Chamath Palihapitiya rejects the AI jobs apocalypse

The AI job apocalypse may make for an "incredible headline," AI investor and All-In podcast co-host Chamath Palihapitiya said on "The Axios Show" — but he says it ignores history.

Why it matters: The AI boom has turned the future of work into a political fight, an investor thesis and a sales pitch. Palihapitiya's counter: New technology changes what humans do, but it doesn't make them irrelevant.

The big picture: The Social Capital CEO rejected the idea that AI and robotics will wipe out work — even for plumbers. Axios' Dan Primack floated a future where robots could crawl under the cabinet and do the job.

• Palihapitiya asks who will run the plumbing business, or the robotics company. Humans will still need shelter, food, clothing and, yes, bathrooms.

"I think it's great to spark a debate," he told Axios' Dan Primack in Redwood City, Calif. But he suggests the argument isn't rooted in "patterns of the past."

• Palihapitiya points to past technological transitions that let humans multiply the number of tasks they do in a day.
• "I suspect if you just trend it, that 35 things now goes to 300 things over the next thousand years," he said. "There's going to be more ways in which we allocate time."

Reality check: Palihapitiya is not alone in challenging the bloodbath theory.

• MIT researchers in an April paper described AI automation as more of a "rising tide" than a "crashing wave."
• In May, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he was "wrong" about projections that AI would wipe out entire categories of jobs.

Zoom out: Primack, 50, put the fear in personal terms: He doesn't expect his own work to disappear before retirement, but worries his 15-year-old daughter's generation could face a rockier path to stable employment.

• Palihapitiya posed: "Are you saying that you think she's just going to be unemployed and a ward of the state?"

The bottom line: Palihapitiya bets AI won't end work. It will scramble it — and expand what humans do next.

• The full episode of "The Axios Show" interview will be released later this week.