Tractors replaced a task in specific fields, farming, construction largely. AI seems to have the potential to cover more territory. The potential blast radius is greater.
Agricultural jobs accounted for more than 80% of the preindustrial workforce. Granted you still needed people to maintain the jobs and some roles weren't entirely replaced or replaceable. I wonder how the two compare. I will say that AI has the opportunity to affect many lines of work which makes it scary for many.
80% was peak agriculture, but involvement was already in decline before the tractor. Necessarily so — nobody would have had time to create the tractor if they were still busy toiling in the field. The tractor was the final death knell, I suppose, but only around 40% of the workforce was involved in agriculture by the time the tractor started showing up on farms.
> AI seems to have the potential to cover more territory.
Theoretically, the only two things that any human go to earn money is (a) use muscles or (b) use brains.
I feel like AI plus robots covers all the territory. Maybe not quite yet - maybe we have a few more years, but what job could a human do that couldn't be done by an AI controlling a humanoid robot?
