As the debate rages on about whether AI is eliminating jobs, Bill Gurley thinks many of today’s fears echo a historical mistake.
The longtime venture capitalist said on a recent episode of the “All-In Podcast” that warnings about AI destroying jobs look like concerns raised during the Industrial Revolution — concerns he said ultimately proved wrong.
Gurley pointed to Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, “Rerum Novarum,” which warned that the Industrial Revolution and the rise of industrial capitalism could harm workers and widen social inequality.
The comparison came as the hosts discussed a recent AI-focused encyclical from Pope Leo XIV, the current pope, who warned that mass AI-driven unemployment could become a “true social calamity.”
“Leo the 13th encyclical warned that the industrial revolution was going to be bad for people,” Gurley said.
He said that the century that followed delivered a dramatic rise in living standards instead.
“The workweek went from over 60 hours to 34 hours globally. Real wages went up 8 to 10x adjusted for inflation,” Gurley said. He added that life expectancy rose, workplace deaths declined, and global poverty fell from roughly 75% of humanity to under 10%.
While some of the broader trends Gurley cited are well documented, some of the specific figures are difficult to verify.
Data from the UN’s International Labour Organization — its agency for the world of work — showed that the average worker globally worked about 43.9 hours a week before the pandemic.
And while economists broadly agree that real wages have risen dramatically since the Industrial Revolution, the gains have been far less pronounced for typical US workers in recent decades. Research from the Economic Policy Institute shows that since 1979, productivity has grown roughly eight times faster than pay for typical workers.
“All those things happened because of technology, innovation, and capitalism, which is exactly what Leo the 13th was warning against,” Gurley said. “So he got it dead wrong.”
The investor said he sees no reason to believe AI will break that historical pattern.
“Historically, innovation has led to more prosperity for humans,” Gurley said. “I see no reason why that won’t happen here.”
The AI jobs debate is shifting
Gurley’s view reflects a growing pushback against AI doomerism.
Apollo chief economist Torsten Sløk said in May that there is “zero evidence” that AI is causing job losses, while Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said that the technology is more likely to automate tasks than eliminate workers.
Some of AI’s most prominent voices, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, have softened earlier predictions of widespread unemployment.
At the same time, many major companies including Block, Cloudflare, Cisco, IBM, Coinbase, and Snap have cited AI as a factor in recent layoffs — a trend some economists and industry leaders believe may overstate the technology’s impact and downplay other pressures, including years of overhiring during the pandemic, higher interest rates, inflation, budget-cutting initiatives, and uncertainty around trade policy and tariffs.
While Gurley said that automation could reshape some types of jobs, he said that workers who embrace AI tools will be better positioned than those who resist them.
“The best way to protect yourself from AI is to be the most AI-enabled version of yourself you can be,” he said.
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