The Race to Reinvent Work

Work as we know it is being rewritten in real time

For more than a century, every major technological shift has followed a familiar pattern: machines took over physical labor while college-educated professionals moved higher into the knowledge economy. That ladder—so central to middle-class mobility in the United States and other advanced economies—is now under pressure from both sides.

On one end, AI researchers are warning that entry-level white-collar work may be the first major casualty of the next wave of automation. On the other, the world’s wealthiest technologists are pouring billions into competing visions of what AI will become, accelerating the very forces that worry economists and policymakers.

Together, these stories form a single narrative: work as we know it is being rewritten in real time, and the people shaping that future are no longer just theorizing about its impact—they are building it.