"There is a photograph from 1930s East London that should be mandatory viewing for anyone anxious about AI taking their job. It shows Mary Smith, a " knocker-up" - a woman whose entire profession consisted of walking the streets at dawn, shooting dried peas at bedroom windows with a long bamboo pole to wake workers for their factory shifts. Mary charged sixpence a week for this service. Then the alarm clock arrived, and Mary's job vanished."
"Do we mourn the knocker-up today? Do we rage against the tyranny of the alarm clock? Of course not. Because what happened to Mary is what has happened throughout every technological revolution: certain tasks became obsolete whilst entirely new categories of work emerged. Yet here we are in 2025, gripped by the same ancient panic. AI is coming for our jobs, we are told. The robots will replace us. The future is bleak."
Work has continually changed as technologies reshape tasks and create new roles. In 1930s East London a knocker-up woke factory workers by tapping windows, a task rendered obsolete by the alarm clock. Technological revolutions repeatedly make specific tasks obsolete while generating new categories of work. Contemporary AI excels at processing, pattern-matching, and producing at vast speeds, enabling automation of many tasks formerly done by humans. AI threatens tasks rather than entire occupations, so distinguishing between tasks and jobs is critical. Historical shifts from hunting and gathering to agriculture, industrialisation, and the information age illustrate that human work evolves and requires adaptation.
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