AI, the future of jobs and employment
For two centuries, technological revolutions have promised both rapid change and renewal. Spinning's Jenny broke the guild system, tractors drove farm workers away, but fed millions of people, and computers sent administrative work while laying the entire industry. Each wave of innovation sparked anxiety about mass unemployment, but each time it absorbed what new sectors had evacuated.
However, artificial intelligence is different. Unlike looms and tractors, AI threatens not only physical labor but cognitive work. Drafting contracts, diagnose illnesses, and even writing software. The question facing policymakers in 2025 is not whether AI will restructure the labour market, but whether machines will still find employment when they think.
The pace of change is extraordinary. The debut of ChatGpt in 2022 was followed by Google's Genie 3 in 2024. This is a system that allows robots to navigate the real environment. Released in 2025, the GPT-5 pushed the frontier of reasoning even further. These are not niche tools. They are general purpose technologies that spread at a rate that the previous industrial revolution has never witnessed before. The predictions are different, but they are all heading in the same direction. Tens of millions of jobs have been lost, hundreds of millions of people potentially automated worldwide, making it the best layoff in the US since the pandemic era.
Research shows that almost half of US companies hope to cut staffing for AI. The International Labour Organization estimates that 14% of jobs worldwide are at high risk of automation, and an additional 32% are likely to undergo major transformation. Goldman Sachs has a potential displacement figure in 300 million jobs worldwide. This upheaval is no longer virtual – it's ongoing.
History provides precedent, but it is not always comfortable. The Luddites, who destroyed textile machines, have proven wrong, and the computer revolution eliminated the typing pool, but created an entirely new industry. But today's analogy is shaking. These early innovations expelled manuals or clerical work, opening new industrial frontiers, such as steel, automobiles, and IT. In contrast, AI automates cognition itself. If the tractor releases the farm hand and moves to the factory, where will the lawyer go when the contractor writes himself or the coder? This time, even professional classes that have not been automated for a long time are at risk.
The government is scrambling. Singapore is putting money into AI-related retraining. The EU is piloting “skill passports” to help workers cross the sector. In the US, the universal basic income – once the idea of fringe, has entered mainstream debate. But these efforts feel like a patch of rupture. McKinsey estimates that AI can add $4.4 trillion in annual productivity to the global economy by 2040, but these benefits do not arrive equally and will not compensate for what is left of it. As AI continues to advance, it not only drives away store clerks and paralegals, but it also drives out radiologists, analysts and even teachers, shaking the middle class foundations.
Geopolitical contexts add urgency. Training for cutting-edge AI systems is highly resource-intensive, so only a few countries and businesses can compete. The race was narrowed down to Americans and Chinese giants. Global private investment in AI reached $67 billion in 2024, with the US winning about half, while China has pledged to spend more than $150 billion in AI by 2030.
70% of graduate students in the US in AI-related fields are foreign-born, and China offers the deepest bench. Chinese citizens make up about 30% of Americans' AI doctoral degrees. Chinese immigrants have founded eight of the 48 most important US AI companies, and half of Meta's “super intelligence” team are Chinese. However, Washington is bolstering the H-1B lottery to rely on foreign talent and discipline elite universities. “The birth of the Ice Age.” The moment America needs the most global mind, it keeps them out. The irony is noticeable. Fearing to lose the AI race to China, countries are on the sidelines of Chinese engineers and entrepreneurs who promote its advantage.
Frontier AI research is not an open field, but a tightly gated domain, and is less constrained by money than the scarcity of people who can move the edge forward. This comparison is less than consumer technology than in the early days of nuclear physics, where a breakthrough in the minds of a few labs.
As AI continues to advance, radiologists, analysts and even teachers move, shaking the middle class foundations.
Dr. John Sfakianakis
For the biggest technology companies, there is a pool of researchers whose numbers are only important, even if they cost billions. And there will be dozens of people in that, insights will disproportionately shape the direction of the field.
But the central uncertainty isn't just who leads the race. That's the other side of the race. The literature on AI and productivity remains unstable, not only because there is little evidence, but also because AI itself is still not aware of which direction it is moving. Does it prove new electricity, saturate the economy, or exaggerated tools? Until the trajectory is clear, all confident claims about the long-term impact of AI are more speculative than science.
Some argue that they will move to areas where trust, empathy and physical presence are essential, such as senior care, hospitality, community service, and crafts. Others lock their hopes into whole new industries like synthetic biology and space exploration. However, such alternatives are speculative and unlikely to absorb tens of millions of displaced people at comparable wages. The Economic Co-operation and Development Agency warns that AI-driven automation is likely to send middle classes, disproportionately affecting the middle work of skills to maintain social stability.
A more unsettling possibility is that society relies on redistribution rather than work, accepting permanent structural unemployment. It raises the question of identity and dignity. Can society come together when the social role of work decreases? Deeper more: what happens to humanity when the act of thinking, the task that defined our species, is outsourced? This is not just an economic problem, it is a civilized mystery. What do people do when someone else, or something else, think for them?
Public anxiety reflects this uncertainty. A recent Pew survey found that 62% of Americans expect AI to have a significant impact on employment within 20 years, but only 28% believe it will improve employment opportunities. In other words, most people see confusion coming, but few people expect to benefit from it. This anxiety is not misguided. This reflects the scale of change already underway.
Policymakers are just beginning to work on this. Redistribution through basic income or negative income taxes could mitigate the blow, but it is uncertain whether taxpayers will maintain such a program. Human collaboration, which is machine-enhanced, rather than replacing workers, slows down erosion, but may not stop it. What's even more radical is redefineing “work” itself. It is to expand awareness of caregiving, volunteering and creative pursuits that AI cannot fully replicate. However, this requires a rethinking of economic values and social status that the government is not ready to undertake.
The interests will not be high. AI has already eliminated work at an invisible pace since Great Fear Presion. Historical analogies are pleasant but misleading. Steam engines, electricity and computers have restructured the economy, but preserved the human superiority of the cognitive domain. This time, machines are coming not only for the factory floors, but also for the desks.
Calculations are inevitable. An adaptive society could navigate the transition by building a safety net, investing in human complementarity, and fostering new industries. Failing people risk massive unemployment and political unrest of a magnitude that is not found in living memories. The AI revolution leaves us with more keen questions. Not only is the work left to remain, but whether the dignity of work itself can survive when the machines express us.
The challenge is no longer to keep pace with the machines, but to decide what kind of society you want when you inevitably move forward.
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Dr. John Sfakianakis is Chief Economist and Head of Economic Research at the Gulf Research Center.
Disclaimer: The views expressed by the writers in this section are unique and do not necessarily reflect the Arab news perspective
