Bill Gurley has seen technology upend industries before. The Benchmark Capital partner backed Uber early, watched the internet boom and bust, and now watches AI spark familiar panic. On a recent episode of the All-In Podcast, he cut through the noise. Warnings that artificial intelligence will wipe out jobs, he said, mirror complaints raised during the Industrial Revolution. Gurley Points to the Vatican’s Own History Pope Leo XIII issued an encyclical in 1891 called Rerum Novarum. It expressed deep worry that factories, machines and industrial capitalism would exploit workers, widen inequality and harm society. Gurley quoted the concerns directly. “Leo the 13th encyclical warned that the industrial revolution was going to be bad for people,” he told the podcast hosts. Then he delivered the verdict. The century that followed brought the opposite. Workweeks dropped from over 60 hours to 34 hours globally. Real wages rose eight to 10 times after inflation. Life expectancy climbed. Workplace deaths fell.…