Comment by simiones

This is like claiming that there are fewer people who work in construction now than in the year 1000 because a machine can do what it would have literally taken 100 people to accomplish back then.

But what has happened instead is that we are now building much more buildings and much more complex ones than we ever would have even conceived of back then. The Three Gorges dam required the work of thousands or even tens of thousands of people when it was built, and it would have required the work of millions in the year 1000. But it didn't actually generate millions of jobs in the year 1000: it was in fact never even conceived of as a possibility, much less attempted.

Of course, the opposite can also happen. The number of carpenters has reduced to almost nothing, when it used to be a major profession, and there are many other professions that have entirely disappeared.