If AI Eats Your Job for Breakfast, Maybe Your Job Was Already Toast

A friend and ex-colleague, Dominic Johnson, recently posted an article on LinkedIn titled “AI Will Eat Your Job for Breakfast — Unless You Do This”.  You can read Dominic's full article here. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-eat-your-job-breakfast-unless-you-do-dominic-johnson-hxauc/

I agree with the majority of what Dom is saying.  His key premise is that AI is not necessarily a threat to expertise. It is a threat to experts who have allowed their role to be focused on routine technical output that could also be done by those without the same level of expertise. Experts who use AI to remove lower-value work and develop higher-order enterprise capabilities may become more valuable, not less.

I don’t feel AI is a major threat to expertise. I worry humans are.  It’s the growing view that “my opinion is as valid as your years of training and research,” which concerns me the most.  But that isn’t just another article about breakfast. It’s a whole other restaurant.

History shows that AI may take some of our jobs, but it is not the existential threat many think it is.

Many technological disruptions since the industrial revolution have created initial upheaval because it does replace “routine tasks involving explicit rule-based activities” (Frey and Osborne). But people and organisations inevitably adapt and keep taking on increasingly more complex and difficult challenges.  Then the baseline of what is considered routine is raised again, which technology eventually replicates again. This does occur with some degree of pain, but we have always managed to step up.  Practically every single time.

The history of automation is not a story of jobs being permanently destroyed.  Instead, technology destroys tasks, reshapes occupations, and creates new ways for us to create value that previously did not exist, or could even be considered. This is in part supported by another article Dominic added to his post - https://www.anthropic.com/research/labor-market-impacts.

MIT economist David Autor’s paper Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? argues that automation does displace labour in specific tasks, but it also complements human labour, increases productivity, lowers costs, and raises demand for work in other areas.

One of the many examples Autor provides in his paper? In 1900, about 41% of the US workforce worked in agriculture. By 2000, that had fallen to about 2%, largely due to technological change. Yet mass unemployment did not follow, because people adapted, reskilled, and moved into other sectors.

The World Bank’s World Development Report 2019: The Changing Nature of Work argues that fears of automation taking away jobs have always dominated the discussion, but “on balance,” those fears appear unfounded. The report emphasises that work is constantly reshaped by technological progress as workforces adopt new production methods, markets expand, and societies evolve.

Some more recent research? A large and enjoyable part of my career used to be forecasting workforce capability demand and supply.  I often used research from the World Economic Forum as my bible.  The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 projects 92 million roles will be displaced by 2030, but 170 million new roles will be created.

Historically, technological disruption has often produced short-term job losses and temporary economic pain, but it has not usually led to long-term unemployment across sectors. Over time, new technologies often create new tasks, occupations, industries, and sources of supply and demand. The real challenge, and Dominic does clearly articulate this challenge AND the solution, is whether people can transition quickly enough.

I’m not saying AI is not going to be a threat to many people. There has been and will be pain. But most people will adapt, and in time, this modern-day doomsday scenario will be added to the towering scrapheap of past end-of-days predictions.  However, if your livelihood depends on your expertise, I do highly recommend you take on Dominic’s advice – start adapting and improving your enterprise skills now.