By John Cassidy
Publication Date: 2026-01-12 11:00:00
Even if AI does not significantly accelerate economic growth, there are questions about how it will impact employment and wages. The main question is whether AI primarily complements or replaces human labor. For example, allowing office workers to complete their tasks more quickly and effectively could increase their wages, preserve many existing jobs, and create well-paying new jobs for people skilled at working with AI agents. In a recent article, Séb Krier, manager of policy development and strategy at Google DeepMind, argued that “future workers will likely act as organizers of information” and monitor what AI does. In the longer term, AI could also create new jobs and new professions that we cannot currently imagine other transformative technologies have already done.
However, the fact remains that AI agents will eventually be able to perform virtually all cognitive tasks without human intervention – a possibility that they tout…
