Artificial intelligence tech continues to be hyped up and invested in, and many people are worried that they might be replaced at work. However, things aren’t as clear-cut.
There’s a paradox at play here. According to a recent MIT Media Lab report, 95% of organizations see no return on investment in AI technologies. Meanwhile, the Harvard Business Review warns about the rise of ‘workslop.’ There are also recent rumblings of a possible AI bubble. And yet, some employees are already being directly, negatively impacted by this tech.
In an illuminating AskReddit thread started by u/_thecatspajamas_, working professionals opened up about the jobs and clients they lost due to AI. Scroll down to read their brutally honest stories and to see how some sectors of the job market are already affected.
#1
I was a literary editor for one of the largest sci-fi presses in the world. My boss, the executive editor, retired and the company reassessed their practices. So after spending fifteen years working for the greater good of sci-fi, I got outsourced to a robot.
To be fair, I guess I probably should have seen that coming, given the genre. Just never thought it’d surpass human reading/analysis THAT fast.
hollymbk:
It hasn’t surpassed human reading and analysis. Your company is just soulless and greedy. Another very common sci fi theme, to be fair!
Image source: Apocalypse_Wow, diignat / Envato
#2
Graphic designer here. I haven’t been fully replaced yet, but the landscape has completely changed. Clients now expect me to use AI as a ‘co-pilot’ — generating initial concepts, mood boards, and even rough copy in minutes, not hours. The job is becoming less about executing the first idea and more about curating, refining, and adding the crucial human touch (and catching AI’s weird mistakes).
It feels less like I lost my job and more like my job description was rewritten overnight. The pressure to constantly adapt is the real challenge.
addiekinz:
As a fellow graphic designer. Yeah, it’s frustrating. My team and I spent a few days working on a branding, getting as far as moodboards and logo concepts. Then our boss AI-generated a (very crappy) moodboard + logo, and presented it to the client then shoved it in our faces like “haha see should’ve used AI from the start, the client loved it”. I was livid, to say the least.
Image source: silver86racher, Getty Images
#3
I used to be a data scientist (with 13 yoe). My boss wanted me to solve a problem which involved clustering sensor data by location. Because errors in latitude and longitude tend to be random, we’ll have elliptical clouds of points, so I said we should use k-means. My boss picked up his laptop, turned it around, and said: “But Copilot says that we should use DBSCAN”. I researched DBSCAN and found that it would be very slow and do the wrong thing in a worse way. My boss did not agree. I was laid off a few weeks later, along with the rest of the data team. My boss was laid off two months after that. Now the company has an open position for an “AI Scientist” in India.
Confident_Pepper1023:
This bet on “AI” originating from the US-based companies is so weird to me. It seems to be so detrimental, yet most of the leadership seems to be so committed, it feels almost like a cult. As somewhat of a bystander, it feels like China’s bet on electrification and exports of technology related to sustainable energy seems so much better, and yet, US folks seem to be doubling down on their initial stance.
Image source: Utkonos91, ultramansk / Envato
#4
Voice actor here. While I still get the bigger commercials and jobs, I’ve lost a lot of the smaller jobs. For example, storyboarding. Ad agencies will create a digital storyboard detailing what the ad will look like, they hire a voice artist to do a preliminary voice over (you’d earn like 150-200 for the hour), it’s all AI now.
I’ve worked on campaigns where all of the voice artists refused to sign their contact because there’s a new clause in it – if they sign it, they’re signing the rights of their voice over to AI, so this client can use their voice without them ever having to record anything else again. They all refused, the client just recast all of them.
Major-Goose-6320:
What I don’t understand is how people can prefer AI VAs over actual artists. Take a look at any video with AI slop voice over and regardless of the content that’s what the comments will be about.
lu5ty:
My dad watches the newsreels with ai voiceovers all the time. Tbh i dont think he even knows its ao, and if he does he doesnt care. I imagine there are A LOT of people like this.
Image source: angry2320, GroundPicture / Envato
#5
Not me, but one of my close friends worked at a call center that was specifically for the hard of hearing/disabled. The people who have the phones that have screens that write out/speak the text. Her job was to basically subtitle each call that came in. She would type out the conversation as it was happening for the disabled person. As you can imagine, they were all laid off and replaced by AI. I’ve heard it’s already caused legal issues and people suing for the AI telling them incorrect info (like from doctors or medical related conversations.).
hisosih:
I’m not surprised at all. I worked in customer service, part of my job was to oversee the chat bot that users would speak to before they got through to an actual agent. The AI would consistently get information incorrect (I dealt with licenses, so there’s legal implications if someone is provided with incorrect information from us). Since I was laid off, I’ve seen an uptick of YouTube videos about how the company is a scam and fallen into other dark patterns (pop ups, autorenewals etc) to extort more money from their elderly users, with no real way for them to get assistance with a refund, so the amount of CC disputes has risen exponentially – and keep in mind the company has to pay for every dispute, whether they win or lose.
I’ve already seen they’re regretting it and are now outsourcing cheaper labour from abroad and taking advantage of foreign workers, but f**k, they torpedoed any good will their brand may have gotten.
