How worried are you about job security?

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wildflower12345678@reddit

Not at all. My job is a very manual, hands on type of thing. I can't see ai replacing what I do for quite some time, not till I retire anyway which is only a few years away.

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lerpo@reddit

Personally? Not much. But that's because I work in AI. That's the selfish answer.

The less selfish answer is, as someone who works in AI - terrified for the next generation. And I come accross people daily who argue "well I used chat gpt a year ago and it couldn't do x so ai is never going to replace my job.

And honestly the average person does seem to have this opinion. And that scares me the most. Partly because AI is the worst it will ever be, but also the speed in which it's improving and genuinely replacing a lot of man hours at this stage, let alone in 5 years time. The average person has no idea what's about to happen imo.

My advice to anyone is learn a practical skill like plumbing etc. Just have a side hussel where possible that you can scrape by in the worst case event. Also doubles as a money saver for your own home.

We are in that "middle section" where ai will replace jobs, and we won't have enough "new jobs created" for a while I believe.

And once true AI (agi) hits, that's when I believe we are majorly fucked.

Middle managers are going to vanish so quickly.

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TheBeaverKing@reddit

Your point about the average person's lack of awareness on how fast AI is moving, and even it's current capability, is something that also regularly surprises me.

Most of my friends group has no real understanding of what you can do with current LLMs outside of asking it questions. Even my wife, who is an accountant, hasn't really paid it much attention. At least she didn't, until I showed her Claude building me a fully functional Inventory spreadsheet, all formatted and pulling data from 8 other Excel docs, in about 3 minutes. Half her job is pulling info from various sources and getting it into a usable summary.

As you can tell from the above, I'm not even a strong user of AI, average at best, and even I can see the writing on the wall for a lot of data processing and reporting roles. We're going to see a lot of roles disappear in the near future and a lot of people just aren't aware.

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Content-Activity-874@reddit

Sure but she still has to cross reference every detail and make sure the correct data was pulled and transferred. It’s not that much less work in this case

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lerpo@reddit

Yeah similar experience with a friend of mine. His wife is a translator.

I'd argue she should really be training up in something else because her job is clearly going to be wiped out pretty quickly. She argues it will probably not happen in her early lifetime.

A discussion I had a couple of years ago went something like "I tried to get chat gpt to do this and it didn't work. Ai is rubbish it won't ever be useful".

Like I honestly don't understand that mindset. "it was rubbish for me specifically so I'll discount it ever getting better and it being used in other roles".

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BambiTheInsane@reddit

How do we make Ai accountable for errors? People are held accountable, not robots.

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lerpo@reddit

Good question, but I think it's slightly misframed.

We don't "hold tools accountable," we hold people and organisations accountable for how they use them. If a spreadsheet has an error, we don't blame Excel, we blame the person or company that relied on it without proper checks.

Al will follow the same model. Accountability sits with

the business deploying it
the developers building it
the governance around how it's used

In practice, that means audit trails, human-in-the-loop systems, validation layers, and clear responsibility for outcomes. Those frameworks are already being built because companies can't legally or financially operate without them.

Question should be "how do we design systems where humans remain accountable for Al decisions?"

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Such-Competition6393@reddit

AI just isnt what people think it is. The issue with AI is that it was positioned as a whole of everything solution, rather than a closed door solution. Will it work closed door? Probably. But its inability to think critically will always hold it back. It regurgitates what it reads, and so is quite easily manipulated. Even within closed door it would take very little for a bad actor to cause significant issues to a business and entirely kill its margin.

Plus youre putting your trust in an asset held by the USA and it would only take a single bad actor there to ensure an almost entire economic collapse in a country they deemed to be unfriendly.

So, any business throwing their weight behind AI should seriously consider its applications and true usefulness.

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lerpo@reddit

Your reply here kind of proves a lot of my points. You're wrong about a fair few things there which maybe we're true 2 years ago. But not anymore.

I think “will always hold it back” is the bit I struggle with. And this isn't a dig... but because it assumes AI is static. It’s improving at a pace most people underestimate. What looks like a limitation today often just becomes a solved problem less than a year later.

Also, I’m not really “putting trust in a US-held asset” ... You can run local models, self-host, fine-tune on private data, the control layer is already there and getting better fast.

I think the bigger disconnect is viewing AI purely as “ChatGPT.” That’s just one interface. When you start looking at agent-based systems, tool use, retrieval, automation pipelines etc, it’s already far beyond “regurgitating text.”

In a lot of workflows it’s not about thinking like a human, it’s about outperforming humans in narrow, repeatable tasks at scale.

But yes, you’re right that businesses should be careful with how they apply it, especially around security and misuse. But the idea that its current limitations are permanent is where I’d strongly disagree.

That’s exactly the assumption people made 12–24 months ago, and it’s already outdated.

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loaferuk123@reddit

I think that’s right.

I do think the new jobs will get created, but it will be tough whilst that adjustment happens.

There is an argument that AI, robotics and renewable energy will act as deflationary influences, so there may be some respite from that.

