Entrepreneurship
Wait A Minute, Will AI Really Take My Job? Really?
By Jan Okonji
“ Hold my coffee, the robots are coming for all our jobs!”
Really? History tells a different story. When personal computers showed up, pundits promised a paperless office and mass unemployment. Instead, we got spreadsheets and email … and millions of people learned new skills and stayed employed. The same panic plays out with artificial intelligence. Let’ s attempt to sift through all the viral noise and really understand what’ s happening with this AI and employment situation.
Reality Check: What AI Does Well( And What It Doesn’ t)
AI isn’ t some all‐knowing god or super robot; it’ s a set of tools built by humans.
Today’ s generative models, like ChatGPT, are superb at processing language, generating images, and analysing patterns. We know and understand what they can do- draft marketing copy, help debug code, summarize legal documents, suggest treatment options etc etc. And their usage is rightfully exploding: 78 % of blue-chip organisations reported using AI in 2024, up from 55 % the year before.
That ' s just wild. Currently, about 40 % on average of corporate blue-chip company employees use AI at work, double the rate in 2023.
But there are limits and because of these same limits technological change impacts employment gradually not instantly. In the past, technologies from electricity to smartphones, took years or decades to spread, and many occupations grew in spite of the automation wave.
Even with generative AI, researchers find that the timing and scale of impacts on jobs remain uncertain at the moment and the opinions you are seeing online are just that- opinions.
Consider the example of autonomous vehicles we thought would eliminate taxi drivers. Currently it is so near and yet so far implementation-wise and a basic web browse will show you that the foray into that technological space has actually increased jobs rather than eliminate them.
Machines can process, predict and compose, but they just don’ t care. They don’ t build relationships, mentor colleagues, or motivate teams. Even with the latest advances, AI struggles with complex reasoning and remains limited in unstructured, real‐world environments.
Even the pre-cursor to this which was Uber and it ' s AI enabled application, has seen more job opportunities rather than the death of a traditional industry.
Still not convinced? Well, consider AI is still not yet ' feeling ' or ' human ' enough to be sentient and stupidly struggles with tasks that require physical dexterity, deep empathy, contextual judgement or leadership. Don ' t get me wrong- I am an avid user of AI in it ' s various forms but the extent of work one has to put in during prompt engineering to get a refined output from an AI LLM is quite nerve wracking.
Let ' s back it up further: a recent Microsoft‐sponsored study ranked jobs by AI applicability: interpreters, translators and customer service reps scored high, while nursing assistants, architects and surgical assistants scored near zero. In other words, AI excels at repetitive, text‐heavy tasks but falters when a job calls for caring for patients, building a roof, or inspiring a team.
Machines can process, predict and compose, but they just don’ t care. They don’ t build relationships, mentor colleagues, or motivate teams. Even with the latest advances, AI struggles with complex reasoning and remains limited in unstructured, real‐world environments.
Caring professions such as nursing, teaching, counselling and social work rely on empathy and trust. Trades like carpentry, plumbing and electrical work demand dexterity and on‐the‐spot judgement. Leadership roles require vision, persuasion and ethical judgement. AI may offer suggestions, but you still make the call.
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