Image source: ScarletSpell, Getty Images
#6
I worked for a newspaper as an editor. I was basically a glorified spell checker. They automated my job for less than $1,000 a year.
Now, I bartend and drive school busses to make ends meet.
lyan-cat:
That sucks. Good editors are worth their weight in gold. Nothing “glorified spell checker” about it. We’re losing a skill because the people who make that decision don’t understand the value a person adds.
Image source: thinkdeep, Lelia_Milaya / Envato
#7
My brother lost his job to AI this month. He worked in QA and his company decided to sack 500 non-client facing jobs to replace them with AI without any warning. I honestly hope that the AI blows up in their face.
War20X:
In QA? The one area you REALLY can’t trust a hallucinating AI to do the correct thing, all the time. Paycom is going to hurt for this one. Maybe not today, or tomorrow…but we shall see in the news something weird come out down the road. I know it doesn’t matter now because it affects your brother at this moment, sorry to him. The greed of the leadership in the company will just ruin everyone.
Image source: True_Dovakin, Arlington Research
#8
I’m an epidemiologist working for a local health department in a team building disease surveillance capacity. Basically, my team makes data cleaning and visualizations automated so we can spend time interpreting the output and detect outbreaks and patterns earlier. We all have masters or PhDs in epidemiology/biostatistics. We are being pushed out in the middle of respiratory season at the end of the year so the IT team can make oversimplified graphs that are not useful and use AI for the rest.
It’s absolutely horrifying that our community’s health is in the hands of untrained IT and AI.
j2thebees:
My wife is a nurse working in Hospice/Quality/Training. She just quit a position due to multiple idiotic things. But the lead guy hired “an AI company” that was building an AI tool to do chart audits. They get $25K/month, and only want 10 questions at a time, with the relevant answers.
My son and I are programmers, and anything that can be put into a flow chart can be a program easy enough. Problem is 10 questions won’t get them through the first form (maybe the technicals on one form) and it’s not that unusual for a chart to be well over 100 pages/screens.
Can it be done? Yes. Will the flow chart look like mapping every move of a chess game? 😂 No, but it’s tens of thousands of variables. 🤦♂️
Tech companies are so invested in this hype machine, they have to push it off on end users. It’s so ubiquitous that it’s hard to know what to boycott.
Image source: berkosaurus, maksymiv / Envato
#9
This just happened yesterday so new wounds. They had us train a chat bot so we made the resources to feed it. The chat bot was supposed to help us with the load. Chat bot now gets to carry the whole load. Entire support team got laid off.
arittenberry:
Damn, that sucks for everyone. As a customer, I won’t use companies that only have chat bot for support. I’m pretty good at problem solving most issues that come up, so for the instances I need to reach out to support, it’s pretty nuanced/complex, which chat bots CAN NOT handle.
Image source: fartinaround, NanciSantos
#10
My uncle does voice acting. A lot of his work came from audiobooks but that’s drying up lately and being replaced by AI voice.
almost_not_terrible:
Advice: become an “AI Voice Director”. Seriously. Because you can hear the uncanny valley, you can do the valuable “kerning” job, adding stresses, refining pronunciation etc.
Your experience is valuable, and you can now play a variety of sexes, ages etc.
You are now 100 voice actors, and can charge 120% of your previous rate, but for 100x the number of roles.
Image source: mathazar, Getty Images
#11
Was making 3D models for 20 years, but since AI became a thing, most people just skip the 3D stage altogether and just generate the final image or video instead. AI is still trash at 3D modeling, but it’s great at generating the final product, making the models themselves unnecessary.
Working retail now.
lurkjiggler:
Put your skills on Upwork, Fiverr, and other such platforms. You’ll be competing with obvious fake profiles but real talent does get work and rewarded freelancing there and clients like me, once we find you, are very jaded by the fakes and latch on to real people when we find them. If nothing more it can be a good side hustle. There is plenty of use for 3d models.
Image source: rmpumper, seventyfourimages / Envato
#12
I didn’t yet lose my job to ai but I feel I am falling behind as most people are actively using ai in their creative careers which I don’t because you need to buy credits to do anything, I don’t wanna be chained, but yeah it’s hard to match the level or work of people that use AI.
ledow:
Wait until the true cost of AI hits.
OpenAI is hundreds of billions of dollars in the hole and one day their investors are going to want to claw that back, with interest, and profit on top.
They’ve even said themselves that NOT ONE SINGLE TIER of service is profitable for them. They’re just haemorraghing money in order to try to be a loss leader.
When the costs of those tokens/credits start to reflect reality… there are so many companies/people that are going to have a really serious shock once they realise they’ve lumped all their products / services into relying on it, have been offering it for free to all their customers and sacked the staff who used to do that.
Image source: Best-Code-6923, Brooke Cagle / Unsplash
#13
I lost mine to automation – that I’d written myself. Someone once told me “If you’re a programmer and your job is repetitive, that means you’re bad at programming”, because you should have automated the repetitive stuff.
