I Was Wrong About AI and Jobs

Eight years ago, I said AI wouldn't take your job - but someone using AI would.

I was wrong.

Many jobs will disappear. Not might. Will. I've watched it happen across agencies, brands, and teams I work with. The roles that existed two years ago are already changing - or gone entirely.

This isn't fear-mongering. It's observation.

The Honest Truth

AI is already superhuman at certain narrow tasks. Data analysis. Pattern recognition. Content generation at scale. Pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone. It just delays the adaptation people need to make.

I spent years softening this message. Making it palatable. Focusing on the "AI as assistant" narrative because it felt safer.

But safe narratives don't prepare you for what's coming.

What This Actually Means

Here's what I've learned watching dozens of agencies navigate this shift:

One agency I work with went from 14 people to 6 in eighteen months. Not through layoffs - through attrition they didn't backfill. The work that used to require a junior analyst, a senior strategist, and a designer now gets done by one person with the right AI setup. Same output. Fewer humans.

The jobs disappearing fastest are the ones we pretended were safe. The "knowledge work" that turned out to be pattern-matching in disguise. The analysis that was really just reformatting. The reports that nobody read anyway.

What's not disappearing? The messy human stuff. Relationships. Judgment. The ability to sit with a client and understand what they actually need (not just what they're asking for).

The Opportunity

I'm not writing this to depress you. I'm writing it because clarity creates opportunity.

If you know certain skills are becoming commoditized, you can stop investing in them. If you know relationships and judgment matter more than ever, you can double down there.

The agencies thriving right now aren't the ones who ignored this shift. They're the ones who saw it early and adapted.

Where We Go From Here

This series is my attempt at honesty. No more comfortable half-truths about AI being "just a tool." No more pretending the future is decades away.

It's here. The question is what you'll do with it.

Start by asking yourself: which parts of my work are pattern-matching that a machine could do? And which parts are irreducibly human?

That's where your future lives.