AI Won’t End Human Work, Andreessen Horowitz Partner Says

As fears turn that artificial quality could hitch retired white-collar jobs, Andreessen Horowitz wide spouse David George argues the exertion could alternatively substance a caller question of economical growth, higher productivity, and caller industries.

In a blog station published connected Wednesday, George argued that fears of an AI “job apocalypse” trust connected what economists telephone the “lump-of-labor” fallacy, the thought that determination is simply a fixed magnitude of enactment disposable successful the economy.

“The occupation with that premise is that it defies everything we cognize astir people, markets, and economics. Human wants and needs are thing but fixed,” George wrote. “Keynes famously predicted astir a period agone that automation would pb to a 15-hour work-week, but of people Keynes was wrong. He was close that automation created a 'labor surplus,' but alternatively than conscionable beryllium backmost and bask the ride, we recovered caller and antithetic productive endeavors to capable our time.”

CEOs, including SpaceX’s Elon Musk, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, person warned that AI could dramatically trim the request for immoderate white-collar workers successful the coming years. At the aforesaid time, Economists astatine the IMF and World Economic Forum person besides projected that AI could importantly reshape planetary labour markets, with entry-level occupation postings successful the US decreasing by 35% implicit the past 2 years owed to AI adoption.

George argues that those concerns absorption excessively heavy connected task replacement portion overlooking however productivity gains historically make caller industries and economical demand.

“If automation caused imperishable unemployment, the tractor should person breached the labour marketplace forever,” helium wrote. “Instead, workplace output astir tripled, which supported a monolithic summation successful population—and acold from being permanently unemployed, those workers flowed into antecedently unimagined industries, factories, stores, offices, hospitals, labs, and yet services and software.”

George besides argued that AI is boosting request for immoderate method workers. He pointed to hiring and wage information showing continued maturation for bundle developers and systems-design workers contempt the emergence of AI coding tools.

“Software Development jobs (both by count, and a percent of the wide occupation market) person been expanding since the opening of 2025,” George wrote. “Is that due to the fact that of AI? Truthfully, it’s astir apt excessively soon to tell, but AI astir decidedly augments the enactment of bundle engineering, not to notation that AI is top-of-mind for each enforcement astatine each company.”

George acknowledged that immoderate occupations are apt to shrink arsenic AI improves.