Most of my job was pretty repetitive, so I automated it. That worked fine for over a decade, until I made the awful mistake of writing some documentation for the automation. I lost my job the same month.
ubstantialBass9524:
I’ve automated a lot of the boring parts of my job but luckily there are parts that are impossible (ever changing) to automate (they would cost far too much and then you’d have to pay far too much to pay a specialized programmer to maintain it with the changes)
Anyway our developer always has people who fight against automating parts of their job because they don’t want to get fired (I know at least 1 who 100% would get fired) and he says he has no idea why they are worried look how easy it’s made my job. Mhm yeah no clue why they don’t want you touching their stuff.
Image source: Porrick, Mohammad Rahmani
#14
I was a full time visual artist. The commissions dried up when people started using ChatGPT to make all their images, flyers, posters, etc.
DannyDirewolf:
I was in 2D animation for 7 years. Some of my co workers lost their jobs a few years ago, then I lost my job a year and a half ago and now my supervisors are losing their jobs. All because of AI. I’ve moved on to traditional art.
Image source: Swimming_Abalone_518, Getty Images
#15
Companies tell you it’s “AI” but its just an excuse to cut staff.
StumpedTrump:
Excuse to cut staff… and re-hire the positions in India / Africa.
Everyone in the western world in tech has been talking about how “no one’s hiring” the last 2 years. That’s true, my company hasn’t hired anyone local in almost 2 years. We’re hiring like crazy in India though…
Epcoatl:
Kind of funny with so many companies claiming that remote work is bad.
Image source: Cheeky_Star, Getty Images
#16
Keep in mind, most people will not directly lose their job to AI. Companies will just hire fewer people and expect the current people to get more done.
Like when computers and productivity software got popular, secretaries didn’t lose their jobs. Companies just stopped hiring secretaries.
enricowereld:
All jobs are (indirectly) affected.
I’ve seen people say “oh well I’m a chef and that will take much longer to automate.”
Everyone who’s been laid off by AI will want these few remaining jobs now, so your competition is increasing exponentially. The odds of you becoming a chef, or retaining your chef job, will lower drastically, even if the job itself remains manual labor for a while longer.
Image source: jedberg, Ahmet Kurt
#17
I’ll let you know within the year. My leadership team started developing it and expecting half or more of us to be eliminated.
Image source: YoungManYoda90, LYCS Architecture
#18
Partners company just did a large round of layoffs due to restructuring for AI.
All those jobs are still done by people but the company has to justify their huge AI bill by cutting their workforce.
Image source: uSer_gnomes, Getty Images
#19
They just started introducing more Ai things to “save us time so we can focus on the important stuff”, and they swore they weren’t trying to replace people they just wanted to help us at work. Then they eliminated positions one by one. Once they had eliminated 2 jobs and moved the responsibility to my role (so the work of 3 positions) they started laying off those people. Bye.
Ok-Jackfruit-6873:
Exactly what my company is saying now. “Nobody is losing their jobs! This technology is going to allow you to do more with less!” But clearly, they’re not planning on backfilling any positions that come open, particularly in comms, and they’re going to load up every remaining person with the work of three … oh and no raises, we’re saving up to afford better AI …
Image source: w11f1ow3r, Getty Images
#20
I worked for a company where the CEO decided we had to become an “AI-first” company. (The problem space was definitely not “AI-first”.
We “had” to all start using AI in everything, and then one day they let go the entire QA department, the entire sales department, a big chunk of the software engineering group, and the post-sales group.
None of those groups had “AI” solutions built to take over. I’ve already seen customer complaints where bugs have gotten out into the wild, so good luck with that.
164cm:
The exact same thing happened in my company, CEO even publicly introduced that we’re going AI-first from now on and 250 people were fired in a single day.
I personally still kept my job, but quit now a month later as this was a cherry on top of horrible business decisions I wanted to do nothing with.
Image source: HiroProtagonist66, Getty Images
#21
I worked for a content creation marketplace, we matched up people who needed a lot of content written with people in a community if over 2000 writers. 20 million dollar company to almost 0 in 6 months.
Image source: better-off-ted, Evgeny Opanasenko
#22
I was a proofreader. Well, my company told us that AI can simply do the job faster.
random_thought121:
Proofreading’s one of those jobs where AI can do it fast, but not always right. Bet they’ll realize soon enough that human eyes catch way more subtle stuff than any bot ever could.
#23
I was let go during a mass layoff where they blamed shifting resources towards AI. Got 8 months severance and landed a new job in 6 months selling AI. lolz.
Image source: Numerous_Ad1813, Imkara Visual
#24
Copywriter here.
I was effectively replaced by AI over a 1-2 year period beginning in the first half of 2022.
I was earning a comfortable salary writing ad copy, web pages, pitch decks and more, and it all got scooped up by a single paid generative AI subscription (Gemini, I believe).
I tried freelancing after I was let go, but the commercial writing discipline had changed way too much.
I’m now going back to school.
…at 46.
Winky_the_houseelf:
32yo copywriter here… what are you switching to? I feel pretty bleak about my future in copy but nothing else I ever wanted to do other than writing.
