According to McKinsey, as many as 50% of all work activities could be replaced by automation within the next two decades – from 400 million to 800 million jobs worldwide. As a result, industries will emerge, skills will transform, and, for many, jobs will disappear. The job apocalypse is coming.
Let me explain.
A century ago, most people on earth worked on farms and in factories. But when the Industrial Revolution hit, everything changed. Machines replaced millions of jobs across agriculture, manufacturing, freight, and logistics. We replaced human hands with assembly lines, and made production faster, cheaper, and better than ever.
In the process, occupations vanished. When was the last time you went to a blacksmith?
When the internet revolution happened, same thing. It displaced millions more. Cashiers, travel agencies, phone operators, tollbooth operators, and bank tellers… I could go on. My point: everything changed, again. Slowly, and then all at once.
The next big economic shift is going to be even more disruptive, and it will be driven by AI.
Don’t act surprised. We knew AI would replace manual jobs and many quantitative roles. But the part we didn't know: it's coming for the creatives, too.
New tech is created every day that writes your copy, designs your living room, and edits your photographs. And while some of these tools are still in their infancy, they’ll continue getting better, faster, and cheaper. And as they do, even more jobs will disappear.
Take interior designers, for example. What happens when AI does their job for you? What if all you needed to do to create the living room of your dreams was snap a photo, upload it to an AI tool, and tell it what you want it to look like?
“Remember Tony Stark’s house in Iron Man? I want my living room like that, but with mid-century modern furniture and black walls.”
In an instant, it delivers – practically FOR FREE. Of the ten styles it generated, you pick three, and buy your favorite pieces of furniture directly through the app, without ever speaking with another human.
The crazy part? These tools ALREADY exist. They just aren’t integrated yet.
If you’re the designer, the architect, or the realtor, it’s not too late to succeed. But you need to act NOW. Instead of resisting AI, learn how to harness it to your advantage. Experiment with tools like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion. Test them with clients.
Because the truth is this: creativity isn't going away, it's just going to look different. It's prompts vs pencils.
The winners are going to be the ones who use AI to make them EVEN BETTER, not resist the inevitable.