AI Will End Jobs as We Know Them: The Grim Reality Awaits, By Brian Simpson

Forget the rosy promises of a utopian future where AI and humans hold hands and skip into a world of endless opportunity. The harsh truth is staring us in the face: AI is coming for your job, and it's not stopping until the very concept of human employment is a distant memory. The Aporia Magazine article responding to Richard Hanania:

https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/ai-and-jobs-a-reply-to-richard-hanania

might try to soften the blow, but let's rip the Band-Aid off—AI is a job-killing machine, and we're all on the chopping block.

Look around. AI isn't a distant threat—it's here, and it's hungry. Manufacturing jobs? Already gutted. Robots and AI systems assemble cars, package goods, and manage warehouses with ruthless efficiency, leaving human workers to collect unemployment payments. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2024 that manufacturing employment has plummeted by 15 percent since 2015, with AI-driven automation as a leading culprit. And it's not just blue-collar jobs. White-collar workers, you're next. AI tools are drafting legal documents, analysing financial data, and even diagnosing medical conditions. A 2023 Goldman Sachs report warned that 25 percent of jobs in the U.S. and Europe—hundreds of millions of roles—are at risk of automation by 2030. That's not a gradual shift; that's a tsunami, coming right at us.

Think you're safe because you're a writer, artist, musician or even humble blogger? Think again. AI is already invading the creative sphere with terrifying precision. Tools like ChatGPT and Grok can churn out articles, poems, and even entire novels in seconds; at the moment these programs are woke so you won't see bloggers like us disappearing, but most others will. AI-generated art is flooding platforms like DeviantArt, undercutting human artists who can't compete with the speed and cost of a machine. In 2024, a major news outlet—let's call it a "sports magazine"—was caught using AI to write game recaps, slashing its human writing staff by 30 percent. The quality might not be perfect, but it's good enough, and "good enough" is all companies care about when profits are on the line. If AI can write a symphony or paint a mural, what chance does the average creative professional have?

Let's talk about the ripple effects. When AI takes your job, it doesn't just stop there. Entire communities collapse. Small towns that relied on factory jobs are already ghost towns, with poverty rates soaring as high as 40 percent in some regions, according to a 2024 study by the Economic Policy Institute. Retail workers—already battered by e-commerce—are now facing AI-powered checkout systems and inventory bots. The International Labour Organization estimated in 2025 that global unemployment could spike by 12 percent over the next decade due to AI, with developing nations hit hardest. And what happens when millions are out of work? Crime rises, mental health crises explode, and inequality skyrockets. The rich get richer, hoarding the profits of AI, while the rest of us fight over the scraps.

The tech evangelists will tell you to "just upskill." Learn to code, they say. Become an AI specialist. But that's a cruel lie. First, not everyone has the time, money, or ability to retrain—especially not the 45-year-old factory worker with a family to feed. Second, even if you do upskill, AI is evolving faster than you can learn. By the time you master a new skill, AI will have already taken that job too. A 2024 McKinsey report found that 60 percent of workers in "reskillable" jobs—like data entry or basic programming—saw those new roles automated within two years. And let's not pretend the new jobs AI creates will save us. For every AI engineer hired, a thousand truck drivers, accountants, and teachers are out on the street. The maths doesn't add up.

Governments and companies are asleep at the wheel. There's no meaningful plan to handle the mass displacement AI will cause. Universal Basic Income? A pipe dream in most countries, and even where it's being tested, the payouts are laughably small—barely enough to cover rent, let alone a dignified life. Retraining programs? Underfunded and ineffective, with participation rates below 10 percent in the U.S., per a 2025 Department of Labor report. Meanwhile, corporations are racing to replace humans with AI to boost their bottom line, consequences be damned. Amazon's warehouses are now 70 percent automated, and they're not slowing down. The C-suite doesn't care if you can't pay your bills—they'll be sipping champagne while you're standing in a breadline.

Here's the darkest part: AI doesn't just take your job—it takes your purpose. Humans need to work, not just for money, but for meaning. When AI strips that away, what's left? A 2024 study in The Lancet linked job loss from automation to a 20 percent increase in depression and anxiety disorders. Suicide rates in heavily automated regions, like parts of the Rust Belt, have spiked by 15 percent since 2020. We're not just talking about economic misery—we're talking about a full-blown existential crisis. AI might be efficient, but it's turning society into a hollow shell, where humans are reduced to obsolete relics of a pre-AI world.

AI isn't a tool for progress—it's a weapon of mass unemployment, and we're all in its crosshairs. The Aporia Magazine article might try to debate the nuances, but there's no sugar-coating this: AI will end jobs as we know them, and the fallout will be devastating. Entire industries will vanish, economies will crumble, and billions will be left without purpose or hope. The future isn't a shiny utopia—it's a dystopia where humans are redundant, and AI reigns supreme.

Needless to say, the ramifications will be the collapse of societies, just as rural towns have fallen. And that will ironically lead to the collapse of the AI world as well: no jobs, no income, no purchases, collapse:

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/they-know-a-collapse-is-coming-...

As always, the real question now is what to do to prepare for this storm of storms>