OP:
Nursing!
Image source: Agnostix, Colin + Meg
#25
I worked for a major US based insurance carrier. I wasn’t actually fired, but they started pushing a lot of people out the door and I left before I could be next.
For the last few years, AI has been the big push. Being able to generate a policy without ever needing to speak to a human, and if you file a claim, being able to submit photos, get an estimate and payout instantaneously and with minimal human contact was the goal. So they started implementing fully automated systems, laying off the most tenured employees, and driving up the workload for everyone else.
In my department (the fraud department), they started using AI to scrape claim files, looking for fraud indicators to generate cases and then assign them out. It worked ok for some types of cases, but terribly for most others… but the company didn’t care, they laid off the entire intake team.
Company-wide, they reworked our metrics to be impossible to meet, then started routinely firing the bottom performers. Everyone (including me) saw the writing on the wall and started looking elsewhere.
I can’t speak for the rest of the company, but I suspect they are going to soon get hit with some massive lawsuits because AI and new employees make a lot of mistakes, and you can’t make mistakes on contractual things like this. Too bad they laid off most of the legal team and switched the entire HR department to AI. For my small department, they lost centuries worth of experience along with most of their employees, and they are getting hit really hard by fraud rings that they used to be industry leaders in combatting. Too bad everyone who knew how to deal with them was fired or driven away.
I won’t say who the company is but if your insurance company’s mascot is green and animated, you should know what your premiums are going to.
HotWing8916:
That is just sad. And I doubt the 15% or more savings on AI is going to translate to lower premiums for consumers. Ai the age of the grifters.
Image source: livious1, Coolcaesar
#26
I helped set up a data science algorithm for when to give out loans to a smaller bank and once I set it up they said we’ll have AI take it from here. They were using illegal fields as well to determine who got loans.
Image source: goodsam2, Getty Images
#27
My wife lost her career as a copywriter and editor. All her clients switched to AI, and they usually have a single human oversee it. Every time we see an obviously AI-written ad or training video, my wife bristles.
Image source: NotAnotherFriday, Simone Summ
#28
Detention Deputy here:
Idk how AI will replace me, but I can definitely see it being invested in and used as a tool in the corrections landscape.
Sad-Sail-3413:
AI surveillance and auto alarm/warning when prisoners act “out of range” maybe.
Image source: Terminal_Wumbo, t Penguin
#29
I worked in tech support for 16 years. After Covid I noticed it was getting harder and harder to find work in my field. Since 2021 I’ve applied at HUNDREDS of places and rarely ever get a call back, or even a courtesy email. I started to suspect AI recruiting tools were rejecting my resume for arbitrary reasons. It’s true that I had a couple jobs I only lasted a year at, but I don’t think that should completely invalidate me as an employee. I was making $135k 4 years ago working for a large tech company, and now I can’t even find full time work. I work part time in a mall and need to find a 2nd job if I’m going to survive. So I don’t think my position was replaced with AI agents, but I’m fully convinced AI tools are keeping me underemployed. I lost my house, my car, my mental health, and most of my possessions all because I don’t fit the 100% perfect criteria for a remote tech job I have lots of experience in.
i_suckatjavascript:
Start using AI to help you write your resume, it’ll help you find what’s missing and help you put the language on your resume better.
Image source: comineeyeaha, Getty Images
#30
I had a part-time job for a local private jet hire company. I was the sole person meticulously writing blog posts. It might sound redundant, but due to the age of people booking flights with us (boomers), they loved it.
One part of the editing process was fact-checking, think statistics on bookings per year, updates to safety advice, etc. A year passes with the blog growing month to month, yet they decided to get rid of me and write the posts with AI. Every single post had inaccuracies and promised more than what I remember we could deliver.
I checked the other day, and the company removed the blog entirely since nobody was reading it anymore. I wonder why.
Image source: No-Contribution4221, SASI
#31
Half my colleagues just got laid off because of AI.
(guess whose workload just doubled).
Image source: Shadowlady
#32
Darn if I am going through this right now. I am gonna be fully transparent here. To preface, I didn’t lose my job to just AI, but to outsourcing in tandem with AI that our C level execs thought could perform on par with US employees.
I work for a Microsoft vendor that provides global support for Azure cloud and 365. This covers a lot of support verticals, some are technical and some are not so technical.
I am a support engineer for Azure identity and access management. We provide break-fix, RCA, and advisory support on anything from from hybrid environment identity management (AD -> Entra ID), cloud only environments, enterprise provisioning, SCIM, SSO, RBAC, application access, onboarding/offboarding, lifecycle management, key vault, directory management and subscription concepts, etc. We have the broadest scope of Azure technical support.
You, as a SMB or enterprise organization, can pay for Azure support. The support plans vary from broad commercial to Unified (expensive and white glove, think fortune 500 companies). When you make a support request, likely the request goes to a vendor like myself. Sometimes you get a guy who can’t speak english and the support is awful or you get to an American team or sometimes they “escalate” to the better performing teams.
