With the massive layoffs in big tech companies in 2025, many have been quick to blame AI.
Recently, I spoke on a panel about agentic AI for fraud detection, addressing more than 1,200 anti-money laundering professionals. A few attendees asked nervously, “Will AI replace our jobs?”
When I think about the answer to that question, I come back to what I call the “Golden Gate lesson.” About 10 years ago, my little daughter and I stopped our car at a toll collector on the Golden Gate Bridge. She looked at the booth and asked, “Daddy, is that a good job?” To her, it seemed powerful—every car had to stop and pay.
But almost overnight, the tollbooths vanished. All-electronic tolling quietly replaced full-time positions. Automation eliminated multiple permanent jobs on the Golden Gate Bridge and across the U.S. No headline announced “the end of toll takers.” Society simply moved on.
That’s how I believe agentic AI is transforming today’s labor market—not with drama, but through a silent shift in who creates value and how. These autonomous systems plan, execute and optimize multistep workflows with minimal human intervention. And unlike traditional generative AI, they now target cognitive roles, such as analysts, bankers, compliance officers, coders, marketers and even paralegals.
Passing The Turing Test—And No One Celebrated
In April 2025, Futurism reported that OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 model outperformed humans in a Turing-Test-style challenge, convincing judges it was human 73% of the time. Twenty years ago, when I was pursuing my Ph.D. in machine learning—and the Turing Test was still the holy grail of AI research—such a milestone would have dominated global headlines. Instead, I noticed that much of the world barely reacted. Many people were already collaborating with AI systems every day. There was no dramatic “AI takeover moment.” The shift happened quietly, gradually and irreversibly.
The Red Queen Reality
In Through the Looking-Glass, Alice runs beside the Red Queen but finds the scenery unchanged. The Queen explains: “It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”
In 2025, this is a metaphor for the economy.
The Data Behind The Shift
Younger workers have been hit hard as AI tools replaced entry-level tasks. A Stanford Digital Economy Lab study analyzing millions of payroll records found that employment among early-career workers (ages 22 to 25) in AI-exposed occupations—like software development and customer service—fell 13% after the adoption of generative AI. In software engineering alone, early-career employment has dropped nearly 20% since 2022.
A San Francisco Standard article, citing SignalFire research, noted that new-graduate hiring at the 15 largest tech firms has declined by more than 50% since 2019, as companies are adopting AI and seeking more experienced workers.
Meanwhile, a World Economic Forum report (download required) found that 40% of employers expect to reduce headcount “where AI can automate tasks.” Yet, that same report anticipates a net gain of 78 million new roles by 2030. Disruption and creation are happening simultaneously.
It’s Not AI That Replaces You—It’s Your Peer Who Uses It
During the panel session I mentioned above, I shared a truth that resonated deeply: The biggest risk to your job isn’t AI itself—it’s a colleague who masters AI before you do. The competition is no longer between humans and machines. I believe it’s between humans augmented by machines and those who aren’t. As an AI company building tools to fight fraud, we have already witnessed the impact of how cryptocurrency investigators could see productivity gains in the anti-money-laundering workflow, and I’m sure the same is true for other verticals.
Strategies To Stay Indispensable
To help not only their businesses but also their employees stay ahead in this age of AI, there are a number of steps leaders can take.
1. Build agentic AI and generative AI literacy. Ensure you—and your team—understand how AI agents orchestrate decisions, trigger actions, escalate anomalies and remain compliant, not just how to prompt a chatbot.
2. Encourage employees to deepen their uniquely human skills. Contextual judgment, ethical reasoning, stakeholder communication and strategic alignment remain beyond automation.
3. Become a force multiplier. Educate your team on how they can use AI agents to increase accuracy, speed and insight density. This can help your company outperform peers through augmentation, not resistance.
4. Commit to continuous reinvention. In a Red Queen world, standing still equals decline. Adaptation is survival for leaders, employees and the business at large.
The New Definition Of Work
Agentic AI isn’t eliminating human intelligence—it’s reassigning its purpose. Just as Excel transformed financial analysts from number-crunchers into strategic storytellers, these systems will elevate—or eliminate—those who fail to adapt.
Jobs may not vanish overnight, but responsibilities will evolve faster than many expect. Some professionals will cling to outdated roles until automation overtakes them. Others will lead hybrid teams of humans and AI agents.
In the age of AI, the winners will be those who evolve before the disruption arrives.