Artificial intelligence does not destroy jobs—CEOs do

Every major technological shift triggers the same fear: this time, jobs will disappear for good.

- RAVI VENKATESAN

We heard it with mechanization, computers, the internet—and now with artificial intelligence (AI). But history is clear. Technology itself does not determine outcomes. People with power do. Leadership does. Guns don't kill people; people do. AI doesn’t destroy jobs; CEOs do.

Right now, far too many leaders are using AI in the most crude and unimaginative way possible—as a chainsaw to cut costs, automate roles and discard people. Layoffs are announced as “efficiency gains.” Stock prices jump. Executives congratulate themselves for being “AI-first.”

And then the real costs begin to surface. Consider cases like Klarna, which publicly celebrated replacing thousands of customer service roles with AI, only to later acknowledge that customer experience had suffered and human support had to be rebuilt. This is becoming a familiar pattern: automate aggressively, hollow out capability and then, as problems surface, quietly reverse course. This is not strategic leadership. It is short-term cost engineering and opportunism masquerading as innovation. Used carelessly, AI will trigger two crises at once.

The first is within organizations. When employees see AI deployed primarily as a job-destruction tool, trust collapses. Fear replaces initiative. Creativity gives way to compliance. The very people companies will need most—adaptable, committed, high-judgment talent—either disengage or leave.