AI Won’t Steal Your Job (But It Will Change Everything) Insights from Wharton Professor, Daniel Rock

On this episode of the 1st10 Podcast, Boris Epstein sits down with Daniel Rock - economist, professor at Wharton, and co-founder of Workhelix - to decode the messy reality of AI's impact on jobs, productivity, and enterprise transformation. Daniel brings a unique perspective as both an academic economist studying digital technologies and an entrepreneur building AI solutions for enterprises. The conversation explores why AI adoption might take longer than tech enthusiasts expect, how companies can strategically deploy AI tools, and why the "entry-level jobs apocalypse" might not happen as predicted. Daniel also shares his insights on teaching in the AI era, the challenges of building an AI startup, and his measured predictions for the technology's future impact.Daniel is refreshingly clear-eyed about where we actually are and where we're likely going. Below are some of the standout lessons I took away from our conversation.An entry-level job-pocalypse? Well, no. AI could just as likely augment junior talent as replace it, and in some cases, even increase demand for skilled oversight.A job isn't a task. It's a bundle of interdependent skills, roles, and context - making full automation much harder than people think.Generative AI = the new Excel. Used poorly, it's lazy. Used well, it supercharges creativity, productivity, and learning - especially among students.An Educational Revolution Is Underway. AI is quietly transforming classroom dynamics and assessment criteria in ways that mirror future workplace changes.Real transformation takes time. Like electricity and the internet, AI as a general-purpose tech will only reshape enterprise when paired with new systems, workflows, and retraining.AI Has A Real Risk No One's Talking About. It’s not superintelligence - it's bad actors with superpowers. And it matters a lot more in the near term than you think.Chapters00:00 Key Ideas From the Episode05:32 Confessions of a Multi-Disciplinary Economist08:31 How Students Actually Use AI11:24 Redefining Originality in the GPT Era16:21 A Startup That's Betting Against the Wait-and-See Crowd19:30 Inside the Enterprise AI Mess24:22 Jobs Are Systems, Not Widgets28:12 Reviewers, Not Doers: The Software Engineering Shift32:00 Workhelix: Building in the Eye of the Storm38:42 Predictions from the Pragmatist45:26 Careers @ WorkhelixQuotes"I tend to make everyone a little bit upset when I talk about Artificial Intelligence." - Daniel Rock (02:28)"I'm a little skeptical that the entry-level jobs apocalypse is even going to happen. A job is not, like, an easy thing to just take out." - Daniel Rock (00:00)"My friends, Gene Kim and Steve Yegge, call that 'The Potential Closet of Eldritch Horrors.' I do not envy the talent wars that Meta and OpenAI and Anthropic have to fight in." - Daniel Rock (00:00)"You don't get an A if you're correct anymore! You have to be correct AND original! You'll get a B if you're correct." - Daniel Rock (11:56)"AI will pay off your credit card debt on the technical debt side. So if you start racking up a lot of technical debt, that can be okay because AI will wipe it out to some extent later on!" - Daniel Rock (35:06)Follow:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/13UwWOSV1KrJBJgIdt8bJ7Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7e8ec9af-f38c-4cd9-8c68-1c1dd4516b 27/1st10-podcastApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1st10-podcast/id1760411207 Podcast: https://www.1st10.com/podcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@1st10podcast Links:Daniel Rock’s website: https://www.danielianrock.com Daniel Rock (Operations, Information and Decisions Department, Wharton School, UPenn): https://oid.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/rockdi/Daniel’s startup, Workhelix: https://www.workhelix.com/ Music by Roman Senyk from PixabayProducer: Shrikant Joshi