It's novel because previous rounds of automation were about automating specific tasks or well-scoped functions. There was always an implicit understanding that the white-collar worker would be freed to spend their time on more valuable, higher-level problems. But this time is different because of the generality of the technology. Agents promise to automate the process of thinking itself. And in many domains they can learn new tasks as fast as white-collar workers can find them.

> It's novel because previous rounds of automation were about automating specific tasks or well-scoped functions. There was always an implicit understanding that the white-collar worker would be freed to spend their time on more valuable, higher-level problems. But this time is different because of the generality of the technology. Agents promise to automate the process of thinking itself. And in many domains they can learn new tasks as fast as white-collar workers can find them.

Nah, sometimes the expectation and advertisement was that you could let go of the white collar worker because you're paying the overseas person 1/10th the amount. And "overseas person" is pretty general.

"Everybody knew" it was a bad idea to get a CS degree for a bit after the dot-com bust because of that.

(Some white-collar industries did get hit much harder by that; VFX is one I've heard in that context quite a bit.)