The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon

mono442

It still doesn't seem to work all that well for tasks which don't have a short feedback loop.

moezd

When manufacturing turned into electrified factories and conveyor belts, there wasn't waves of massive layoffs. And AI these days come nowhere near close to conveyor belts or electrification at scale at all. Debt cycles could fund it to a certain scale, but we don't know our priorities either: Do you fund hyperscalers? Do you fund ex-crypto miner co-location data centers? Do you fund centralized frontier model labs? Do you let everyone be able to deploy these models on any throwaway hardware? What is the best standard for model distribution? We are so far off from these discussions that AI hype these days really sounds like a couple of frat bros BSing and not knowing what to do with their Ivy League credentials and inheritance money.

650

You still need handholding, you can’t just give a few junior devs Claude Opus 5 and expect them to recreate Instagram in a few weeks. Frontend and backend basics sure, but security, scale, etc. need prior knowledge.

datakan

Judging by the IT maturity of most of the companies I have worked with in the last 30 years, my guess is we're about 10-15 years from any serious changes, solely because adopting AI will require a few things. Most are running razor thin margins and wont be able to afford any of this, others have so much technical debt piled up that even if they could afford it they couldn't do anything without identifying ancient systems and then updating them. Most people I deal with still struggle with basic things. These were the types of people that couldn't program a VCR back in the 80's. Yes eventually they may get left behind but they are the majority of the population. I'm sure AI is all the rage in SV but everywhere else I go, no one gives a damn about any of this. I was just in Florida for work last week. 5 days and not one person I talked to brought AI up outside of a vendor trying to scare me about Mythos. It's just a nonissue for most people. In time maybe that changes, but I still hear people arguing about "the cloud" which was over a decade ago at this point in terms of tech trends. Expecting any of these people to understand what skills are or MD files or MCP is unrealistic. They simply don't give a fuck.

trolleski

But, but... They said. Wait, did they... Lie?

vouaobrasil

It sort of is though because more jobs are becoming more mechanical. In the past, I wouldn't mind being a programmer but now with all this AI the job sucks. AI may have made things more efficient but that also balances on the other side of the equation: the boss now expects more, and it's much less fun to produce more than to concentrate well on a single topic. So jobs suck more and that's harsh. Also, many jobs are being threatened, including my own. And I don't really want to get a different job, even though I will if I have to. I like my current one and I'm very specific about what I do. I will get another job but it's probably not going to be as fun. I hate AI and the people that made it.

Gualdrapo

All I know is that trying to get a job now is being way more brutal than before. The closest thing I got this month was a scam email from an alleged "independent global senior recruiter" "currently supporting a confidential search for a company developing AI-powered digital products". The made-with-ai smell was all over the place, the company in mention allegedly was adobe, and am pretty sure they got my email from the "who wants to be hired?" posts in here.

FrustratedMonky

Then what is causing hiring to be so low, or the layoffs? Just a soft job market in general? The economy is actually tanking, not just "AI" jobs. Did hiring managers just pump the brakes "just in case this AI thing is real". So we should see some big spike in hiring now that we know AI isn't going to do everything? Or, the actual real numbers of hiring, is for real an indicator that AI is already taking jobs, or reducing jobs. Teams of 5, can now be teams of 2 or 3.

robotswantdata

Don’t expect The Guardian to report on AI taking jobs. Their audience wants to believe AI is failing and could never match their superior intellects. Newsflash: AI is already remarkably good at replacing the exact office and civil service paper-pushing they do every day.

rexreed

There was an article in Forbes [1] that shared that it's not about jobs going away, but the steady creep of tasks being taken away from people and given to AI and automation. The point made is that AI is hollowing out jobs, leading to earlier (and often forced) retirement, the destruction of entry-level jobs, and the steady creep of winnowing out workers making things leaner. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ronschmelzer/2026/07/14/ai-isnt...

rambojohnson

for many people it is already here...

rybosworld

Agentic coding only became reasonably decent this past December. Even in tech, most organizations that have adopted the tools are still trying to understand how capable they are and how to use them. Point is it's too early to declare what the effect will be. It can take years for large organizations to change the way of doing things. The only sure-fire way to speed that up is if they suddenly start losing market-share. Otherwise, it's all herd-following and complacency in the majority of companies.

tysilva

At the same time, we seem to be making rapid progress year over year in capability. Competition is keeping things progressing forward at an interesting pace. It will be interesting to see what we are actually capable of 5 years from now... 10 years... There is almost definitely some job functions that are at risk and just don't know it, or haven't felt it yet.

keeda

> Labor productivity was, in fact, slower in the first three years of our AI era than during the information technology boom that began in the mid 1990s. That's a bit of a misleading statement, as it uses inaccurate terminology and cherrypicked comparisons. The linked chart is about labor productivity growth in those time frames, and current labor productivity is actually growing faster than projected since early 2023: See first chart here (rest of the article also worth skimming): https://aleximas.substack.com/p/what-is-the-impact-of-ai-on-... Some economists suggest it's because of the impact of AI. Here's a study from the St Louis Fed (not quite a tech bro-pilled source I'd assume): https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/nov/state-gen... If I may summarize my takeaway from that article: even though 50%+ of Americans currently self-report (major caveat) using AI, they use it for only 6% of work hours. This is what the recent Google study [1] called "broad but shallow use." But that still leads to 2% of work hour savings, which is a whopping 30%+ productivity boost per hour of AI used. And even with this low level of adoption, we may already be seeing the impact on labor productivity at national-level aggregate statistics! Interestingly, this is across industries. You can play with the charts here [2]. There are all kinds of caveats involved, but there are other studies that rhyme (like [1] and those listed on the substack above.) This is kind of astounding considering it's been less than 4 years since ChatGPT was released. My concern is that the impact on jobs is only beginning because 6% adoption is a very low number. I fear the impact will happen gradually, as adoption inches up... and then suddenly. [1] https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/research/un... (discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49020335 ) [2] https://www.genaiadoptiontracker.com/