Do You Want A Job? How Your Answer Will Determine AI's Future

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Elias Stahl is the Founder & CEO of HILOS, an AI lab and software platform dissolving the barriers between design and production.

“Do you want a job?” Russel bent his head to the side and peered over his glasses in a gesture I’d come to know well. “Can you make coffee?” We both nodded in unison. “Sure, I’ll try you out for a day. Come in tomorrow at three.” I raced home a giddy 16-year-old.

That’s how I got my first real job. Within a year, I was running the café, taking over catering for the restaurant group, and was soon assistant GM. It started with making coffee. When it’s cheap to hire someone, taking a chance is low-risk. I grew quickly, but I needed that chance.

That experience shaped how I think about today's AI debate. Rather than simply questioning whether AI will eliminate jobs, I'm interested in whether future workers will still have opportunities to earn, learn and build value in entirely new ways.

The AI debate is really about who earns value.

This is just the beginning of what will be called either “the job apocalypse” or “the greatest reinvention of work” in our history. This year, labor’s share of U.S. income fell to 53.7%; as the report puts it, "The lowest recorded value since the series began in 1947."

On a per-household basis, that translates to roughly $14,000 to $20,000 a year that a family is seeing in their stock portfolio rather than their paycheck (which I calculated based on data from the BEA, BLS and the 2025 Census).

How far could this fall, and what does it tell us about who is right: the AI utopians or the doomsayers? If current trends hold and labor’s share of income continues to fall by a percentage point every two years, the mid-2030s will mark the first time when labor is a minority share of income.

This isn't a new concern. Economists have long studied what happens when returns to capital outpace returns to labor.

What happens when returns to capital grow faster than labor?

Thomas Piketty, a French economist and one of the world’s leading scholars on wealth inequality, taxation and the distribution of capital, forecast this in his groundbreaking 2013 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. By collecting historical income and wealth tax records primarily across France, the U.K., the U.S. and other countries, he was able to chart the history of this income distribution and the effect of policy and war on inequality and growth. His central argument is that when the rate of return on capital persistently exceeds the economy's growth rate, wealth tends to become increasingly concentrated unless offset by taxes, institutions or other policy interventions.

If AI accelerates the shift in income toward capital, expanding capital ownership could become increasingly important to limiting inequality. Programs such as the new Trump Accounts—which provide eligible children with government-seeded investment accounts—reflect one policy approach aimed at broadening participation in capital ownership. With an all-time high of about 45% of an average household’s wealth in the stock market today, more households are invested in capital and earning income from it than ever before.

But simply owning more financial assets may not be the only answer. AI is beginning to blur the traditional boundary between labor and capital itself.

AI may turn expertise into capital.

These top-line numbers obscure something more important, though: Capital can have two roles in the kind of economy rapidly being built around us.

One just plays out today’s trend into the future. We begin making more money from an index fund than from our day job, then we prioritize work less, feel less dependent on it or less secure in it, but this is detached from our material well-being. In this scenario, the capital that enriches us is distant and obscure, in a portfolio, passive.

The other is where the distinction between capital and labor increasingly blurs. Imagine an interior designer who trains their own AI model. Every time they curate a room, visit a museum or showroom or are struck by an inspiration, the AI model tracks and grows, working for them like an apprentice.

In the Renaissance, great artists would open their own workshops and develop younger talent by holding them to their master’s standard. Over time, they would paint or sculpt less themselves but produce some of the world’s masterpieces (and the next generation of artists). After a certain professional arc, this interior designer functions like the master artist, with AI models as the younger talent. In this world, they could be earning most of their income from capital, but that capital is intimate, active and a close reflection of their labor and life’s values.

What are the product decisions that shape tomorrow's workforce?

The world we build relies on whether we create tools to maximize market value or the individual’s value. Every time technology has offered the ability to increase our creative reach, massive markets emerge. Reportedly, the biggest media company in the world isn’t Disney or MGM; it’s YouTube.

Reflect on your own AI strategy and the company you are building. Chart the value chain that you are creating. This distinction becomes clearer when you compare how the same technology serves different customers.

Take financial ops AI platforms as an example: They currently serve enterprise and SMB clients, automating much of the financial management workflows for the office of the CFO. Their impact on the enterprise side is to reduce headcount and increase productivity, and ultimately the business will have a higher return on capital (and we can expect a residual to accrue to the retained headcount).

For the SMB clients, headcount is already as small as it can be. Their impact instead is to allow many independent CPAs and accountants to begin offering treasury and financial services as well, expanding their book of business and owners' equity.

This is just one example of a company that faces a decision and through its product offering is able to deliver value to the enterprise while empowering the individual.

The future isn't predetermined.

As you chart your own AI road map, the world we are left with will depend on how you support the sole prop as much as the conglomerate.

I’m sure we will build a combination of both kinds of world, but in the end, we’ll see these converge. After all, in 2026 Mr. Beast is coming to theaters near you.

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