We all keep hearing about how AI is going to take everyone's jobs and destroy the economy and we're all doomed. Honestly, if you spend any time on YouTube, LinkedIn right now, it's hard to avoid it. But when we look around us… is it really the case?
I want to push back on this narrative. Not because AI is some magic thing that's only going to help people (it’s not) but because the fear framing is just unproductive. It doesn't help anyone or get anything done. It mostly just makes people anxious and prevents them doing anything useful with the tools that are readily available.
Scott Galloway made a point on Diary of a CEO recently that I thought was pretty sharp. He basically argued that the whole "AI is going to destroy jobs" thing is, in a lot of cases, a fundraising story - a way for tech overlords to justify the absurd valuations of their companies by promising massive savings on labour costs. Meanwhile the actual data on jobs is a LOT less dramatic than the headlines.
What's actually happening
I'll keep this bit short because data-heavy posts are boring.
US unemployment has been sitting between 4.3 and 4.5 percent for ten months straight. That's basically where it was before ChatGPT existed. Hiring has slowed a lot — economists are calling it the "big freeze" — but companies aren't actually firing people en masse. They're just not replacing the ones who leave.
There is one real thing worth being honest about. Young workers, 22 to 25, in the most AI-exposed jobs have seen about a 13 percent drop in employment since 2022. Entry-level corporate is getting squeezed. That part is true.
However, the part the doom and gloom narrative doesn't mention is that business formation has doubled per person over the last decade. More people are starting their own things. Looking to be their own boss. Which by my standards, is fantastic.
More small operators are coming online. An obvious example - even the AI infrastructure boom itself is creating demand for trades. Data centres need to actually get built.
The economy isn't ending. We’re not at the mercy of this imaginary AI demon. And the people who'll do well out of it are mostly going to be the ones who quietly started implementing the tools while everyone else was busy being scared of them.
AI will give us more time to actually focus on interacting with each other. Building relationships. Doing creative, tasteful and physical work which the robots struggle with.
Why the fear story is actually expensive
Here's the bit that bothers me.
If you're running a small property maintenance company, or a renovation outfit, or you're an electrician with a few vans on the road... and you've spent the last two years being told that AI is some terrifying thing that's going to wipe you out, what have you actually done about that?
Probably nothing.
Because the message wasn't "here's a useful tool you can use." It was just "be scared."
And being scared is not a plan.
There is potential to be using this stuff to reply to enquiries in seconds, automatically book your calendar, chase up old quotes, send job updates without picking up the phone... instead of losing work because you were on a job site with your phone in your van. All that admin will soon be a thing of the past, giving you more time to actually sign off jobs.
"But what if the AI bubble pops?"
Quickly, because this is a fair question and I'll do a proper post on it another time.
There's a real argument that AI infrastructure is overvalued. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have committed around 725 billion dollars to AI infrastructure just this year. Not all of that is going to pay off cleanly. Something's probably going to give. Fortune
But "the bubble pops" doesn't mean "the technology disappears." The dot-com crash didn't kill the internet. It killed Pets.com. Google, Amazon came out the other side absolutely fine, and so did everyone who'd quietly built a business on top of the web. I predict a similar situation happening with the age of AI.
Same logic here. Even in a bad correction, the tools sitting in front of a property business owner today aren't going anywhere.
The cheesy tech startups jumping on the bandwagon? See ya.
What I actually think
There are jobs that'll change shape, which is already happening. McKinsey's recent survey had 32 percent of companies expecting to shrink headcount by at least 3 percent over the next year because of AI. Yale Insights
But there's a massive gap between "some jobs will change" and "AI is coming for everyone's livelihood." Granted, we're all being forced to adapt, which to some is not ideal. Unfortunately that's how it is though. And a lot of the people filling that gap with scary narratives are, oddly enough, the same people selling you the thing to fix it.
What I actually believe and am moving forward with is the much more boring version. AI is simply leverage. It lets a team of five operate like a team of fifteen. It lets a property maintenance firm running a handful of jobs at once handle the admin without hiring another office manager. It lets the bigger operators get even further ahead, and it lets the smaller ones finally compete on the stuff that used to need a full back office.
The opportunity right now isn't to be afraid of any of this. It's just to be one of the first firms in your industry to actually use it properly. If you’re reading this, you’re still way ahead.
That's a better story. And it happens to be true.