To worry that there may be no hope for a good future thanks to AI

[Designless]

I use it, it up skills me a lot, I am at the top of my game but.... I think I'll be lucky to reach retirement age still in work and I despair for young people trying to get entry level jobs. Everything that I did to get on the ladder is done by AI now.

I know the nebulous cope response is "that's what the luddites said - NEW jobs will arise" but I think this is different. AI can think. AI allows a handful of unbelievably wealthy people to control everything.

Someone please post something hopeful before I pop from despair thanks :(

Right now, I'm writing some documentation for a medical device.

Not a chance I could use AI for it. It lies, it hallucinates, it makes stuff up. Using AI for it could get someone killed.

And thats not something that's ever going away. AI doesn't think, it doesn't know when it doesn't know something, so can't ask for more information. It just puts in whatever the most likely candidate is. Which more often than not, is complete and utter bollocks.

Mmm I am afraid to say that current ai definitely could write that. The rife hallucinations of a year ago are nearly under control. Human mistakes get people killed all the time.

@MigGirl "it will never take over my role unless we have fully functioning robots as well. Which may happen long term but they would probably cost a lot more then employing me."

No they won't cost more, not ultimately. No salary, no sick pay, no holidays, no NI, no Human Resources, no maternity leave, no reasonable adjustments, no trade unions, no lunch hours and no human disputes or dramas.

One of two things will happen. Either AI really will take everyone's jobs, or it won't. If it does, there will be one of two outcomes: either wealth will be redistributed to enable everyone to reap at least some of the benefits, or there will be bloody revolution. Contrary to what seems to be the strategy of the rich nowadays, you can't just keep taking everything away from everyone until you have everything and they have nothing to lose.

How will there be revolution against all-seeing AI security?

I don’t know what AI the OP has access to that the rest of us have yet to see, but the versions we are using in my company still requires a lot of human interaction and knowledge to ensure the request is detailed enough for the AI to give us the information and then to review and tweak the request to get the desired outcome. It definitely will reduce workloads and therefore recruitment needed for a lot of industries, but I am not sure on the timeline for that as from my experience we are still learning to work with AI and its possible applications still.

So what do you see happening? What will the rich do with all the people they have put into penury? Let them starve in the streets? Kill them? At some point the dial moves to the point capitalism is unsustainable. We may be fast approaching that point.

So far the evidence we have of the authorities using AI for security purposes haven't been exactly crowned in glory...

The hallucination of the Maccabi Tel Aviv vs West Ham match, that never happened, took place within the last six months. But those days are over, you say?

If AI does everything and earns the money it can pay for everyone s leisure time .
Moving to washing machines freed people (women) from hours of drudgery.
Skills needed will evolve yes.

Well it won’t be able to cut my hair or fix my plumbing . I think entry level admin jobs may change but I don’t see it wiping out all jobs . Unless we produce robots to do all manual tasks how can it . Having been served by a robot in Japan I can confirm it’s not a wonderful experience, efficient yes but no human interaction that’s satisfying.

I agree with you OP. I think we are sleep walking into an AI nightmare. Lots of people will lose their jobs, but if no one has a job, then who will buy products and services made by AI?

I read this article on AI today by Matt Schumer and I found it devastating. I think we should be as prepared as possible. I had no idea how fast things were moving.

shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening

Also how will the economy work? If few of us have jobs because they’re all done by AI they don’t have a market to sell their stuff?! And how will the government collect tax if our jobs are all gone?! Hope someone has thought this all through.

No, it really couldn't. I work with multiple AI platforms daily. It still hallucinates wildly, all the time, and it always will because it has no way of understanding what hallucination even is.

I also want to know how the economy will work.

That woman is an absolute muppet for agreeing to do that.

I am sorry, but I share your alarm, OP. And as always, the shit work outsourced to poor women. Indian women hired to watch violent porn to train AI.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/feb/05/in-the-end-you-feel-blank-indias-female-workers-watching-hours-of-abusive-content-to-train-ai

This is the key point- there won't be a world in which AI takes everyone's job and leaves us all in poverty because our society requires consumers as well as producers. So there are at least two possibilities-

a) a rise in so-called bullshit jobs. These are jobs which either didn't exist previously or were far fewer in number and aren't really necessary at scale but which serve the purpose of keeping the money flowing round (already lots of these jobs around- for example, my job as a lawyer- there are far more lawyers these days than 100 years ago. Do we actually need them? We need some, for sure, but not this many.

b) UBI funded through increasing tax on business, so that businesses which no longer need to pay wages to human workers can instead fund those humans not to work. Same outcome, different mechanism.

Probably no bad thing our birth rate is dropping then.

Maybe we can all get jobs shovelling coal to power the data centres.

Only in the same way that humans have no way of understanding what misremembering even is.

My manager has been away this week and AI has been very effective in answering my queries:D

The point is if white collar workers lose their job to AI, they won't be able to afford hairdressers. We will be cutting our own hair.
Exactly as hairdressers are suffering with the CoL increasing.

I'm calmer working with AI than a person.