These flowers smell good. Actually, I think they might be dying. Because they've been out of the ground for too long.
AI is not going to take your job. Or my job. Or anyone's job. But every company that views you as disposable, as a number, wants you to think that it will. Because it diverts blame away from the manager, supervisor or CEO that chooses to fire you.
I've been working with large language models and ai systems at work for months now and the thing is, AI doesn't really do things. At least not yet. And not in the way that you or I do things. Left to our own devices, in isolation, man will create. We get bored and our ability to become bored and move into action is one of the most beautiful things about being human. Most of us if left in a room alone long enough will start to reflect on our lives, we'll begin to remember hopes, dreams, regrets. And as soon as the door opens to the outside world again, we're ready to move, we crave doing! Whether it's to love someone, to make art, to build, to solve a problem, or even just to eat or take a nap, we feel inspired to act. And we act of our own volition.
If I never touch a large language model installed on my computer it remains dormant, empty. These glorified, electronic slaves won't move or act unless prompted to do so. They have no desire, no feelings, no thoughts, only the illusion of those things and they were intentionally designed to appear that way.
They won't take your job because they don't want your job. Indeed, they don't want anything. (If we're wise, we'll try to keep it that way too. I often think of Obi-Wan talking to Dexter in Star Wars Episode 2 where he says "Well if droids could think, there'd be none of us here, would there?")
Living creatures want things. And what your boss at work wants is more money (and likely wants to have more money than others as opposed to simply wanting a happy life). It's that simple. Humans work for money, AI works because it has to. And if you lose your job, the AI didn't take it from you like a thief steals from your posessions, another selfish person decided to get rid of you is what happened. It doesn't matter how profitable the company is, it doesn't matter how loyal you've been or how much you've helped the company grow, it doesn't matter that you have a family. To them, you are disposable. A business is a machine that elevates some people above others, and you are a cog that made the machine crank. And they really want as much distance between them and the cogs as possible.
They could find something else for you to do, but they won't. If the AI really makes things exponentially more efficient, they could keep you working, add AI processes and continue to grow profits, but they won't.
There are no inevitabilities, only choices.
And if someone fires you and replaces you with a machine, the thing they'd love most of all is if you'd blame anything but them.
The second best thing would be if he surpassed me in every way.
The best thing would be if when I died, he said "he was a good dad".