Will AI Take Our Jobs? Experts Disagree — and the Stakes Are High

Artificial intelligence — the technology behind tools like ChatGPT — is growing fast, and many Americans are worried about what it means for their jobs. This year, U.S. companies listed AI as the number-one reason for layoffs. Tech leaders recently met with President Trump in Washington to talk about where AI is heading and what it could mean for the future of work. The big question on everyone's mind: Will AI replace human workers, or will it just change the way we do our jobs?

One company right in the middle of this change is Mercor, based in San Francisco. Mercor hires more than 100,000 freelance workers — real humans — to teach AI systems how to think and respond better. A year ago, the company had about 20 employees. Today, it has 400, and it is now worth billions of dollars.

The CEO of Mercor is Brendan Foody, who is just 23 years old. He and his two high school friends started the company after ChatGPT launched four years ago. They saw that AI needed more information than what was already on the internet to keep getting smarter — so they built a business around providing that knowledge.

Mercor connects AI companies with experts in many fields. If a company wants its AI to get better at medicine, music, or law, Mercor finds professionals in those areas to help train it. Workers like Shawna Miller, a winemaker; Robbie Hiser, a music producer; and Dr. Melania Poonacha, a doctor, all train AI on the side while keeping their regular jobs.

When asked if they are training AI to replace themselves, all three said no. Music producer Robbie Hiser explained that great songwriting needs real human experience. He believes that deep personal emotion is something a machine simply cannot copy.

Foody thinks AI will actually make life better for everyone. He imagines a future where AI helps scientists cure cancer and fight climate change. He also believes workers will be freed from boring, repetitive tasks, making them more productive and valuable.

Not everyone shares that cheerful view. Clara Shih used to lead major AI projects at big tech companies like Salesforce and Meta. She became so worried about AI's impact on workers that she quit her high-paying job and started a nonprofit to help young people prepare for the changes ahead.

Shih says AI is especially hurting younger, entry-level workers. Tasks that companies once gave to new employees — like doing research or writing first drafts — are now being handled by AI. She warns that job loss is about more than money — it also hurts people's sense of self-worth and breaks apart communities.

In Columbus, Ohio, trial lawyer Kim Herlihy works at a law firm that has been around since 1909. Her firm built an AI tool trained on the thinking styles of its senior lawyers, so she can ask her AI 'double' to review and give feedback on her courtroom speeches. But she is clear that AI will never walk into a courtroom and speak to a jury.

One of the most respected voices on this topic is Daron Acemoglu, a Nobel Prize-winning professor at MIT who studies how technology affects workers. He says the number of AI training jobs will be far too small to replace all the jobs lost to automation. He warns that we could see unemployment triple in the next decade if we do nothing to change our current path.

Acemoglu says we are living through something the world has never seen before — an industrial revolution happening across many fields all at once, in just one or two years. He does not say we should stop AI, but he believes we need to act wisely and quickly. The choices we make now, he says, will determine what kind of future workers — and all of us — will face.