{"id":179211,"date":"2025-09-30T04:48:20","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T04:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/179211\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T04:48:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T04:48:20","slug":"did-ai-kill-your-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/179211\/","title":{"rendered":"Did AI kill your job?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The response to my recent story, \u201cThe AI jobs crisis is here, now\u201d<\/a>, has been pretty overwhelming. The piece, which examines how the language-learning app Duolingo fired its writers and translators to go all-in on AI, how DOGE uses an \u201cAI-first strategy\u201d to justify firing tens of thousands of public servants, and how both fit into a broader trend of executives using AI to erode conditions for creative, civic, and freelance work, has become one of the most-read stories in this newsletter\u2019s history. <\/p>\n

It was picked up by outlets like TechCrunch<\/a>, the Guardian<\/a>, and TechMeme<\/a>, did numbers on Reddit<\/a>, and was shared in industry newsletters and AI blogs. It sparked a lot of debate, the great majority of which was civil, even.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, I heard from a lot of people who had stories of their own about the impacts of AI on their working lives. Some left comments on the article, some wrote me emails, some posted their stories on social media, and others still sent me tips about job-killing AI use at their companies in cases that have not yet been made public. I heard stories from medical transcribers, freelance illustrators, graphic designers, marketers, writers, tech workers, and more. <\/p>\n

I want to hear yours, too. I think a lot of people do. <\/p>\n

The wide-ranging and often impassioned response to this story has encouraged me to try to do more to document, understand, and illuminate how AI is impacting our jobs, the working world, and our daily lives. The first step is hearing those stories. A lot of people I speak with are anxious, afraid, or feel alone in their fears. Some are angry their bosses deemed them or their colleagues expendable; some feel depressed watching what they loved about their jobs disappear. Many feel exploited. Others are frustrated at the new work AI creates. Others feel a loss of self-worth. But these workers are not alone and are certainly not worthless\u2014there are many people experiencing such indignities right now. Assembling and sharing these stories can illuminate what\u2019s happening to our jobs in the AI era, and help us understand the extent of the trend. <\/p>\n

So, if you have a story about how AI has impacted your working life, your job, or your workplace, and you\u2019d like to share, please send it to AIKilledMyJob@pm.me<\/a>. It\u2019s an encrypted ProtonMail account, and I will keep all details private and, if desired, your identity anonymous. I will protect your identity as I would any source. Your message can be as long or as short as you\u2019d like. It can be shared as a tip on background or written with the intent of being shared with readers, here on BLOOD IN THE MACHINE, where I\u2019ve added a new section called AI Killed My Job. <\/p>\n

I think there\u2019s great value in sharing these stories. We cannot hold the AI companies or corporate leadership or the managers using AI accountable if we do not know what they\u2019re doing, after all. A researcher has volunteered to help sort the responses, and I\u2019ll use the entire corpus as part of a broader project to understand the impacts of AI-led job loss, degradation, and transformation.<\/p>\n

When I ask if AI killed your job, I don\u2019t mean it literally. \u201cAI\u201d is after all a loose term that describes a broad array of technologies, even though these days it\u2019s usually used to describe generative AI systems, which use large language models to produce text and image output. And \u201cAI\u201d can\u2019t kill any jobs on its own\u2014that\u2019s a management decision. And many felt that even if AI didn\u2019t eliminate their job outright, as it typically does not, it effectively killed it; draining it of value or ruining what made it enjoyable.<\/p>\n

In the last week\u2014and over the last couple of years\u2014I\u2019ve heard stories about the ways that bosses, clients, or managers use AI to replace or downgrade rewarding tasks, institute new surveillance measures, try to speed up the rate of work, justify giving workers more work, threaten them with replacement, or otherwise make their lives miserable. And, yes, some people reported being replaced outright by AI systems, either suddenly, as the Duolingo writer and the federal tech worker reported, or after months or years of enduring downgrades and corporate restructuring.<\/p>\n

Clearly, there are a lot of such stories out there. I hear more of them every few days as it is. (This is one thing that happens when you write a book defending the historical Luddites<\/a> and you document the struggles of the new ones<\/a>.) But I have a feeling I\u2019m just seeing the tip of the iceberg: what this response has shown me is that we are under-reporting, and failing to understand the breadth and scope of the changes generative AI, algorithmic work, and automated systems are leveling on jobs and modern workplaces. <\/p>\n

One recurring comment on my original article was that unemployment in general is still high\u2014that the impact of AI has yet to show up in employment statistics. A recent study of workplaces in Denmark found that generative AI seemed to have little impact on total employment<\/a>. Though I\u2019d like to see a similar study on American workplaces, where employees enjoy fewer protections and employers may be more excitable over AI firms\u2019 pitches\u2014and where DOGE has been the most potent American job-destroyer of 2025 by far<\/a>\u2014I\u2019m not particularly surprised by the findings. <\/p>\n

The point in my piece was that \u201cthe AI jobs crisis is\u2026a crisis in the nature and structure of work, more than it is about trends surfacing in the economic data.\u201d Those who are feeling the impacts most are already-precarious freelance workers who tend to be undercounted in jobs data, creative industries, and public servants laid off by DOGE, a project empowered by the logic of AI, and AI-first strategies. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have interviewed too many artists who are now struggling because their clients have turned to Midjourney or ChatGPT, too many designers now out of work, too many federal workers laid off, pushed out, or threatened by DOGE and its bad AI, too many people squeezed in novel ways, to be able to dismiss this trend as anything other than a significant reshaping of work. How significant is this trend? How far-reaching? How economically damaging to workers, in their own words? How debilitating to their mental health? <\/p>\n

These are questions I\u2019d love to answer with your help. This project has been inspired in part by Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, by the late anthropologist David Graeber. The backbone of that book comes from testimonials he solicited over email about workers\u2019 bullshit jobs, and why they felt their own jobs were, in fact, bullshit. I hope to accomplish something similar for AI-impacted jobs here. <\/p>\n

I am convinced, based on years of interviews and industry observation, that generative AI is driving serious changes in work. Help me, and the rest of the world, understand them, if you can. <\/p>\n

So, if you:<\/p>\n

-Have lost a job because management said they\u2019re switching to AI
-Seen your clients dry up and suspect or know they use AI-generated output instead
-Have been pushed to use AI systems at work to speed up your productivity
-Have been pushed to use AI at work to speed up productivity after layoffs in your department
-Were forced to use AI as a requirement of your job
-Have seen AI change the day-to-day makeup of your job
-Are concerned that the AI you\u2019re using will result in someone else\u2019s termination
-Worry that AI tools are increasing surveillance in your workplace
-Have any other stories about the use of AI at all<\/p>\n

Please do get in touch, and share your story at AIKilledMyJob@pm.me<\/a>. I will assume that any submissions are 100% confidential, and are not to be viewed by anyone besides myself and the researcher, unless the messages explicitly and clearly state otherwise, or until I reach out and receive permission to share them.<\/p>\n

Thank you, and I look forward to reading your stories, learning from them, and, when desired, sharing them with a world being overrun by AI. <\/p>\n

As always, thank you to readers of this newsletter, and to the subscribers who chip in their hard-earned cash to support it. If you\u2019d like to support this work, and projects like this one, every paid supporter goes a long way, and I\u2019m thankful to each of you. Thanks, and more soon. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The response to my recent story, \u201cThe AI jobs crisis is here, now\u201d, has been pretty overwhelming. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[64,63,99,180],"class_list":["post-179211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jobs","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-jobs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}