AI and the Future of Work

In April 2025, AI researchers Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, and Romeo Dean published a highly controversial yet influential report called “AI 2027.”¹ In it, they provide a vivid narrative interpretation of what a prospective timeline for the development of superintelligent AI would look like, featuring bioweapon deals between the US and China and the eradication of world poverty. Readers can even decide how the story ends by choosing between the “slowdown” or “race” endings. According to the fast track scenario, it ends with humanity being wiped out by AI (and sooner rather than later). 

But before this happens, “Agent-5”—the report’s superintelligent AI created by a fictitious tech company called OpenBrain—becomes the world’s best employee. Capable of working 100 times faster than the average human, Agent-5 speaks through avatars and starts running the US Government. Protests over job losses pick up pace, and humans are pushed out of factories and offices. But because the new superintelligent AI is creating massive economic growth, with GDP soaring and tax revenues increasing at an unprecedented rate, the government can actually provide unemployed workers with a generous universal income. Over time, humans resign to the fact that they are obsolete, with only a few workers remaining in a handful of industries. 

While some have praised the report for its impressive forecasting and extensive research,² others, like leading AI critic Gary Marcus, claim it’s too far-fetched and dystopian.³ Arguments aside, the picture painted by the authors in AI 2027 illustrates the anxieties many humans currently experience around AI and the future of work. In workplaces across the globe, colleagues jokingly remark how “AI could easily do this job” or “ChatGPT is amazing, it’s going to kick me out of the office.” But in a world increasingly driven by AI, what really is the future of work? 

Regardless of whether the AI 2027 project is closer to fiction than fact, AI is set to dramatically transform the future of employment, altering job roles, required skills, and the essence of work itself. While automation may replace certain jobs, AI is also anticipated to generate new opportunities and enhance human abilities. For employees to succeed in an AI-driven landscape, upskilling and reskilling will be essential to adapt to these shifts. Some have argued that AI will bring about a revolution among white-collar workers akin to that which was witnessed from the introduction of the assembly line in blue-collar work.¹⁷