Box CEO Aaron Levie just made a bold claim: AI won't take away jobs. It will create explosive demand for them.
In a recent essay, Levie invoked a 19th-century economic theory called Jevons Paradox to argue that concerns about AI-driven job displacement are overblown. The theory, named after English economist William Stanley Jevons, contended that more efficient steam engines would not reduce demand for coal but increase it. Why? As coal became cheaper, demand would grow, leading to more steam engines being built.
Levie believes the same dynamic will play out with AI. As these systems dramatically lower the cost of complex knowledge work, including coding, market research, contract review, and campaign creation, he predicts small teams will soon wield the capabilities of Fortune 500 companies from a decade ago.
The result could be a massive expansion of demand for all kinds of work, much of it in areas that don't even exist yet.
It's an optimistic vision. But is it realistic?
To find out, I spoke with SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute founder and CEO Paul Roetzer on Episode 189 of The Artificial Intelligence Show.
The Optimist's Argument
Roetzer wants Levie to be right but he’s skeptical.
Levie's essay builds on a pattern that has repeated itself throughout the history of technology with mainframes, minicomputers and personal computers. Each wave of efficiency unlocked new markets, new users, and new demand.
The same will happen with AI, Levie argues. By automating knowledge work, AI agents will allow every entrepreneur and small business to have the same access to expertise and resources that only Fortune 500 companies could once afford.
And because demand isn't fixed, Levie concludes, the jobs won't disappear, they'll multiply.
Flaws in the Framework
Roetzer is a fan of Levie's work and considers him one of the most intellectually engaged technology leaders. But he sees fundamental flaws in his argument.
First, demand for knowledge output isn't infinite. Just because AI can create more content, more marketing campaigns, and more code, doesn't mean there's unlimited appetite for it. Attention is finite. Distribution is limited. And if millions of people lose their jobs in the transition, who's going to buy what the AI is marketing?
Second, the speed of this transformation is unlike anything we've seen before. Previous tech revolutions unfolded over decades, giving society and the economy time to adapt. AI is moving much faster than society and the economy can prepare for, Roetzer says.
But the Jevons Paradox argument is favorite among tech leaders: Satya Nadella has invoked it, and it surfaces regularly in conversations about AI's economic impact. Roetzer believes it glosses over a critical problem: the transition period.
Maybe we’ll reach abundance in 10 or 15 years, but there’s likely to be a lot of hardship for millions of people in the interim, Roetzer says.
That's the part, he argues, that optimists refuse to acknowledge: The disruption before the destination.
A Place for the Entry-Level Worker?
Roetzer isn't just speculating. He's living it.
As he builds the organizational structure for SmarterX, he's been forced to confront an uncomfortable question: What roles will exist for professionals with less than five years of experience?
"I am trying to find entry-level roles, and I cannot right now find out what those are," he says.
The value AI delivers requires human expertise and experience from people who know what questions to ask and what to do with the answers. But the tasks that used to train those experts, the campaign building, the email writing, the ad creation, those are the jobs AI agents are poised to automate.
“I'm not convinced that the AI agents can't do all of those things in the next one to three years," Roetzer says.
"A Very Messy Transition"
What frustrates Roetzer most is the lack of serious engagement with these questions from the people building the technology.
"I just don't know that the leaders sit down and think deeply about marketing, sales, customer success, operations, finance," he says.
"I think they think about the technology and that it just always works out, and I don't believe that's what's going to happen in the near term."
The assumption seems to be that disruption will sort itself out: that new roles will emerge, new industries will form, and the labor market will rebalance. And maybe, eventually, it will. But that's little comfort for the millions of workers who could find themselves out of a job before it happens.
“I think we're all fooling ourselves if we think there's not going to be a very, very messy transition to get to the future of abundance,’’ he said.
Mike Kaput
Mike Kaput is the Chief Content Officer at SmarterX and a leading voice on the application of AI in business. He is the co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence and co-host of The Artificial Intelligence Show podcast.