Automation has been a thread that has run through all of human history. Previously, it has largely replaced heavy and some skilled manual labour. Now it is replacing repetitive intellectual work. This means that the realm of human work is being compressed into a smaller and smaller subset of viable economic work. Without repetition the work becomes exploratory, work that is traditionally risky, and difficult to value.
Pattern based intelligence has appeared as if from nowhere in the last few years. Its ability to generate code, writing or art automatically has sent a shock through industry; devaluing the perceive value of human work. Partial automation has brought apparent devaluation before; photo editing, code autocomplete, spreadsheets; but ultimately led to increased productivity. However, this is different, it is seemingly more dynamic; adapted to any well specified task.
The question remains, what intellectual work is left for humans to perform ? The answer is frontier work; work not defined by well understood and repeated patterns. However, this work is inherently exploratory, with long feedback loops, and high failure rates. It naturally has the economics of research, and innovation.
This means there is a mismatch between standard labour markets and the new economic model. The vast majority of jobs are repeatable, with predictable output. Traditionally, research-like activity is a small part of most companies, who shy away from gambling with their bottom-line. Universities, public funded laboratories, and a handful of large firms get around this with subsidies, monopolies, or regulation; but most do or cannot.
The new form of intelligent automation is intensifying this. The replacement of repetitive pattern based work at the heart of the labour market, will lead to employment being compressed into the outer edge; the frontier. The result is not mass unemployment, but growing instability: fewer roles, higher variance, delayed validation, and increased pressure on individuals to absorb uncertainty personally.
All that remains if for employees to absorb uncertainty on behalf of others. The difficulty is that most labour markets are not designed to pay for uncertainty, only for output. Until that changes, disruption is not an anomaly; it is the natural state of the system.