar worker can secure a job, and what should they have?
@busmark_w_nika
Hard not to drift into dystopia here...
In guess in the medium term, the people who benefit most will probably be "decision-makers" and the ones who know how to roll out AI structurally inside companies.
I would not build my future value proposition around doing the same work as before.
Most likely, the safest people will be the ones who adapt fastest. But who knows.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@christian_dubray I need to adapt some ADHD pattern to know how to switch between things or so.