For centuries, work has defined us. It has given us identity, purpose, and status in society. But what happens when work, our source of income, itself begins to disappear? Not because of war, depression, or outsourcing, but because of algorithms. What does it mean to work in an AI-driven economy? I spent this month of July interviewing several experts from diverse corners of the labor landscape. Through these conversations, a complex and often contradictory picture emerges, one filled with both promise and peril, efficiency and exploitation, displacement and dignity.
The View from the Top: Efficiency, Experience
From the C-suite, the AI revolution is viewed with a mixture of excitement and urgency. Elijah Clark, a consultant who advises companies on AI implementation, is blunt about the bottom line. “CEOs are extremely excited about the opportunities that AI brings,” he says. “As a CEO myself, I can tell you, I’m extremely excited about it. I’ve laid off employees myself because of AI. AI doesn’t go on strike. It doesn’t ask for a pay raise. These things that you don’t have to deal with as a CEO.”
This unvarnished perspective reveals a fundamental truth about the corporate embrace of AI: it is, at its core, a quest for efficiency and profitability. And in this quest, human labor is often seen as a liability, an obstacle to be overcome. Clark recalls firing 27 out of 30 student workers in a sales enablement team he was leading. “We can get done in less than a day, less than an hour, what they were taking a week to produce,” he explains. “In the area of efficiency, it made more sense to get rid of people.”
Peter Miscovich, JLL’s Global Future of Work Leader, sees AI as an “accelerant of a trend that was underway for the last 40, 50 years.” He describes a “decoupling” of headcount from real estate and revenue, a trend that is now being supercharged by AI. “Today, 20% of the Fortune 500 in 2025 has less headcount than they had in 2015,” he notes.
But Miscovich also paints a picture of a future where the physical workplace is not obsolete but transformed. He envisions “experiential workplaces” that are “highly amenitized” and “highly desirable,” like a “boutique hotel.” In these “Lego-ized” offices, with their movable walls and plug-and-play technology, the goal is to create a “magnet” for talent. “You can whip the children, or you can give the children candy,” he says. “And, you know, people respond better to the candy than to the whipping.”
Yet, even in this vision of a more pleasant workplace, the specter of displacement looms large. Miscovich acknowledges that companies are planning for a future where headcount could be “reduced by 40%.” And Clark is even more direct. “A lot of CEOs are saying that, knowing that they’re going to come up in the next six months to a year and start laying people off,” he says. “They’re looking for ways to save money at every single company that exists.”
The Hidden Human Cost: “It’s a New Era in Forced Labor”
While executives and consultants talk of efficiency and experience, a very different story is being told by those on the front lines of the AI economy. Adrienne Williams, a former Amazon delivery driver and warehouse worker, offers a starkly different perspective. “It’s a new era in like forced labor,” she says. “It’s not slavery, because slavery is different. You can’t move around, but it is forced labor.”
Williams, a research fellow at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) that focuses on examining the social and ethical impact of AI, is referring to the invisible work that we all do to train AI systems every time we use our phones, browse social media, or shop online. “You’re already training AI,” she explains. “And so as they’re taking jobs away, if we just had the ability to understand who was taking our data, how it was being used and the revenue it was making, we should have some sovereignty over that.”
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