As a vendor, we have a contract with Microsoft to provide this support. There ARE internal Microsoft support engineers, but a smaller team working for typically the customers Microsoft deems the most important.
My team is compromised of American engineers. We consistently have had the highest metrics such as days to close complex issues, lowest rate of technical escalations, and the highest satisfaction ratings from our customers. Compared to teams from other countries, like Nigeria and India, where they take months to resolve issues we’d resolve in days, and have extremely low satisfaction reports. No shade but I have seen the work from these places and it is always playing hot potato and “we are inquiring internally” updates, putting work on other teams, no actual engineering or meaningful work.
My company definitely already underpays us, but the last two years HARD pushed us to use a Microsoft proprietary Copilot version to “assist” with our casework. This AI became a mandatory metric where we could get fired for not using it. This AI was and is almost always wrong with technical information and always wrong on key details when assessing complex issues. Essentially it was completely useless if you have any semblance of competency in your role.
So my company gets the go ahead from Microsoft to start us on the highest tier of paid support (Unified) this year after months of the AI push, which we crush as usual. And then they are renegotiating our contract, stringing us along saying we will make more as we are doing more work and working with more demanding and complex organizations.
Instead, once they get the contract, they lay off every single north American team, to outsource our jobs to an African country that will not be named, to pay these guys 400 usd a MONTH because they are betting they can perform near our level leveraging the AI we trained (it is still useless and actively sabotaging yourself to attempt to rely on it in any form).
Oh, and we didn’t even get severance. We are just expected to work as normal and keep “training” this AI until our last day at the end of the year. Its malding and insanity. My condolences if you pay for Microsoft Azure support (you shouldn’t). Feel free to ask me anything.
Image source: _Sweet_JP, LightFieldStudios
#33
I spent 15 or so years writing the content that goes on websites. I had a range of clients, from investment advisors to life coaches to nutrition coaches to people who sold lingerie for men. I had an advantage with some clients because of my engineering degree, so I wasn’t afraid of numbers or to dig deep on technical topics.
I rage quit my first job doing this (long story), worked in a warehouse for a year or so, then took another job writing websites. Same deal. I hadn’t been in that job for 10 months before our CEO (who inherited the company from his dad) “discovered” generative AI software. Suddenly they wanted the software to write everything and me to “edit” it.
I hated every second of it, and I guess it showed. Soon after, I was fired. The CEO was going to let the software write the website content so he could focus on his newest “baby,” a free-to-consumer print (yes, print) magazine. So I went back to my warehouse job, because jobs doing what I did were suddenly nonexistent. The print magazine my former CEO was so passionate about kept getting thinner. Then they started charging for it. I don’t know any more than that, but I do hope he is having a terrible time.
Image source: sirdigbykittencaesar, Vitaly Gariev
#34
I haven’t lost my job but finding one is *really hard* because it seems 1/4th of the advertised now require AI to a high level. Context: GPT was only released 3 years ago, and took off 2 years ago, so no-one has a lot of experience except those very few people who worked in Data & AI beforehand, which was a small subset of the tech community.
So whilst I’m no slouch, not having a track record of AI implementation success stories under my belt makes me look less attractive as a candidate.
Image source: gravity48, Image-Source / Envato
#35
Didn’t lose it to AI, but did lose it because of AI. I was an editor for a website that relied on affiliate links for revenue and once traffic dropped because of AI overviews, they were screwed. Seems a lot of publishers were in the same boat. The buyers tried to hire me back on a freelance basis but didn’t want to pay even half what I had been earning. Lol.
Now learning other skills like coding but seems like that might be a waste of time, too 😅. I have actually also been finding useful cases for AI and educating myself on it so hoping that will help. And applying for “communications” instead of editing because they’re related and those jobs actually still exist.
Image source: WonderfulHat8545, denismuse777
#36
Luckily it was just my side hustle, although a lucrative one. I used to be a notetaker for technical meetings, including some remote meetings. Then various programs rolled out AI transcription services. The results are not as good as what I was producing, and actually have critical errors not-infrequently (did you know can and can’t sound extremely similar when spoken in a room with poor acoustics???) – but I can’t really expect people to be willing to pay my rates when there’s something literally free that produces about 70% of the quality, and I wasn’t interested in doing it for lower rates, so there went that side hustle. Even in government agencies that couldn’t use the programs it still devalued the perception of my work and what someone would be willing to pay for it.
Image source: Ok-Jackfruit-6873, Adolfo Félix
#37
For all the endless talk about AI replacing people, I’d love to see some concrete examples of how much that has proven successful for the companies. Everyone seems to hate AI customer service and some places have already walked that back. I’ve seen stories of other businesses that fired all their copywriters etc only to have to hire people back to fix the slop.
In my personal experience it hasn’t fully replaced people, but it’s being forced down so many people’s throats and workflows, with the expectation that they should be able to produce much more work using the AI output, even though its still-constant mistakes invite a lot of risk across many industries and often add in more labor having to fact check/fix said mistakes.
