Will AI take your job?
- Diana Gramada
- Nov 30, 2025
- 6 min read
Short answer: maybe.
Long answer: It depends on whether you plan to adapt or plan to sit there hoping the world magically slows down for you.
I understand that you might be frustrated. I've seen the posts on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, everywhere you look, people are mad and complaining about AI more and more. Artists posting about how AI stole their style, writers saying AI took their clients, designers watching their jobs get posted at half the salary with "AI skills required" tacked on at the end.
The anger is real, the fear is real, and honestly it's completely justified, but you have a choice. You can stay mad and watch it happen anyway, or you can adapt and I will say this until you get the point.
I'm a graphic designer and video editor who uses AI every single day, Midjourney, Kling, Veo3, Highsfield, ChatGPT, the whole toolkit and I'm going to tell you something that applies whether you're in Rotterdam, São Paulo, Shanghai, Mumbai, or anywhere else on this planet: yes, AI is absolutely coming for jobs.
The numbers
As of November 2025, at least 182,963 people have lost their jobs at tech companies globally this year. In the United States alone, 118,099 workers at tech companies have been laid off in mass job cuts so far in 2025.
The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 reveals that 40% of employers worldwide intend to reduce their workforce in the next five years due to AI automation. The Inter-American Development Bank found that 980 million jobs worldwide face high disruption risk in the next year.
Research published in the Journal of Asian Economics in 2025 shows that 54% of jobs in China could be substituted by AI in the following decades, while 90% of Chinese organizations see AI and robotics as key technologies to transform their business. China job postings for college graduates fell 22% in the first half of 2025 alone, reflecting the immediate impact of AI adoption. This isn't some distant future scenario, this is what's happening right now while people are still debating whether AI is even a real threat.
What's actually disappearing right now
Customer service is getting obliterated. 80% of customer service roles are being automated by 2025, and companies are seeing 40-50% reductions in staffing needs because AI chatbots work 24/7, never get tired, and save businesses $8 billion annually. If your job is answering "Where's my order?" you're competing with that.
Finance and banking are transforming fast. 70% of basic banking operations are being automated, with 200,000 Wall Street jobs expected to be cut over the next few years. Loan processing automation is jumping from 35% to 60% this year alone because AI can read thousands of financial reports in minutes.
Manufacturing was always the first target. 2 million manufacturing jobs are forecasted to be lost by 2026, with assembly line employment dropping from 2.1 million to just 1.0 million by 2030. The U.S. alone lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs in the past year.
Retail is way past self-checkout. 65% of cashier roles are being automated.
Healthcare support staff are getting automated. Medical transcription is 99% automated already, and 40% of medical coding is being automated by 2025. Doctors aren't being replaced, but the people doing paperwork and transcription? AI's got that covered.
HR, legal support, and admin work are all following the same pattern. AI can process over 1,000 documents per hour with almost zero errors compared to humans at 2-5% error rates.
Content writing and media too. 50% of digital marketing writer jobs are projected to decline by 2030, and 81.6% of digital marketers already fear being replaced. If you're writing generic blog posts or product descriptions, AI does it faster and cheaper in any language.
The question isn't "Will this happen to my industry?"
The question is "Am I learning the tools before my company decides they don't need as many of me?"
What I would do if I was you
I’m not worshipping AI like it’s some new religion. I’m not here to romance the future or pretend I “just love technology.” I use AI because I like paying my bills. Fine, maybe sometimes I am a little obsessed with it, but only in the way you obsess over something that actually helps you survive.
I don’t use these tools because they’re trendy. I use them because they keep me relevant, fast and impossible to ignore in a world that’s changing whether I participate or not.
Ok, the first step is learning AI tools in your industry now, not next year, not when life “settles down,” not after your next crisis rotation. I use AI daily through Midjourney, Veo3, Kling, HeyGen, ChatGPT, and many more. Job ads mentioning AI have jumped by more than 400 percent in just two years. That means knowing AI tools is no longer a cute bonus skill.
Whatever field you’re in, choose two or three AI tools that make sense for you and commit to them. Customer service teams can start with chatbot platforms. Finance workers can use AI for analytics and fraud detection. Healthcare professionals can learn diagnostic and admin automation systems. Marketing people can work with ChatGPT, Jasper or similar tools. Designers should explore Midjourney, Runway and Adobe Firefly. HR can learn AI-powered recruitment screening. Thirty minutes a day is enough to become noticeably faster than the people around you.
Learning tools isn’t enough. You also need to focus on what AI still fails miserably at. It struggles with strategic thinking because strategy requires judgment and foresight, not just output. It fails at emotional intelligence because no matter how convincing a chatbot sounds, it cannot read a room or sense a real emotional shift. It collapses in messy situations where politics, complexity and subtle human cues matter and it has no sense of taste or creative intuition. It can flood you with options, but someone with a human brain still has to choose what actually works. These are the skills that protect you, so invest in them instead of trying to compete with a machine on the things it’s already better at.
One of the smartest moves you can make is becoming the AI person at your workplace before someone else claims that spot. Be the coworker who is curious, who experiments, who tests tools and quietly becomes the go-to person when someone asks, “Can AI help with this?” Because in two or three years every company will have an AI transformation team, and the people chosen for those teams will be the ones who started learning early instead of waiting until it became mandatory.
Take advantage of the reskilling programs available right now. In 2025 alone, more than fifty-eight million people worldwide completed at least one AI course or certification. IBM’s SkillsBuild trained more than a million learners in AI fundamentals. Bootcamps grew massively as career switchers rushed in. Even the average cost of upskilling dropped because so many open-access platforms started competing. Also understand which jobs AI can’t actually replace, at least not with the technology we have.
And finally, accept the timeline. Companies are making decisions right now, not in five years when you finally “get around” to learning AI. The window for gaining an advantage is already narrowing.
The job market isn’t looking at feelings, intentions or “but I’ve been doing this for years.” It’s looking at output, and AI is making everyone reconsider what “fast” even means. That’s why I keep learning the tools. I’d rather be the person adapting than the person explaining why they’re suddenly struggling to keep up. And honestly, the people who will make it through this change aren’t the ones who act fearless or pretend they saw it coming. It’s the ones who stay alert, keep learning and treat AI like a tool instead of a threat or a trend.
I don’t feel scared, but I’m not exactly relaxed either, and honestly that middle zone is probably the most realistic place for anyone to be right now. AI is like a new coworker you didn’t ask for but can’t get rid of, so you may as well learn how to work with them before they start outperforming you without blinking.
AND before you close the tab pretending everything is fine: remember that AI is already rewriting emails, editing videos, designing logos, and probably stalking your job description as we speak. So learn the tools, stay curious and try not to let a robot outwork you while you’re scrolling memes.
See you in the next post. If AI doesn’t publish it before I do.
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