One of the things that continues to deeply bother me is all the noise surrounding AI lately.

Instead of using this unprecedented wave of innovation to expand the limits of what humanity is capable of, we’re watching a disturbing trend: executives, investors, and employers are obsessively chasing the most short-sighted and counterproductive goal imaginable — replacing humans with AI.

This isn’t just misguided. It’s dangerous.

Instead of leveraging AI to increase revenue, enhance customer experience, unlock new features, or revive ideas that were once too expensive to implement — and instead of employees using AI to offload toil and repetitive nonsense so they can focus on what makes them valuable — everyone’s racing toward automation as if it’s the Holy Grail.

Let’s break down why this line of thinking is not only flawed, but potentially catastrophic.

1. Are We There Yet? (The AGI Delusion)

First off, let’s address the elephant in the room: AGI. Are we truly at the stage where AI can replace humans across the board? Will we get there soon?

I won’t repeat myself here — I’ve tackled this in a previous piece: Why is AI today both a bubble and a treasure?

The short version: the hype is far ahead of the actual capabilities.

2. The Economic Backfire (Short-Term Wins, Long-Term Collapse)

Let’s assume for a moment that AI is "good enough" to replace 10% of the global workforce. Great. Costs are down. Margins are up. Executives cheer. Stock prices spike. Looks like a win.

But that win? It's incredibly short-lived.

Because when you remove 10% of the workforce, you also eliminate 10% of consumer purchasing power — across every market. The impact starts hitting the sectors that aren’t essential: entertainment, fashion, luxury goods. These industries begin bleeding revenue and start laying off more people in response.

Then the second wave hits: slightly more essential but still vulnerable sectors — private transportation, insurance, etc.

Eventually, the ripple effect reaches the very core of the economy — agriculture, food production, healthcare. These systems require a functioning economy to remain viable. Once consumer demand collapses, so does the infrastructure.

At this point, we’re not just talking about a recession. We're talking total economic annihilation. Not 2008. Not post-COVID. Much, much worse.

And those same executives who once celebrated short-term gains? They’ll be left holding the bag when revenue crashes, stock prices plummet, and the very companies they "optimized" start crumbling from the inside out.

3. The Quality Spiral (Garbage In, Garbage Out)

Current AI systems are trained on human outputs — the accumulated expertise, creativity, and insight of millions of people. That’s why they appear smart right now.

But what happens when you replace those humans?

You’re left with AI systems training on the output of... other AI systems. The quality degrades. The ceiling drops. The creativity and nuance disappear. You end up with the same classic trap: garbage in, garbage out — just at planetary scale.

The irony is that the very thing that makes AI valuable today — human data — disappears the moment you push humans out of the system.

4. The Missing Link: Education, Not Elimination

If we’re serious about evolving alongside AI, there’s one crucial element we absolutely cannot ignore: education and reskilling.

Right now, most organizations are treating AI like it’s a plug-and-play replacement. But AI is not a substitute for human potential — it’s a multiplier. And like any multiplier, the result depends entirely on what you feed it.

If we redirect just a fraction of the energy spent on replacing roles into upskilling the workforce, we’d not only keep people employed — we’d unlock entirely new industries, workflows, and business models. People wouldn’t be left behind; they’d be pulled forward.

Imagine if every frontline worker had access to AI tools tailored to their domain. Imagine if coders could ship 10x faster. Designers could iterate in real-time. Marketers could test and optimize with precision. Customer support agents could focus on empathy while AI handles the logistics. Farmers, teachers, nurses — all empowered, not replaced.

We don’t need fewer people. We need more capable people with smarter tools.

The future we want isn’t automated. It’s augmented. And that future starts by treating education and human growth as the core infrastructure of the AI era.

What We Should Be Doing: Grow the Damn Pie

Here’s the thing: AI has the potential to bring positive change for everyone. But that only happens if we stop obsessing over cost-cutting and focus on growing the economy.

Let me be blunt: you don’t build a better future by shrinking your way into it.

Instead of saving 5% on a small pie, let’s invest in making that pie a gigantic cake — one that supports more industries, more innovation, and more opportunity than we ever thought possible.

A Real-World Example: True Personalization

Let me bring this down to something tangible: personalization.

Today, we throw that word around constantly, but let’s be honest — most "personalized" products are a joke. A "personalized" iPhone? Please. At best, you get to sort your icons differently or change your wallpaper.

But a truly personalized iPhone — one tailored completely to your usage, taste, habits, colors, interaction preferences — that would mean if someone else picked up your phone, they’d barely know how to use it.

So why hasn’t Apple built that?

Simple: before 2020, the engineering cost to pull that off would’ve been massive — maybe 7–10x their current dev team. The ROI just didn’t make sense.

But with AI, we finally have the tools to reimagine what personalization could mean — and do it at scale.

The Bigger Picture: A Choice Between Scarcity and Expansion

Think of it this way:

You own a 1,000-square-meter piece of farmland. You’ve got a team of farmers helping you harvest it. Then the Industrial Revolution hits.

Now you have two options:

1. Fire your workers and pocket some short-term savings
2. Use machines to scale to 10,000 square meters, move your team to higher-value work like packaging, processing, and logistics, and open up entirely new revenue streams you couldn’t access before

That’s the kind of thinking we need right now.

In Conclusion: The Choice Is Ours

We are standing at a fork in the road.

One path leads to a slow erosion of human value, economic collapse, and ultimately, AI systems cannibalizing themselves into irrelevance.

The other path leads to a new kind of prosperity — one where humans and AI don’t compete, but collaborate to build systems, products, and experiences that were impossible just a few years ago.

So the question is simple:

Do we want to replace… or evolve?