The Cyborg Era: What AI means for jobs

"We retired the horse — why should we be any different?" Krier takes the strongest version of that worry seriously and explains why the economics is more complicated. Comparative advantage can keep human work valuable even when AI is better at everything; demand for human-made things is real economic demand, not sentiment; and full substitution requires a stack of extreme assumptions to hold at once. But he also concedes the sharpest counter-case: if the friction of involving a human ever costs more than the human adds, firms redesign the process to drop the human — no perfect substitute required.

Read it as the honest middle of the AI-jobs debate: an argument for why "cyborg" arrangements of humans directing AI should last years or decades, written by someone who does not pretend the reassurance is permanent. It assumes a little comfort with economic vocabulary; the companion unpacks the key terms. Pairs with Noah Smith's sunnier take and against the fully-automated world of the AI 2040 scenario.