Economist Justin Wolfers has issued a stark warning that white-collar professionals are now facing their “Detroit auto worker” moment due to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).

AI Is Coming For Cognitive Jobs

Speaking on MSNBC, Wolfers argued that, unlike every major technological shift in the past, AI is the first to replace cognitive work rather than manual labor.

“Almost every previous technological revolution—the plow, the steam engine, electricity—has been technology… doing the work of brawn, of muscle,” Wolfers explained.

He noted that those disruptions primarily impacted blue-collar workers. “What’s different this time is the robots are doing cognitive work,” he stated. “So that means the folks they’re coming for this time are white-collar workers.”

He identified the core skills of many white-collar jobs—including his own and those in media—as being directly in AI’s crosshairs. “If you spend your day ‘reading lots of stuff and turning it into straight English,’ well… so does the machine,” he wrote.

The plow, the steam engine, electricity, all replaced muscle. AI replaces cognition. If you spend your day "reading lots of stuff and ...