CEOs are open about it now: AI to replace people

Oh ho! Google did not want to talk about the topic of AI taking over jobs!

The past few weeks my feed have been showing articles discussing companies either no longer hiring people and letting AI take over the work or companies actually letting go of people as AI take over.

The most distressing story is the one about CEOs openly bragging about reducing headcounts due to AI implementation. They are no longer softly talking about augmentation; it’s about the easy bottom line, baby!

Here’s one such article (actually the one that impelled me to write this post)
Companies are publicly boasting about reducing headcounts

The link to that is here.

There are just news galore about the latest CEOs obsessions.

Google search did supply a list of links

While Google AI did not want to answer my prompt “what are some of the dystopian headlines about AI taking over jobs”, the usual Google search obediently provided me some sites related to my prompt.

CoPilot’s response to my prompt

I will say CoPilot is game to help out. It actually discussed about the prevalence of bad news and gave the reasons why. Here are some samples of headlines CoPilot offered:

• “AI is gutting workforces—and an ex-Google exec says CEOs are too busy ‘celebrating’ their efficiency gains to see they’re next” – Fortune
• “AI Is Leading to Thousands of Job Losses, Report Finds” – CBS News
• “Elon Musk Says AI Will Take All Our Jobs—Including His” – Gizmodo
• “Microsoft Study Reveals 40 Jobs Most Likely to Be Replaced by AI” – Tom’s Guide
• “This Generation Is Secretly Using AI at Work—And Not Telling Their Bosses” – Investopedia

CoPilot assures me that I am not imagining the prevalence of distressing news about AI. Ever since Facebook learned that strong emotions such as fear and hatred increases engagement, it seems everyone else utilizes the same phenomenon. CoPilot tells me that organizations use fear and uncertainty to generate clicks.

The positive side of AI

To counteract the depressing news of impending AI takeover, CoPilot offered to provide me some “good news” about AI job creation.

• “AI May Replace $100K Jobs But Create Even More Opportunities” – Time
• “AI Could Create These New Jobs Despite Gloomy Forecasts” – ABC News
• “How A.I. Can Help Create Jobs for Humans, Not Just Automate Them” – CNBC
• “Futurists Positive About AI’s Impact on Jobs, Urge Wide Perspective” – Forbes
• “AI Has a Positive Impact on Job Creation—And We Have Proof of It” – Workable

Okay….so, I delved into some of these reports, and they are more of a wishful forecast rather than actually happening. The substance is vaguer whereas you can see the depressing forecasts as more likely to happen before the positive news take place.

Therefore, I’m not ready to celebrate.

Ex-Google executive’s dystopian prognosis

The one that CoPilot found – “AI is gutting workforces—and an ex-Google exec says CEOs are too busy ‘celebrating’ their efficiency gains to see they’re next” is delicious.

That article talks about the ex-Google lead Gawdat and I want to focus on him a little bit because he has been showing up in my feed quite a bit and he has quite a dystopian image of the future.

“Gawdat predicted that most knowledge workers would be replaced in the next decade and said many still underestimated just how rapidly this transformation would unfold.”

Thibault Spirlet, Business Insider, “Ex-Google exec says AI is coming for your job — even if you’re a podcaster, developer, or CEO”, 8/4/2025

If you want to go directly to the source, here’s the link.

Note the timeline he is offering: with the next decade, so I’m assuming between 2025 and 2035.

He provides an example of the magnitude of the replacement of people: one AI to hundreds, if not thousands, of employees.

“He cited his own startup, Emma.love, which builds emotional and relationship-focused artificial intelligence and is run by just three people.

“That startup would have been 350 developers in the past,””

Thibault Spirlet, Business Insider, “Ex-Google exec says AI is coming for your job — even if you’re a podcaster, developer, or CEO”, 8/4/2025

Here’s the phrase in the article that is bringing about some interesting headlines (the one about CEOs too busy celebrating their efficiency gains to see they are next):

“Even elite professionals shouldn’t feel immune. “AGI is going to get better at everything than humans — at everything, including being a CEO,””

Thibault Spirlet, Business Insider, “Ex-Google exec says AI is coming for your job — even if you’re a podcaster, developer, or CEO”, 8/4/2025

And here’s the quote that is very, very dystopian. He speaks to the very thing that I’ve been thinking: who is going to win out? The more empathetic people who would use AI to augment and extend our intelligence or the more psychopathic/sociopathic shareholders who would prefer to replace people? Who is going to win out?

My fear is the shareholders which typically are the wealthiest, maybe the top 10%.

“But he warned that AI was being deployed by people and institutions driven by profit and ego, not ethics.

“Unless you’re in the top 0.1%, you’re a peasant,” Gawdat said. “There is no middle class.”

He predicted a “short-term dystopia” beginning around 2027, driven by mass unemployment, social unrest, and an economic structure that fails to adapt.”

Thibault Spirlet, Business Insider, “Ex-Google exec says AI is coming for your job — even if you’re a podcaster, developer, or CEO”, 8/4/2025

There are some pushbacks

Microsoft, Nvidia, and Meta do push back on those doomsday visions.

Also, there has been some pops of good news – not many because we are in early days (hopefully).

One pop of good news is that coming from Klarna: the company has recently gone back to hiring customer representatives. This was the company that was bragging either last year or the year before about AI being able to do the work of 700 customer representatives.

CEO said that the quality was not good.

The other pop of news was that of copywriters being hired to fix the AI results. Sometimes the copywriting was just so bland that sales did not come in. I suspect this is coming from smaller companies not really knowing how to prompt well and not being able to recognize good copy (heck, I wouldn’t be able to see a good one).

The copywriters being hired to fix the results are being paid more due to complexity of the fix.

I think the same thing is happening with web developers: web developers are being brought in to fix non-workable sites at higher rates because the problem is not an easy fix.

CoPilot was not able to give me much beyond those examples I came across. I’m hoping that it is early days and that later on we will find that more and more companies need to hire people to fix whatever ails them.

But, this means one thing: you have to level up your skills. You can’t be mediocre anymore or AI will replace you. You have to level up.