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ForestRiver2@reddit

I have redundancy hovering over my head all the time. Worrying won't change it, but I'm working on an action plan if it happens

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Evolutionary_u-turn@reddit

I can hear the clock ticking every day. COVID hurt the business quite a bit, but there's deeper issues. Our business model is dependent on customers buying our almost bespoke product. We make each customer order to their specifications, as agreed with the commercial sales team, each one taking roughly 6-9 months to complete. We hardly build "stock" because the cost implications are too high. There's a few times we do, but it's based on market intelligence and the product is close to what would be ordered.

Our biggest challenge is now coming from two fronts, our own government and the Chinese manufacturers. The Chinese build 100s of the same thing all roughly the same, but at a quarter of the cost of the UK (gov'mt funded) and will supply to the UK in only as long as it takes the boat to get here, so about 6 to 9 weeks. Add to that, our own governments (UK and Scot) are subsidising the customers to buy our class of product but not controlling where the spend goes, so about 70% and rising goes overseas.

As a result, our company has shrunk by quite a lot, we lost one entire manufacturing site in around 2020 and are about to lose another this year. That's 600 or so direct losses plus the knock on to each areas wider businesses from the loss of demand.

I am in a privileged position that my function sits outside manufacturing so the support we give is necessary to existing as well as future customers, but I am very aware we are on shaky ground.

As an indication, in 2019 our company had a 70-ish percent share of the UK market, our only other real competitors from the UK had about 12, the rest scattered across European builders. Suddenly in '25 we have less than 40% and china accounts for 35% and rising. If this continues, our business will collapse in the next 3-4 years, maximum.

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AromaticCream1987@reddit

Ai can't take minimum wage warehouse jobs away so I couldn't give a shit. My company are opening more stores across the country so I'm safer than I've ever been

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snowmanseeker@reddit

Quite worried for me, I am probably one of the most at risk of my whole office if we got through major cost cutting. But I also got diagnosed with MS recently and so my health may take work from me anyway. Very worried for husband, recent redundancies and restructuring at his place.

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DevilishlyHandsome63@reddit

More concerned than I was 12 months ago, but still hopeful my job will last until retirement, 4 years or so away. We're still very much paper based believe it or not, so it would take some time to move over,if we ever do at all.

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Embarrassed-Site1253@reddit

I'm more worried now because 1.) My age - not getting younger! and 2.) the overall state of the job market and 3.) my industry segment. For me these three things make it a real concern if my job were to come to an end as I think it would be challenging to re-enter the labour market at my current salary level.

As a sort of aside in my career to date I've never seen quite so many people being made redundant at one time as I have now. It's hard to see and I think it's tough if you are in a middle position, in the middle of your career. I mean also tough for people starting out too, but in my experience there are far more entry-level roles around.

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KatVanWall@reddit

Self employed so yes, always

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Dartzap@reddit

I'm in an industry that's unlikely to be killed off by AI for atleast a while, but have already seen its presence in my work place.

We used to have a couple of admin, but as they gradually left, none were hired to replace them due AI tools reducing time needed on tasks to a minimum .

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BambiTheInsane@reddit

I mean, yeah it sucks. I don't think I feel that pressure. I'm a film trailer editor for several film distributors and its not like my clients are going to stop releasing movies anytime soon.

Understood though, the UK is struggling to maintain its relevance in todays world.

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ukrifter@reddit

I’ve been in my job 20 years and each year told that my org was making redundancies. It’s no worse now than any other time. I feel that almost every sector will be impacted by AI, not really sustainable, who will be paying the AI companies. We are 100 years away from some utopian vision of a society of frolicking in meadows while intelligent robots do the work. The first industry that is getting decimated by AI is law. I think laws will change as a result.

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gixxer-kid@reddit

Very worried, IT, professional services so very dependant on other companies spending money.

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poo_on_my_scarf@reddit

I run my own business in a growing field. I'm not concerned. Can always pivot if need be

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Gro022@reddit

Poo scarf

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HMSWarspite03@reddit

I'm very lucky in that my mortgage is paid off, I'm working an easy job until retirement, but i do feel sorry for the younger generations, so many redundancies and cut backs.

The government need to promote jobs and help employers to take on more staff, especially the smaller businesses.

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Zr0w3n00@reddit

I do a job that can’t be replaced by AI, at least for the foreseeable future, in a company that is growing. So I’m secure. Although it is barely above minimum wage, so I’m more worried about being able to get promoted or find alternative employment that pays more.

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Puzzleheaded_Turn887@reddit

It is a worry, but you can’t sit around worrying about what could be. I say this as someone who was recently made redundant after a long service at my previous job and about to start a new job soon. It’s scary I agree. There’s jobs out there, but you can’t be as picky imo… compromises required especially on pay!

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peekachou@reddit

Im ambulance crew, we're pretty low down on the list to get cut during a recession and recent lay offs they went for management first then offered redundancy to those that wanted it, theres definitely enough people above me that would take it before they have to actually start cutting people unwillingly.