Friends and others who have described the details of their non-technical white collar work to me over the last 15 or so years have typically evoked the unspoken response... "Hmm, I could probably automate about 50-80% of your job in a couple weeks." That's pre-AI. And yet years later, they would still have similar jobs with repetitive computer work.
So I'm quite confident the future will be similar with AI. Yes, in theory, it could already replace perhaps 90% of the white collar work in the economy. But in practice? It will be a slow, decades-long transition as old-school / less tech savvy employers adopt the new processes and technologies.
Junior software engineers trying to break into high paying tech jobs will be hit the hardest hit IMO, since employers are tech savvy, the supply of junior developers is as high as ever, and they simply will take too long to add more value than using Claude unless you have a lot of money to burn on training them.
So I'm quite confident the future will be similar with AI. Yes, in theory, it could already replace perhaps 90% of the white collar work in the economy. But in practice? It will be a slow, decades-long transition as old-school / less tech savvy employers adopt the new processes and technologies.
Junior software engineers trying to break into high paying tech jobs will be hit the hardest hit IMO, since employers are tech savvy, the supply of junior developers is as high as ever, and they simply will take too long to add more value than using Claude unless you have a lot of money to burn on training them.