Image source: burntpecan, Getty Images
#38
Aholes who had seen tiktoks saying that they could be rich beyond their wildest dreams with no effort bombarded my very favorite writing gig. It got to the point where they had to halt submissions because those AI tester things weren’t great- and they just wanted to figure out a fair way of doing things.
Image source: AstarteOfCaelius
#39
If I’m being honest, he was just better at basketball.
Image source: stexel
#40
Not lost yet.. but insurance. I feel like the only reason we have people on our team is so that people calling in aren’t talking to a robot. Other than that, claims, emails, appeals, medical record readings are all done by Ai. Boss says we need to focus on the important things which is living up to customer expectations.
So to have claims done by the day cause now everyone is advertising how quick claims can get done.
As time goes on our teams get smaller. Even replaced our whole training department for new comers.
Your voice is now analyzed and used for grading for your reviews. It’s also getting stored and sold as data.
It’s not a good thing guys. Patience is a good thing to have and tech has cut that short on a lot of people.
Image source: ListenHereLindah
#41
Software engineer here, saw the writing on the wall when gpt 3.5 first released and reconverted my skills and energy into learning everything i possibly could about this technology as fast as possible, left my senior swe position at a big company to work full time building agents at another big company, and now i’m very in demand and getting paid big bucks
I have adhd and it’s hell on earth in every day life, but sometimes it allows me to see patterns before everyone else and act ahead of time before s**t hits the fan.
Image source: Free-Internet1981
#42
I lost my job to outsourcing and “AI.” I was a Technical Artist, the person who takes/makes game assets, makes them compatible with a game engine, gets them into the game, and gets them looking right and set up for programmers/engineers. I have AI in quotes because I was let go on the CEOs assumption that I could be replaced with AI, not that it can actually do my job. Then my job was outsourced. I suspect a lot of people are being let go just based on the assumption that AI can replace them.
Image source: shugarshock
#43
I was hit with the 3 punch combo. Outsource to Romania. Automation. And yep, I’m the one who trained the Romanians and helped write the automation to “make our jobs a little less taxing”. Fired without notice after 11 years.
Have no loyalty to your company. They will drop you without hesitation to save a buck. You and your family aren’t human beings to them.
That being said, I was over worked and under paid. Since losing my job, I’ve now gotten two full time jobs I can work simultaneously, remote, and have over doubled my income in less than a month. Don’t get comfortable out there people!
Image source: DisturbedDeeply
#44
I was a copywriter. Fun stuff too- people who were making their own fantasy worlds for video games/ dnd games/ board games approached me to rewrite their rule system in a flavour text way.
It was good fun, and helped fund myself thru university. I dont remember what the pay was, but it was decent considering how annoying and time consuming it was to make game rules sound interesting!
Yeah, as soon as chat gpt launched, i lost most of my clients. Why pay me for 5hrs of work to do what a prompt will do for free, i guess.
Image source: Colla-Crochet
#45
I’m a graphic designer, what do you think happened?
Image source: Neon_Biscuit
#46
Nobody in this thread lost their job to AI. They lost their job to humans making terrible decisions. It’s important to remember that none of this is inevitable.
Image source: VulKhalec
#47
Lost my job as a copywriter/content writer. I’ve thankfully settled into a strategy role on how to use content to achieve things instead. That’s something AI hasn’t quite figured out yet.
I was replaced as they thought AI could come up with better content than I could. They asked me to use it, and admittedly, it helped a lot to brainstorm very basic ideas (after checking it hadn’t suggested plagiarised copy), refine them into something cool, and share that in kick-off meetings to build upon with the team of creatives.
But they read it as “AI is doing the work.” and so ditched me.
They hadn’t actually tested to see if it could work without me, and when it came to it, it fell flat. Since then, they’ve defaulted to the most generic, soulless tone of voice. Instead of introducing interesting, attention grabbing content, they just put the title of the product in instead and send it out. For a heritage company in business for 180+ years to not have a brand voice… ouch.
Fair enough. Money will always win, but I do laugh when all the companies that use AI see it as the second coming, yet also complain that their tone of voice and branding seems to have just fallen off a cliff in the previous years. They can’t seem to connect those dots. Or I suspect they don’t want to. Or, more likely, it doesn’t matter to them.
I’d say it’s a lesson about modern business leaders, and one that I don’t see enough people understanding. It’s no longer about having some respect for your product or customers, offering something of quality to the world, or offering staff a livelihood and career, nor is it about doing some kind of good in the time we’re here. It’s only about money.
My advice to those struggling to understand this… is stop trying so hard to prove your worth to these parasites.
Stop pushing to improve your output, just press the button on the robot.
Stop innovating, just press the button on the robot.
Stop trying to impress and showcase your ability, just press the button on the robot.
Keep your creativity for yourself. You’ll be paid or laid off either way.
Image source: Robot_Coffee_Pot
#48
System Specialist, lots of stuff got automated and our department was halved. Before that I lost all income from my translation/subtitling side gig.
