No. AI* isn’t coming for your job.
Don’t get me wrong, many jobs are disappearing, especially at the lower levels, but AI isn’t some sentient being plotting your destruction.
Nope. It’s not AI you need to fear. It’s managers.
It’s true AI is making it easier to automate certain tasks; and if you don’t care too much about quality (or ethics), it can automate much more. But AI only replaces people when those who hire and manage people choose to replace them.
Whether it works out or not, corporate leaders are betting that they can cut one of the biggest costs (human) by forcing the rest of their team to do more with less – now powered by AI!
Ironically (or not) the ones most vocal about the impending job losses are those, like Anthropic’s CEO, who stand to gain the most; furthering the gap between those at the top (mostly tech CEOs) and everyone else.
This quote from a new book, The AI Con, described it eerily well.
When executives are threatening to replace your job with AI tools, they are implicitly threatening to replace you with stolen data and the labor of overworked, traumatized workers making a tiny fraction of your salary.
Alex Hanna & Emily M. Bender, The AI Con
So what do we do? It feels frustrating and overwhelming at times, seeing company after company slash jobs and repeat the AI mantra. What does a future look like where we put people first, and technology serves vs replaces them?
I can see this fomenting a reactive movement that dreams of better; not capturing all the wealth and funnelling it upward, but creating meaningful work that enables and empowers people. Perhaps it will even leverage AI, but purposefully, aware of the costs and the hidden faces behind the slick interfaces.
* When I refer to AI, I am speaking mainly about LLMs and Agents; both end-user products like ChatGPT and those types of features built into product via APIs.