There’s a mixture of concern and excitement around AI right now—and rightfully so. AI is both terrifying and amazing at the same time.
The part that really stands out to me, though, is the concern around job loss from AI, whereas I see the opposite being true. If you look at the current workforce and the amount of work required to create, maintain, and improve our infrastructure in the United States, it’s astounding. We simply don’t have enough people to do it.
This is where AI comes in. AI isn’t something that the future merely wants—it’s something we need. Our working-age population is trending downward, yet the amount of actual work that must be done continues to rise. I’m speaking strictly from an infrastructure standpoint—not about creating movies or video games, but about the physical systems that make modern life possible.
And if you zoom out beyond the U.S., the picture becomes even more grim. Look at Africa, for example: a continent rich in natural resources that has never been able to fully industrialize. AI could help bridge those gaps and bring real development to places long left behind.
Back to the nuts and bolts here—the U.S. infrastructure is rapidly deteriorating. Much of what we rely on was built between the 1920s and 1970s and hasn’t been properly maintained since. It seems like every month there’s another crisis, like the Flint, Michigan water disaster. Most people don’t realize what it actually takes to get clean water to their faucet, electricity to their home, or even that Amazon package to their doorstep. It’s all dependent on aging systems that require billions upon billions of dollars just to restore to an average level of functionality.
Sanitary sewers, water mains, storm drains, electrical transmission—all of it needs updating. Even California, one of the most advanced and affluent areas in the world, experiences rolling blackouts. That alone should tell us how bad things have gotten.
We need massive reinvestment in infrastructure. But money alone won’t fix the problem—the next major hurdle is the lack of skilled labor to actually complete the work.
I’ve been in the heavy civil construction industry for 14 years, and the decline in the workforce is alarming. Not only is it shrinking, but the overall skill level isn’t what it used to be. Twenty years ago, there might’ve been 100 pieces of heavy equipment with 1,000 people waiting to operate them. Now there are 100 pieces of equipment with only 50 people available to run them. The same goes for laborers, pipelayers, welders, electricians, and nearly every other trade.
There’s already more work than can be completed—and we’re not even meeting the funding levels required to maintain what we have.
This is where AI plays a critical role. As AI inevitably replaces some white-collar jobs over the next decade, it can free up more people to fill the blue-collar positions that are desperately needed. We need AI to augment the workforce because we simply don’t have enough people to do the work otherwise.
That’s the long and short of how I currently see things. There’s a lot more to discuss around AI—ethics, energy needs, and economic impact—but from a high-level perspective, it’s a necessary development. And if I’m being frank, it’s one we can’t afford to delay unless we’re willing to accept a decline in our standard of living.
KON Investing 