A recent survey found that 41 percent of employers across the globe have plans to fire your ass and replace you with an AI that can do your job.
Whether or not AI will ever advance to the point where it can fully replicate the intricacies of a human’s effort, creativity, attention to detail, and outside-the-box thinking enough to fully replace a person, even for the most menial job, is another matter altogether.
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On the bright side, if these cost-cutting scumbags are to be believed, 77 percent of companies also said that they would focus on “reskilling” and “upscaling” existing employees between 2025 and 2030. This means workers won’t necessarily be replaced by AI but be taught how to work alongside it.
You know the person who oversees the self-checkout lanes at CVS/the grocery store/Home Depot? That. They have plans to turn you into that, a babysitter for technology and a workflow still in its infancy. Sounds fulfilling. Spiritually uplifting, even.
The survey, conducted by the World Economic Forum, or WEF, provided a handy list of the kinds of jobs that companies are looking to replace. Postal Service clerks, executive secretaries, payroll clerks, basically anyone with a job primarily consisting of routine administrative tasks. Graphic designers are another big one that AI is predicted to replace.
The report says that while you may lose whatever job you have now, nearly 70 percent of companies intend to hire employees with experience in designing AI tools. Meanwhile, 62 percent are going to start recruiting people who can work alongside AI, which sounds a lot like they’re looking for people who won’t feel resentful of a technology that’s taking a job that could’ve been theirs.
All of this stands in stark contrast to the WEF’s 2023 report that said that AI would bring about a “net positive” for job numbers. One year later, the report predicts massive job losses and what sounds like no real plan of what those people are going to do for a living other than the insulting suggestion that they become stewards of the technology that replaced them.
