During a recent appearance on a podcast episode, venture capitalist Jason Calacanis made predictions about the future of warehouse and delivery work in America.
His comments align with a tweet he posted stating that by 2035, the complete automation of hard labor “will not be controversial” and that “humanoid robots will be as common as bicycles” by 2030.
When discussing artificial intelligence and automation with host Tim Miller, Calacanis laid out a timeline.
“Before 2030, you’re going to see Amazon, which has massively invested in this, replace all factory workers and all drivers,” he said. “The idea that when you order something from Amazon, a human would touch it at any point in that supply chain is ins ane. It will be 100% robotic, which means all of those workers are going away.”
Calacanis expanded his prediction beyond Amazon to include major shipping companies. “Every Amazon worker, all those jobs, UPS gone, FedEx gone, every all of those are going to be gone,” he stated.
The investor provided specific numbers to illustrate the scale of displacement. “Every self-driving car is four full-time jobs and every humanoid robot in a factory is five jobs, maybe six. Because those jobs you can you can work for maybe seven hours, as a just physical limitation,” Calacanis explained. He noted that driving jobs can sustain 12-hour shifts, making them particularly vulnerable to automation.
Calacanis framed this transformation as part of what he called the shift to artificial general intelligence, which he defined as technology’s “ability to play chess, be a lawyer, an accountant” or perform what he described as “human chores.”
However, Calacanis acknowledged the concerns this transformation would create. “Those companies will be more profitable and when you order something it’s going to come faster and cheaper and better. And your Uber will be half as much, but somebody needs to retrain these people and that’s actually a very valid fear,” he said.
He compared the coming transition to previous economic transformations, noting a critical difference in speed.
“We had this happen in the industrial revolution that happened over 40 years, 50 years. And you know the agricultural revolution, you know, again that was multi-decade. This one will happen in a decade and so it’ll be very different and yeah, you should be concerned,” Calacanis told Miller.
The venture capitalist emphasized that technologists who simply dismiss these concerns are missing the point. “The question is what happens to those people who get caught in the gap, right?” he said, referring to workers displaced by automation before new opportunities emerge.
Calacanis also addressed the broader context of AGI adoption. “One person as an attorney using this or a developer using these technologies in a what’s called a co-pilot to kind of assist them, they’re going to be 10 percent better, probably every two or three months, which if you compound that you know it means basically every two years people will be twice as good as their jobs,” he explained. “That means you just need less lawyers at your company. You need less accountants.”
Despite his concerns about worker displacement, Calacanis maintained optimism about education and retraining possibilities through AI. He pointed to adaptive learning technologies that could provide continuous education throughout workers’ lives, potentially enabling “people having two or three careers in their lives.”
