“AI isn’t going to take your job, but someone knowing AI is going to…” It’s the biggest piece of bullshit I’ve ever read. Low-key thinking by someone who never bothered with second-order effects. And while it sounds prophetic and true, that’s not exactly how society progresses.
Companies aren’t laying off people because of AI. They’re laying people off because AI gave them a great excuse to.
In the 1970s and 80s, banks used ATMs as cover to reduce teller headcount. It didn’t work — ATM deployments made branches cheaper to operate, tellers evolved from cash handlers into relationship bankers, and total teller jobs actually increased over the long term. (Interestingly, it was the iPhone — not ATMs — that eventually reduced bank teller employment significantly.)
Same pattern with spreadsheets in the 80s. Hundreds of thousands of bookkeepers and accounting clerks were replaced by software. But the number of accountants actually increased — because people started asking accountants to do more.
The pattern is always the same. Technology doesn’t eliminate work. It redistributes it.
Some of today’s job losses are real — AI-exposed roles that were always hollow. But the majority? Executives are using AI as a cover for decisions they wanted to make anyway. That’s not displacement. That’s opportunism.
Every major technology transition creates more than it destroys. The new jobs just aren’t visible yet — and that’s always been true.
So if you’re scared about AI, don’t be. It’s there to make your life better. The how part is up to you to figure out. And what do you do in the interim? Nobody knows yet. And that’s okay. Because that’s been true of every transition.