Phil Thornton
7.9K posts
@phil_thornton
Product Strategy: AI Accounting Platforms | Future of Work Researcher (PhD) @UniOfNewcastle | Follow @NUFC @SouthShieldsFC @F1 | Kidney Transplant Oct'22 | 🇪🇺
Eddie Howe remains the best manager for Newcastle United and deserves the chance to rebuild the squad in the summer with a proper support structure in place. If he leaves in the summer, I believe the club will regret it. Probably swiftly and for a long time. This is my opinion. I have covered the club for 23 years. I watch them pretty much every week and nothing that happens between now and the end of May will change my mind. It’s fine to disagree. I’ve seen a few comments about where I’m from recently and the fact I’m not a fan. Like that prevents me from having an opinion on a club it is my job to cover and has been for more than two decades. This is my professional opinion as a football journalist. Lots of you will disagree with it. But I also know many of you agree with me because I speak to people all the time and don’t spend my entire day on here. Opinions vary, that’s absolutely fine #nufc
Defeat at Selhurst Park.
Elon Musk just identified which jobs go first, and it destroys every assumption about who’s safe. Musk: “AI is going to take over those jobs like lightning. Anything that is digital, which is like just someone at a computer doing something.” Not factory workers. Office workers. The people who spent decades assuming education and desk jobs meant security are actually first. Musk: “Anything that’s physically moving atoms… those jobs will exist for a much longer time.” Output is a file? Vulnerable. Output is physical? Protected. That’s the entire framework. Musk: “AI is really still digital.” AI doesn’t need a body. Doesn’t need an office. Just needs access to the same software you use. Executes faster. Never tires. Costs nothing to scale. But it can’t weld. Can’t wire a building. Can’t fix pipes or work soil. Musk: “Literally welding, electrical work, plumbing. Those jobs will exist for a much longer time.” Trades aren’t the vulnerable jobs. They’re the durable ones. Physical presence, real-world adaptation, manual dexterity provide protection no digital credential offers. Analyst, accountant, paralegal, programmer, anyone producing files and documents, automates first because digital work is exactly what AI does natively. Person moving atoms has natural defense. Physics, unpredictable environments, material resistance create friction AI can’t scale past. Person moving bits has nothing. No friction. No physical barrier. Just software AI already operates better than most humans. The assumption that desk work and degrees represent safety just inverted completely. College graduate producing documents faces faster displacement than the electrician producing installations. Society spent generations telling people trades were beneath them. Pushed everyone toward offices and screens. Turns out the people who didn’t listen built the most automation-resistant careers. Most ironic outcome of the AI revolution. The work society treated as inferior turned out to be the work society couldn’t replace. And the work society valued most turned out to be the easiest to eliminate.
