## 11 Aug 2026 Tuesday - My Reflection after reading FT #AI - I’ve been reading the _Financial Times_ for a few days and listening to _The Economist_. There’s always news about AI—especially how it needs to be regulated, and how it will disrupt work and displace workers. - Proponents say AI will simply change jobs, and workers will need to upskill and move into other roles. The opposing view is that the new jobs will be fewer, and it won’t be realistic to train a large population fast enough. AI may also make it harder for fresh graduates to enter the job market: if AI can do entry-level work, employers will prioritize people with existing experience. But if graduates can’t get in, how do they ever gain that experience? - The Philippines is a global hub for customer-service call centers, and India is a global hub for IT support. Both are being disrupted by AI. If AI can do their work, companies may hire fewer people, leading to unemployment and wider social issues—especially if governments aren’t moving fast enough to prepare their populations. #philippines #India - Every government says, “We need to retrain and upskill,” but I keep wondering: _what specific skills_ should workers actually learn? - And then there’s the chip side of the story—the suppliers and manufacturers. Korea is making a lot of money right now from chip sales, since chips are the tools needed to build AI. Governments are also thinking about how to distribute that money, or reinvest it. - In China, AI seems to be more accepted by pragmatic people. It is also fueling a new industry of micro-dramas created through video generation, which may leave actors and production crews without work. I read that the number of gig workers in China is increasing. #china - There’s also talk about turning blue-collar workers into white-collar workers who repair robots—but wouldn’t we still need far fewer workers overall? - Right now, some professions feel “established”: study to be a doctor, get employed as a doctor, and get paid as a doctor. But with AI, it feels like no one is sure what new professions will appear, so people are upskilling without a clear destination. - Is there an interim period before new professions emerge? - People say that bank tellers had jobs, then ATMs appeared, and tellers disappeared—they were retrained to do something else. But I think that still meant fewer people. Likewise, after word processors became common, companies no longer employed typists. I don’t know the historical context, though—maybe the disruption was smaller then?