← All IntelClip / OtherVisiCalc as a counter-argument to AI unemployment fears
From The New Primitives: Building AI Native Software — Kwindla Kramer, Daily · ≈9:25
“VisiCalc didn't put accountants out of business.”
“Instead, it made much much much much more accounting-like work possible.”
What’s in it
- Uses VisiCalc's history to argue against AI causing mass unemployment
- Shows how new abstractions turn specialist skills into generally accessible tools
- Argues automation expands work categories instead of eliminating them
Clip transcript
tangible benefits. Take VisiCalc, for example, which was the first spreadsheet program. A truly new abstraction for doing computation, numerical computing, two-dimensional, interactive, so durable and so useful that probably most of us in this room use a direct descendant of VisiCalc regularly, Google Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel or whatever. Or put another way, this was a spreadsheet in 1957. And this was a spreadsheet in 1985. And I think a lot about VisiCalc these days too because I think VisiCalc is an example of how transformative new technologies can be in the way of delivering a capability that used to require a lot of specialized people and specialized knowledge and making it generally accessible. And I think VisiCalc is a potentially a counter-argument to the argument or the fear or the concern that AI is going to lead to mass unemployment. Because VisiCalc didn't put accountants out of business. Instead, it made much much much much more accounting-like work possible. And it made new categories of work possible that we couldn't even really conceive of
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