How AI Is Reshaping the Workforce ... and 3 Ways Entrepreneurs and Investors Can Adapt

By Alastair Goldfisher
Veteran journalist and creator of The Venture Lens newsletter and The Venture Variety Show podcast. Alastair covers the intersection of AI, startups, and storytelling with over 30 years of experience reporting on venture capital and emerging technologies.

At Samsara’s R&D Innovation Hub in San Francisco last week, the future of work didn’t arrive with splashy fanfare.

A handful of panelists sat on stools in front of a Samsara-branded truck and near an ArcBest autonomous forklift, discussing how AI and robotics are reshaping industries like transportation, warehousing and logistics.

There were no dramatic demos of robots or autonomous machines. Just quiet signs of a profound shift already underway.

And the panel revealed something often missing from broader automation discussions:

AI isn’t necessarily eliminating frontline work. It’s transforming it.

Companies that recognize this shift are gaining an edge.

The labor crisis beneath the hype

On the topic of autonomous delivery, Samsara Co-Founder and CEO Sanjit Biswas set the stage with a troubling reality:

The U.S. economy needs about 7 million licensed truck drivers. Yet only 3.5 million licenses are active today, according to the American Trucking Association.

Meanwhile, the workforce is aging—the average driver is 47 years old—and just 12% of drivers are under 25. Many are nearing retirement.

And the pressure to adapt isn’t just internal. Customer expectations are rising fast.

Gautam Narang, Co-Founder and CEO of VC-backed Gatik, highlighted the growing challenge:

“We as end consumers expect our orders—if I place an order right now—to be ready for pickup or delivered the same day, or at the very latest the next day,” Narang said. “But at the same time, we don’t want to pay extra for deliveries.”

Retailers and logistics companies are now caught between rising customer demands, a shrinking labor force and margin pressure.

Companies are turning to AI not just to cut costs, but to make jobs safer, more sustainable, and more attractive to new types of workers, said Kiren Sekar, Chief Product Officer at Samsara.

What the new frontline looks like

ArcBest is already reshaping work, not eliminating it. Rather than replacing forklift operators, Jefferson Maldonado, Head of Robotics & Automation at ArcBest, described how his team developed a hybrid model:

• Forklifts navigate autonomously most of the time.

• Remote human operators, using Xbox-style controllers, intervene when needed.

This model moves workers out of physical warehouse roles and into remote, office-based supervisory jobs, potentially thousands of miles away.

It also broadens the hiring pool, opening new opportunities for neurodiverse individuals and workers with physical limitations.

“We’re enabling a completely different labor pool that wasn’t accessible before,” Maldonado said. “And we're making the work environment safer in the process.”

Building the future of work

The implications stretch far beyond warehouses and trucks.

For startups building AI, robotics or operational platforms—and for the investors backing them—this shift demands a new strategy:

• Augment workers, not replace them.

• Redesign how work happens, not just automate old tasks.

• Prioritize real-world deployment over moonshot demos.

Sekar emphasized that Samsara’s customers aren’t just looking for labor savings. They’re focused on expanding the capacity of their teams safely and sustainably. AI is becoming essential to that effort.

Automation without a workforce strategy isn’t just shortsighted. It’s bad business.

Not every job will survive the shift

Of course, not every role will survive intact. Some repetitive, hazardous jobs will disappear. Retraining and workforce transition will be required. And not every worker or company will adjust easily.

During the audience Q&A, I asked the panelists about AI’s long-term impact on frontline work.

Boris Sofman, robotics veteran and former Waymo executive who’s working on an autonomous company in stealth, pointed to Amazon’s warehouse automation as a key case study.

When Amazon introduced robots to assist warehouse pickers, many feared massive layoffs. Automation initially eliminated the most grueling, repetitive tasks—order picking, package sorting, routine stocking—while creating new, higher-skilled roles.

At the same time, Amazon’s overall warehouse productivity improved, Sofman said, which created a feedback loop of growing demand and additional hiring.

“The throughput of these warehouses often went up two and a half to three times,” Sofman said. “Prices went down, demand went up even more. It became a feedback loop where automation actually expanded employment.”

Still, recent reporting highlights that Amazon’s automation push has started to displace some traditional roles, even as it creates new ones, a reminder that AI’s impact is not evenly distributed.

The same dynamic could play out across logistics, manufacturing and construction if companies focus on workforce adaptation instead of cost-cutting alone.

A slow but steady shift

As much as AI is beginning to reshape frontline work, change won’t happen overnight.

Samsara’s Biswas cautioned that even once technology matures, adoption will follow a gradual curve.

“We’ve had warehouse robots since the ‘90s,” Biswas said. “It’s taken 25 years to get to full adoption because of all the corner cases, the economic models... you have to reach pretty high utilization.”

Even with advances in autonomous trucking and warehouse robotics, factors like cost curves, integration challenges and change management will shape a gradient effect, not a sudden revolution.

In short, the AI transformation of frontline work is underway, but it will unfold gradually, unevenly and sector by sector.

The companies that build flexible, human-centric systems today will be the ones leading the next era.

🎙️ Stay informed by subscribing to The Venture Lens for the latest insights and updates from Alastair.