Image source: Asmodeane
#49
Not really a job, but a past time. I liked trolling Reddit posts, but now with AI bots, I can’t get in there fast enough. All of the really good zings have already flooded the OP. All I can add is a lame thumbs up or tag a vote.
Image source: Many-Seat6716
#50
I’m a costume designer, and with increasing frequency production/director are “designing” the costumes in Midjourney with explicit instructions to reproduce them, effectively stealing the one part of my job I signed up for.
Still, I’m considered one of the “lucky” ones because I’m still working.
Image source: mildredvon
#51
Not directly me, but I’m a printer that also does graphics.
The amount of Posters and Flyers i’ve printed that were made with Ai is insane. All of them have mistakes too.
Clients also refuse my spell and print data check way more often to cut costs. Bet some poor folks got fired in those departments.
Luckily I started working in merchandise for musicians. All of our clients care about man made graphics on their shirt and hoodies.
Image source: AchtCocainAchtBier
#52
Worked payroll then got replace, now I work food service again and the existential angst about money and my career trajectory hits harder in my 30s than 20s. I’m so lucky to have my fiancé be so supportive at least. Been applying to payroll jobs ever since, gotten a few interviews but no satisfactory offers.
Image source: sanjuniperose
#53
This is fresh for me, I was laid off on 3rd October. I’m a social media manager. My company closed down the entire Brand department, including designers and copywriters.
They thought AI could produce all the social media content. Which it technically can, but the content is terrible. In September my content had reached over 3m people – the content they’ve posted in October has reached about 45k people so far and already generated some pretty negative feedback from the community.
Anyway they realised very quickly that AI can’t post that content, so they’ve taken me back as a freelancer 2 days per week to manage the channels without having to produce any of the written or visual content.
Very strange times.
Image source: throwRA-instagurl
#54
The company I worked for put all their money and resources to try to create their own AI chat bot and it failed miserably. Layoffs started shortly after Chat GPT was released. Survived 4 layoffs and then lost my job to outsourcing to cut overall costs. I wasn’t working on the AI, completely different department, it just bled through to everything.
Image source: honeyhye
#55
Late to the party, but here’s my story.
I was set to work on a children’s book for the school I worked for. I told them straight away I wouldn’t sign up if there was AI (they used AI art for their last children’s book and apparently the kids hated it). They laughed and told me it was all going to be from my imagination. So I wrote it and started to put together some clip art like they asked to make the book.
Then I had a lupus flare-up. I was out a whole week and when I came back they said the book was ready. However when I looked at it, yes, it was my writing, but all the clip art had been replaced with the ugliest AI art I had ever seen.
I faked ignorance and asked who illustrated it. Excitedly my boss showed me the AI tool she used. I cried all the way home and for the next few hours. I was already a fiction author and if this new book with AI art got onto Amazon like they planned, it was going to ruin my reputation as a very anti-AI author.
I texted and asked to have my name removed. One batch had already been sent out and it was too late, but they felt bad and decided to give me a pen name for the next few batches.
I parted ways soon after that.
Image source: CatGirlIsHere9999
#56
I was a writer who did commissions. Over six years I did over +300. From articles, to fanfics, to NSFW and novellas. It was my full time job. I loved it.
When AI started over a year ago I slowly started to have less and less jobs. Even though in Fiverr I had 5 star reviews and more than 56 client recommendations, it wasn’t my fault but rather AI.
So I stopped having commissions, and that was the end of it. I need to find another job, but now my priority is to enter college and focus on my own writing.
(Fron three works I have earned 11 USD in over 1 year and two months) while in only two years, I earned around 7600 USD (Which is quite a lot for my country) So it shows the disparity.
I feel bitterness, and yet I have a memory that I was once so well liked, and when I doubt my skills, I can see how much work I had and with frequent clients.
But is true what Beethoven said in the 1800’s: Nobles and generally people, do not care about art, about the artist. Is a commercial thing, something that they can hear at the background that they enjoy shallowsly without true recognition. They do not value art but they enjoy it.
This is the same problem, art too is devalued of any value and so doing “art” with AI that is free and looks “good” for them is enough and they do not care truly about depth or the artist who lives from it.
I will study literature and honestly, I am just doing it in hope of getting a position as a professor at the college and for the scholarships. But I do no thave much of prospect for the future in those terms.
I suppose that from the only thing I am good at is writing and teaching, so in a sense it is very painful.
Image source: Lastsynphony
#57
I’ve seen a lot of people talking about AI replacing jobs, but it seems like the real issue is companies using AI as an excuse to downsize. I mean, AI can be useful, but it’s not a magic solution that can replace human judgment and creativity in most cases.
Image source: Cute_Juggernaut5944
#58
Until they make robots that can work in a kitchen my job as a chef is safe. I give it ten years.
Image source: TheHasegawaEffect
#59
I was an SEO copywriter until I got laid off last week. The company demolished the entire content team and is forcing everyone to use copy.ai.
Image source: BonoboRainbowQueen
#60
I’m in the process of my industry dying out. Former journalist, current copywriter. AI has been chipping away at my work for the last 1.5 years. It’s terrible, I honeslty have no idea what to do next, where to find time to retrain, no idea what to do. I recently had a gig to write something creative from scratch and it was such a delight to do – I’m going to miss writing, I truly do love it.
