The "average worker" ends up getting more wealthy because younger, newer employees who grow up native to the new technology often capture its upsides at the expense of older workers who were unable to. The Rust Belt is a great example of this because most kids ended up migrating out to cities for work while their parents or the less successful ones end up stuck.

There's a lot of questions right now.

1. Will there be a net-new creation of jobs? Is positive-sum knowledge work a real thing, or have we run out of new jobs to create?

2. How quickly will workers transition to an AI version of their jobs?

3. Will AI even succeed in a broad way across knowledge work or will the frontier of AI remain jagged and only impact some jobs (coding) while leaving others alone?

4. For workers left behind in this transition, what will their lives be like? We know from looking at previous technology transitions (industrial revolution, factory automation, computer revolution, now maybe AI revolution) that many workers really do end up in bad places. It's perfectly reasonable to demand that in today's world in our advanced societies that even if those workers are unable to adapt that they are able to lead lives with dignity.

There's a lot of interesting conversations and investigations to be had but my biggest fear is just that nobody is really willing to listen to the other side with empathy. This entire conversation thread is just people snipping at each other, hitting the vote buttons based on where they want to steer their favorite opinion. If you want to do social and economic science in this space but people are so polarized, the work will be thwarted. In general offline spaces are less polarized (not to be mistaken for pro or anti AI disruption) than online spaces, but my fear is that we continue to polarize, making understanding the fabric of our social change challenging and letting down everyone in the process.