While AI's current impact on jobs is minimal, the *anticipation* of its future capabilities is creating a speculative drag on the labor market. Management teams, aware of hiring and firing costs, are becoming cautious about adding staff whose roles might be automated within 6-12 months.

Firms are attributing job cuts to AI, but this may be a performative narrative for the stock market rather than a reflection of current technological displacement. Experts are skeptical that AI is mature enough to be the primary driver of large-scale layoffs, suggesting it's more likely a convenient cover for post-pandemic rebalancing.

Unlike previous technologies like the internet or smartphones, which enjoyed years of positive perception before scrutiny, the AI industry immediately faced a PR crisis of its own making. Leaders' early and persistent "AI will kill everyone" narratives, often to attract capital, have framed the public conversation around fear from day one.

Despite marketing hype, current AI agents are not fully autonomous and cannot replace an entire human job. They excel at executing a sequence of defined tasks to achieve a specific goal, like research, but lack the complex reasoning for broader job functions. True job replacement is likely still years away.

For current AI valuations to be realized, AI must deliver unprecedented efficiency, likely causing mass job displacement. This would disrupt the consumer economy that supports these companies, creating a fundamental contradiction where the condition for success undermines the system itself.

A viral chart linking ChatGPT's launch to falling job openings is misleading. Job openings began declining months earlier, largely due to Fed interest rate hikes. This highlights how complex macroeconomic trends are often oversimplified in popular narratives that rush to assign blame to new technology.

Fears of AI-driven mass unemployment overlook basic capitalism. Any company that fires staff to boost margins will be out-competed by a rival that uses AI to empower its workforce for greater output and market share, ensuring AI augments jobs rather than eliminates them.

The AI debate is becoming polarized as influencers and politicians present subjective beliefs with high conviction, treating them as non-negotiable facts. This hinders balanced, logic-based conversations. It is crucial to distinguish testable beliefs from objective truths to foster productive dialogue about AI's future.

The real inflection point for widespread job displacement will be when businesses decide to hire an AI agent over a human for a full-time role. Current job losses are from human efficiency gains, not agent-based replacement, which is a critical distinction for future workforce planning.