Generative AI is becoming more advanced and scaling to impressive heights every day, though recent opposing reports suggest that the technology has seemingly hit a wall and even begun plateauing, predominantly due to an implied lack of higher-quality training data.
Aside from privacy and security concerns, artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming a threat to professionals. In 2022, as ChatGPT was just launching, AI was predominantly viewed as just a text-based tool for generating simple, conversational responses to emails and messages.
However, it has rapidly gained broad adoption across the world, with continued integration into companies to automate redundant and repetitive tasks in their workflows, apparently creating more time for demanding tasks. Still, as the technology becomes more advanced, some companies are embracing a totally different approach of laying off their staffers entirely and replacing them with AI to cut down on costs.
This year, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff indicated that the company was “seriously debating” hiring software engineers in 2025. He later revealed that AI was handling up to 50% of the company’s tasks, citing incredible productivity gains via agentic AIs.
Last month, a Microsoft study revealed 40 professions that are most susceptible to automation using AI, including writers, editors, telephone operators, radio DJs, web developers, and more.
Some executives argue that integrating AI into workflows isn’t inherently bad. While they admit the technology has a high probability of rendering some professions obsolete, they also claim that the technology will create new job opportunities.
Former CBO (Chief Business Officer) at Google X, Mo Gawdat, doesn’t subscribe to this school of thought. Like Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates, Gawdat believes that AI will replace humans for most things, including entry-level jobs (via CNBC). Speaking in an interview on the Diary of a CEO podcast, the executive indicated that the idea of AI creating jobs for humans is “100% crap.”
He used his AI startup, Emma.love, to further drive the point home. He indicated that he was able to build the app with the help of two other software developers, a task that would have otherwise required the manpower of “over 350 developers in the past.”
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According to Gawdat, “Artificial general intelligence is going to be better than humans at everything, including being a CEO. There will be a time where most incompetent CEOs will be replaced.”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei indicated that AI is on the verge of slashing 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs, leaving fresh graduates and Gen Z out of an already tough job market. While the former Google executive indicates the paradigm shift is imminent, an AI-driven world isn’t entirely a bad thing.
We were never made to wake up every morning and just occupy 20 hours of our day with work. We’re not made for that. We defined our purpose as work. That’s a capitalist lie.
Mo Gawdat, former CBO at Google X
Microsoft’s special June Work Trend Index report revealed that most employees are stuck in an “infinite workday”, which often coerces them to carry work home, prompting them to work late into the night. Some even lamented that Sunday “feels like the new Monday”.
But thanks to AI, employees have devised ingenious ways to leverage AI to free themselves from this vicious loop, including automating repetitive and mundane tasks to create a healthy work-life balance.
We’ll need a universal basic income (UBI) in an AI-driven world
What happens if AI takes over our jobs? How will we make a living and cater to our never-ending needs? A universal basic income (UBI) might be the solution. For context, this is a social welfare concept where the government allocates a specific amount of money to everyone regularly to cater to basic needs.
But Gawdat indicated that the concept isn’t flaw-free, it’s susceptible to “hunger for power, greed, and ego,” since the tools will be reporting to “stupid leaders.” Elon Musk also floated a similar idea last year when he claimed that AI would take over our jobs, turning work into an optional hobby.
Earlier this year, Microsoft’s AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, claimed that AI is rapidly revolutionizing everything and could replace the importance of “hard dollars” with intelligence, referring to the concept as Universal Basic Provision (UBP).
While the executive admits that humans will still need some cash in the AI era, it won’t hold much value compared to intelligence. He claimed intelligence will make people richer, presenting a new reality where we might need less dollar income to get by than we do today.
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