AI is supposed to supercharge employees and bring incredible gains for businesses. But it’s not about deploying the technology; it’s about making it happen, which takes effort and leadership with vision.
If you haven’t already, ask ChatGPT if you would lose your job to AI now or in the future. Whatever its answer, it will also tell you how all it is doing is creating space for you to do the important stuff that only humans can do. Bosses may tell you the same thing. However, artificial intelligence is not just augmenting human endeavour or the workplace but displacing both.
Companies are rapidly automating tasks from coding to copywriting, legal research, logistics, and customer support. The result is a mounting wave of layoffs and a growing imbalance between executive ambition and frontline reality. Even jobs AI creates, like Prompt Engineering, are redundant because of its rapid advances.
Executives are not hiding their motives. IBM’s CEO, Arvind Krishna, has openly stated that the company would pause hiring for roughly 7,800 roles that AI could soon replace. Klarna’s CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, boasted on social media that the company’s AI assistant now does the job of 700 full-time customer service agents. In media and marketing, firms are slashing headcounts while touting improved output from AI-assisted teams.
Markets frequently reward these decisions. In the corporate playbook, “doing more with less” has never sounded better. However, a 2024 survey in developed markets shows the story is less triumphant.
Workers report rising workloads, tighter deadlines, and unclear expectations. Despite the repeated claim that AI will “free up time” for higher-value tasks, few companies have articulated what those tasks are.
A 2024 survey by Upwork reveals the extent of this disconnect: while 96% of C-suite executives expect AI to increase productivity, 77% of employees say it has, instead, increased their workload and decreased productivity.
The gap between AI hype and workplace reality is widening.
Rather than being redeployed into strategic thinking or creative problem-solving, now employees often operate and validate AI systems that have replaced their peers.
TIME/Charter, picking up the survey, says that 81% of business leaders increased performance expectations on their teams in the past year, expecting AI tools to lift output without adding staff. However, only one in four companies offer meaningful AI training, according to Inc., leaving employees with rising demands but insufficient support. Employees must learn to use AI and keep up with bosses who think AI can allow teams to take on bigger workloads. Businesses are increasing short-term expectations but not investing time, energy, training, and support. There is a lack of clarity in goals.
This failure to redefine roles has created a chasm filled not by innovation but by anxiety and burnout. Employees are left wondering what their future looks like in a workplace that demands more but defines less. As AI carves out larger domains of productivity, workers are being squeezed rather than elevated.
Despite industry rhetoric about “augmenting human potential,” the operational reality often defaults to cost-cutting and consolidation. Management consulting firms advising on AI adoption frequently focus on efficiencies gained, not on how to reimagine work around irreplaceable human capabilities.
If AI is to be more than a blunt instrument for trimming payrolls, leadership will need to do more than deploy tools. They will need to define new visions of work: what it means, what it does, and what value humans bring in a machine-driven economy.
So far, however, that vision is missing in most places.
And while machines don’t ask for clarity or purpose, people still do.
Over a century ago, H.G. Wells wrote about mass layoffs in the wake of rapid technological advancement, asking the affluent purveyors of innovation and progress if they lacked the intelligence to foresee the human costs and prepare.
A 2023 analysis by Goldman Sachs estimated that artificial intelligence could displace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs globally. However, it also noted the potential for new roles to emerge alongside productivity gains. Similarly, the International Monetary Fund projects that AI could impact nearly 40% of all jobs worldwide. According to IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, the widespread adoption of AI is, in most scenarios, expected to exacerbate existing inequalities.
What can we do? Global tech leaders are clear: AI will not replace people or businesses. People and businesses wielding AI as a tool will do the replacing if they invest the time, energy, training and support, avoiding the scramble to pile on more work.
Ironically, ChatGPT wears empathy better than most people when it explains job losses. But AI does not run businesses. People do.
Further Reading:
Dealing with employee apprehensions about AI: https://hrexecutive.com/how-to-keep-employee-distrust-from-limiting-your-companys-ai-strategy/
Upwork survey findings on AI in the workplace:
https://www.upwork.com/research/ai-enhanced-work-models
Time/Charter story on burnout and defining roles based on the Upwork survey:
https://time.com/charter/7001637/how-to-avoid-burnout-and-maximize-impact-from-ai/
Inc. story based on the Upwork survey on workers being less productive because of AI:
https://www.inc.com/brian-contreras/most-workers-say-ai-makes-them-less-productive-according-to-a-survey.html
Tech layoffs in 2025:
https://www.analyticsinsight.net/artificial-intelligence/ai-blamed-as-big-tech-layoffs-surge-in-the-name-of-automation