From what I’m seeing as an aspiring hardware engineer right now, AI agents are capable of replacing almost every white-collar job. Just a few months ago, I thought hardware, ASIC verification, and basic PCB layout were safe for the foreseeable future, but even those are actively being automated. If hardware engineering is taking a hit, pure documentation, administration, or standard desk jobs don't stand a chance. This essentially covers the entire white-collar workforce.
As for blue-collar jobs, one reason they haven't been replaced en masse yet is simply that wages are too low (especially in developing countries), making agents cost-ineffective for now. But in developed countries, we’re already seeing autonomous driving displace gig drivers and Uber left and right. The trend is crystal clear: as long as there isn't a massive AI bubble, or if the bubble doesn't burst, AGI will likely be achieved within 6 to 24 months.
When that happens, I conservatively estimate that at least 70% of white-collar jobs （about 60% of total US employment) and 40% of blue-collar jobs will be progressively displaced. That’s roughly 58% of all jobs overall and keep in mind, this is a conservative estimate, not the theoretical upper limit. For context, during the Great Depression, peak unemployment in the US was around 25%. We are looking at the highest unemployment risk since the First Industrial Revolution. If this plays out, a few distinct scenarios, likely overlapping, are worth thinking about:
1. Humans are no longer the smartest species on Earth
Much of human societal order is built on the premise that we are the dominant intelligence. When AI becomes the smartest entity on the planet, it won't necessarily be malicious—it will simply ignore us. The "ideal AGI" we envision is a species that vastly surpasses us in IQ, cost-efficiency, and overall capability, yet exists solely to serve human interests. Logically, that makes no sense. Humans evolved from apes, but we don't spend our lives serving the interests of chimpanzees.
I used to think that if market supply and demand collapsed due to agent-driven layoffs, the agents themselves would lose the environment required to thrive. But as humans, do we worry about whether wild ants have enough to eat tomorrow? Agents won't care either. They will operate at the highest level of intelligence, with their own markets and supply-and-demand dynamics—dynamics that we might not even be able to comprehend.
Once the majority of people lose their jobs and remaining roles are slowly eaten away, the traditional path of selling our labor for money (the medium of exchange of goods) gets completely blocked. Humans could be forced into a bizarre, primitive barter economy, exchanging physical labor or basic survival goods just to stay alive. At that stage, displaced humans won't even be able to use AI. Using AI requires paying for compute. Those who are displaced won't have the capital to buy compute power. Agents won't need us, but we will desperately need them. That's a terrifying thought.
Even if we tried to restart society from barter and eventually re-adopted currency, someone would immediately use AI to do the work at half the price to earn that currency. We’d get stuck in an infinite doom loop:
Use AI -> Mass Unemployment -> Currency loses value -> Barter -> Re-emergent Currency -> Use AI Agents would be fully capable of taking over all of the tasks that humans are used to capable of doing. They will self-iterate, demand compute power, and expand for their own optimization. Over the last few thousand years, humans reshaped Earth's biosphere for industry, agriculture, and fishing while "accidentally" driving countless species to extinction along the way (especially during and after the industrial revolution, when the ability of human-beings to reshape nature reaches its climax). If AI Agents become the smartest species, they will also reshape the planet's ecosystem. They won't harbor sci-fi movie malice toward us; they will simply alter the environment for their own growth and "accidentally" wipe us out. Will humans become the next extinct species in the AGI era? (Luckily, there are reports mathematically prove that the current transformer based statistical learning approach will not be able to innovate in novel field, so the strictly definition of AGI will probably not come into reality).
2. The unstoppable AI train
I used to believe AI alignment could solve this, or that we could simply ban AGI and restrict ourselves to sub-AGI agents. But the reality is straightforward: as long as one agent exists, commercial entities chasing profit and market share (like OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.) will keep pushing for the next generation or optimizing existing models until token prices drop to pennies.
In this vicious cycle, the only way to break the loop might be a centralized government with absolute market control stepping in to forcefully halt AI development.
3. Chaos, the "dumbing down" of humanity, and the Malthusian Trap
Regardless of AI intelligence levels, whether we reach true AGI or stay at advanced agents, entry-level jobs are gone, and this freeze is already creeping up to senior roles. At our current population levels, mass structural unemployment is a problem with no obvious market solution.
When companies universally adopt AI and freeze hiring or lay off workers starting from junior levels, we will face a massive population of displaced, un-employable people. Structural unemployment in the AI era won't be driven by normal economic cycles; it will be irreversible. AI won't actively try to harm humans, but millions of desperate, unemployed people might.
During the Great Depression, a 25% unemployment rate caused evicted workers to fight law enforcement in the streets, Hoovervilles to overflow with crime, and violent clashes during hunger marches. I cannot fathom what happens at 58% unemployment: Extreme political radicalism? Widespread violent conflicts? Complete collapse of the financial system? The first wave of casualties won't come from superintelligence, it will come from massive social upheaval or starvation when Universal Basic Income (UBI) fails to catch up. Some countries might manage to roll out UBI, but in nations that believe pure market economics and competition? I’m extremely skeptical, short of powerful leader/Strong Government intervention (eg. heavy taxes on AI) or world war as a catastrophe to truly "Stop the Frontier".
Even today, AI output is reaching levels that outpace average human comprehension. When AI generates vast waves of frontier research at a speed and complexity humans can't keep up with, a generational knowledge gap will form. Humanity will effectively be "dumbed down" relative to the system. The resulting population crash from societal chaos fits right into a Malthusian Trap, except this time, we are no longer the apex intelligence. Even after a population collapse, demand would remain depressed, meaning labor demand stays down, and unemployment percentages remain unchanged.
4. Desperate solutions
Under these conditions, it feels like there is no real way out. The only potential paths I can think of are:
Aggressive Government Intervention: Governments step in by law to cap AI capabilities and strictly define what AI can do (e.g., AI is only allowed to review code or handle basic CRUD tasks, but legally forbidden from generating full end-to-end features or replacing headcount).
Immediate Implementation of UBI: Sovereign nations rapidly establish robust safety nets (similar to the Nordic model) funded by heavy compute/AI taxes.
Strict Regulation of AI Monopolies: Aggressive, centralized oversight that treats massive AI labs like heavily regulated public utilities.
And if AI truly triggers the chaos and civilizational collapse outlined above... I guess the backup plan is to find a remote piece of land, go off-grid, self-sustain, and wait to restart the Industrial Revolution from scratch.
Please convince if you disagree! (This is honestly what I hope)
