As the debate rages on whether AI is stealing jobs, Bill Gurley believes many of today’s fears reflect historical mistakes.
The longtime venture capitalist said on a recent episode of the All In Podcast that warnings that AI would destroy jobs are similar to concerns raised during the Industrial Revolution, and that those concerns were ultimately proven false.
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 organizers discussed the recent AI-focused encyclical by current Pope Leo XIV, which warned that mass unemployment caused by AI could become a “true social disaster.”
“Leo XIII’s encyclical warned that the industrial revolution would have a negative impact on people,” Gurley said.
He said the subsequent century instead brought about a dramatic increase in living standards.
“Globally, the working week has gone from over 60 hours to 34 hours. Real wages, adjusted for inflation, have increased eight to 10 times,” Gurley said. He added that life expectancy has increased, workplace deaths have decreased and global poverty has decreased from about 75% of humanity to less than 10%.
While some of the broader trends cited by Gurley are well documented, some specific numbers are difficult to verify.
Before the pandemic, the average worker around the world worked about 43.9 hours a week, according to data from the United Nations’ International Labor Organization.
And while economists generally agree that real wages have risen dramatically since the Industrial Revolution, the rise has been less pronounced for the typical American worker in recent decades. Since 1979, productivity has grown roughly eight times faster than wages for typical workers, according to research from the Economic Policy Institute.
“All of this happened because of technology, innovation and capitalism, which is exactly what Pope Leo XIII warned about,” Gurley said. “So he was completely wrong.”
The investor said there is no reason to believe that AI will break that historical pattern.
“Historically, innovation has led to greater human prosperity,” Gurley said. “I see no reason why that wouldn’t happen here.”
The conversation about AI jobs is changing
Gurley’s views reflect a growing backlash against AI fatalism.
Thorsten Slok, Apollo’s chief economist, said in May that there was “zero evidence” that AI was causing job losses, but Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said the technology was more likely to automate jobs than eliminate workers.
Some of AI’s most prominent voices, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, have tempered previous 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 job cuts. Some economists and industry leaders believe this trend may be overestimating the impact of technology and downplaying other pressures, such as years of overemployment during the pandemic, rising interest rates, inflation, budget-cutting efforts, and uncertainty over trade policy and tariffs.
Gurley said that while automation could reshape some jobs, workers who embrace AI tools will be in a better position than those who resist them.
“The best way to protect yourself from AI is to become as AI-enabled as possible,” he said.