05/05/2026
This image made me think about something we are all kind of living through right now.
AI is here, and whether people like it or not, it is not going away. A lot of people are worried that it is going to take jobs from humans. And honestly, they are not completely wrong. It will. It already is. Some tasks that used to require a person, or a whole team of people, can now be done faster with the help of artificial intelligence.
But I think we need to zoom out a little.
This is not the first time technology has disrupted the normal way people worked. One of the easiest comparisons is the horse and buggy.
Before cars became normal, the horse and carriage system was not just one simple job. It was an entire economy. You needed horses, which meant people had to breed them, train them, sell them, shoe them, feed them, house them, clean up after them, and care for them when they got sick or injured. That involved farmers growing hay and oats, blacksmiths making horseshoes, stable hands maintaining the animals, leather workers making saddles and harnesses, veterinarians treating the horses, and people managing boarding stables.
Then you had the buggy itself. That required lumber, timber, metal, wheels, axles, springs, upholstery, paint, tools, and skilled craftsmen. Someone had to cut the wood. Someone had to transport it. Someone had to shape it. Someone had to build the wheels. Someone had to forge the metal parts. Someone had to assemble the carriage. Someone had to repair it when it broke. A simple horse and buggy represented a whole network of human labor.
Then the automobile came along.
At first, a lot of people probably saw it as loud, dangerous, expensive, unnecessary, and maybe even stupid. Why replace the horse? The horse worked. The system already existed. People understood it.
But once the mechanical car improved enough, the old system could not compete. Steam-powered vehicles, combustion engines, and eventually vehicles like the Model T changed everything. Horse and buggy technology did not just slowly improve forever. It got overtaken by something better, faster, more scalable, and more efficient.
That transition absolutely destroyed certain jobs. There is no honest way around that. Farriers, carriage makers, stable workers, harness makers, and others had to adapt or get left behind.
But did the automobile only destroy jobs?
No.
It created mechanics, factory workers, assembly line production, gas stations, tire companies, road construction crews, delivery drivers, trucking, dealerships, auto insurance, traffic systems, engineering fields, oil and fuel industries, logistics networks, and eventually entire global supply chains. It changed where people could live, how far they could travel, how businesses could operate, and how fast goods could move.
The people living in the horse and buggy era could not have realistically pictured what we have today. They could not have imagined massive automotive plants producing vehicles with robotics, computers, sensors, batteries, cameras, software updates, GPS navigation, and self-driving features. A Tesla factory would have looked like science fiction to someone whose whole world was built around horses, wood, leather, and iron.
That is where I think we are with AI.
We are standing in the horse and buggy phase, trying to predict the Tesla factory phase.
That is almost impossible.
AI is going to disrupt jobs. It is going to make certain skills less valuable. It is going to expose people who have been getting by on repetitive work, shallow knowledge, or slow systems. That is the uncomfortable part.
But it is also going to create new jobs, new industries, new tools, and new opportunities we cannot fully see yet. The mistake is assuming the job market of the future will just be today’s job market with fewer people in it. That is probably not what is coming.
What is more likely is that AI will shift the value of human work. The person who only knows how to perform a task may struggle. The person who knows how to think, direct, judge, create, communicate, build trust, solve problems, and use these tools wisely will become more valuable.
AI may help us design better machines, improve medical research, develop more efficient energy systems, reduce waste, solve engineering problems faster, and possibly accelerate space exploration and interplanetary travel. Things that would have taken teams years may eventually take weeks or days with human direction and AI assistance.
That does not mean we worship technology. That does not mean every use of AI is good. And it definitely does not mean we should pretend there will be no pain in the transition.
But fear is not a strategy.
The people who survive big technological shifts are not usually the ones who complain the loudest about what is disappearing. They are the ones who pay attention, learn the new tools, keep their moral compass, and adapt before they are forced to.
The horse and buggy was not evil. It was just eventually outgrown.
AI may be the same kind of shift. We can either treat it like a threat and hope it slows down, or we can be honest about what is happening and start learning how to use it before the world moves on without us.