Image source: stuckwitharmor
#61
Marketing copywriter here.
AI deleted the freelance writing market and decimated the bottom 50% of all corporate writing positions in a matter of days.
Applicant pools went from 40-60 per job to 3500-5500 per job in under a month. It was so dispiriting that LinkedIn changed its UI to accommodate (and obfuscate) the insane increase in applicants. Individual jobs don’t list applicant numbers anymore; they’re just labeled by popularity.
I have an inordinate number of accolades and degrees for my age; I’ve written a Super Bowl commercial and I’ve written for Joe Rogan, Post Malone, and others. I can’t find work.
I’m now an OF content creator.
Image source: bigmacwood
#62
I used to write the “i am not a robot” CAPTCHAs. irony is a cruel mistress.
Image source: Sea-Article-3147
#63
I’m an accountant, and, in the past six months, I’ve seen three staff reductions at my place of employment, all of which had some effect on our departmental staff. Each has amounted to about a 10% staff reduction.
January 8, 2026 is circled on my calendar, because that is the likely last day I can expect to still be employed. My job is rote, time-consuming, and ripe for AI. Within a few years, I can’t imagine there will even be 10% of the staff levels from 2023 and prior.
This is a whole new world we’re entering, and I don’t think we’re prepared for it. There should be massive, government-backed education programs set up to help people learn new skill and reenter the workforce. Instead, I really fear what is going to happen, even if (when?) the AI bubble pops.
I recently enrolled in a program at a local tech college to be a medical assistant while I’m waitlisted for the radiography program. I’m aware of the challenges, burnout, etc, but I need a job that can dependably be around for 25 more years.
Image source: Porkins_2
#64
A lot of people “losing their jobs to AI” are invisible.
A huge amount of money has been reallocated from labor towards capital acquisition to support AI servers. That’s why Silicon Valley is having massive tech worker layoffs. Not because AI is doing their job, but because companies are not doing any jobs anymore, just buying graphics cards.
Image source: Amadacius
#65
I didn’t lose my job to AI, but I sure as hell lost my dreams.
Image source: PositiveDraw1108
#66
This will probably get lost in the comments but I worked for a company that without saying thw name showed captions on the phone for deaf people. They basically had us train the Ai software that replaced us after telling us our jobs were safe. They obviously weren’t. That was years ago tho I moved on to a better job since.
Image source: SkitterChitters
#67
Many people are being put into positions where they are building and training the AI systems that will ultimately replace them. And they know it. And their bosses know it. And the bosses know it’s gonna replace them too. But what else are they all gonna do? There is nowhere else to go and if they say no they’ll just get fired and someone else will do it. Bills to pay. Families to take care of.
All this, and I can say honestly as someone close to AI development that is not ready to replace people. I’ll openly say that correct, responsible usage of AI in the right places can make people more effective, but the person is still the key. Even in things like coding.
But I still see it happening across industries. Fun times.
Image source: MrRabbit
#68
Up until March of this year, I was working for a 100,000+ biotech company. Big name, if you ever set foot in a lab, at least 30% of the products and up to 50% come from this company.
I left before the layoffs, but AI has replaced a significant amount of scientists working in tech support. Nearly all of my peers and myself have PhDs. Some have been away from bench work research for years spanning into decades. There is nowhere for these employees to go. They also sacked a ton of technical sales specialists too.
I knew the writing was on the wall when I started using ChatGPT for troubleshooting advice. By the time I got onto disability, it could analyze western blots and even flow cytometry data with ease and accuracy. If I were still at the bench, I would certainly use ChatGPT as a starting point before picking up the phone to call tech support.
When the first round of layoffs started happening, I considered myself “lucky” for becoming disabled by MS. Survivors guilt in the form of progressive neurodegeneration. I miss my brain and my body and grieve heavily for the current state of scientific affairs in this country. I read the biotech subreddit often. Scientists are resorting to gig work now to make ends meet. I never went into research with the intention of being wealthy, but it was certainly something that was assumed. Surely a PhD should protect you from financial hardship, especially if it comes from a reputable university. Many of us postdoc’d at medical schools too.
Image source: missprincesscarolyn
#69
Earlier this year my team got “access” to lots of AI tools. Lots of my teammates started touting all the benefits to leadership with the attitude that “AI won’t take our jobs, people who know how to use AI will take our jobs.” A few months later they did a huge layoff of almost every senior person in my position and now a small team of the most junior people are expected to “use AI” to manage all the work of like four or five teams, including some complex tools that I built that they have no understanding of. My team alone (who all got laid off) have been basically working at full capacity for the last two years.
Image source: Chaos_Sauce
#70
I was a professional captcha solver. turns out the robots got better at telling other robots they weren’t robots than i ever was. tough industry.
Image source: aka-world
#71
Therapy, one of the most human to human interaction necessary jobs is seeing AI creep in constantly.
Image source: VioletSolo
Follow Us