Typically, the distorted word that was given to you in an early CAPTCHA was a word from an old text that had stumped a computer. If enough people identify the hard-to-read word as “dog,” for instance, then the word would be confidently deciphered as dog and the CAPTCHA would move on to a new word.

Only 0.1% of GDP is spent on helping workers retrain, less than half of what was spent 30 years ago, meaning we’ll have to rely on the private sector to come up with solutions—and fast.

Productivity software has stagnated for a few years, treading water. But thinking AI-first—building the entire product experience around what’s now possible, a new killer feature—creates an Innovator’s Dilemma for incumbents and an opportunity for startups. Every category becomes ripe for reinvention.

in 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that because of innovation, we’d all be working 15 hours per week in 2030.

In 2007, reCAPTCHA partnered with The New York Times to help digitize 100 years of the newspaper’s archives. And after buying reCAPTCHA, Google supercharged the company so that CAPTCHAs were soon deciphering the equivalent of two million books a year (!).

there’s a reason reCAPTCHA (and Google behind the scenes) is asking us to identify traffic lights. As with digitizing old books, there’s a hidden purpose. This time, billions of people are helping Google train its AI. Each time you identify a bicycle, you’re helping improve Google’s image recognition abilities. This proves critical for Google, particularly in its self-driving car efforts. (That’s why we see so many street-related objects like crosswalks and traffic lights!🚦)

A new survey from Gallup found that 22% of American workers now fear AI could replace them, up from 15% in 2021. AI fears among workers without college degrees remain consistent at ~20%, while AI fears among workers with college degrees went up dramatically—from 8% to 20% in two years.

Goldman Sachs Research estimates that generative AI exposes 300M full-time jobs to automation, with two-thirds of current jobs exposed to some degree of automation.

If you work in maintenance, repair, or construction, you’re pretty safe. If you work in admin or legal, you have a ~40% chance of being replaced by AI.

Gen Z has a high opinion of skilled trades like plumbers and electricians. A recent survey found that 73% of Gen Zs say they respect skilled trade as a career, putting it second only to medicine (77%); 47% were interested in pursuing a career in a trade. One potential reason: 74% say they believe skilled trade jobs won’t be replaced by AI.