Automation has traditionally impacted blue-collar jobs first, whereas white-collar jobs benefited. The wave of distant work introduced on by the Covid-19 pandemic additional empowered white-collar staff with extra autonomy by distant work. Nonetheless, generative AI is altering this narrative. Distant staff are actually extra vulnerable to automation attributable to their duties being digital and thus extra simply automated, but additionally signifies giant potential productiveness advantages. However three bigger forces are going to drive much more intensive gen AI automation than most count on: ease of use, companies have self-primed for gen AI automation, and rising gen AI autonomy. Which means whereas some distant staff will lose their jobs, many, many hundreds of thousands of them will quickly expertise intensive job change that can require reskilling, notably in administration and AI-specific expertise, to adapt to the altering job panorama and preserve productiveness.