New York City, USA – Last week, the fashion world descended on New York City for New York Fashion Week (NYFW). The bi-annual event celebrated the best in the industry and showcased the hottest trends for the season. NYFW is a massive money maker for the city and the fashion industry at large. On average, the event brings in a staggering 600m annually. But regardless of the stark economic and cultural value the event brings, it is overshadowed by the same existential threat hitting sectors like media and tech – artificial intelligence eroding existing jobs and limiting work opportunities in the future.

As AI scales, it will become cheaper and faster to have some types of work done by robots instead of humans. One benefit of this is that humans will be able to focus on higher-level work that robots may not be able to do – work that requires more thinking, decision-making, or emotional intelligence, for example. However, there's a common and natural concern that goes hand-in-hand with this: a brewing fear that "increasing robot work" inherently means "decreasing human work" (ie, jobs).