The jobs apocalypse

Long term vs. short term

While recent discussions — including articles such as “The jobs apocalypse: a (very) short history” by The Economist Group — warn about the possibility of large-scale unemployment caused by AI, we hold a slightly different long-term view.

AI will certainly disrupt labour markets. Some repetitive, procedural, and highly standardized tasks will become heavily automated. Certain job categories may shrink significantly, especially where workflows can be fully digitized and optimized by AI systems.

However, history consistently shows that major technological shifts do not simply eliminate work — they transform it.

The industrial revolution reduced demand for many forms of manual labour while creating entirely new industries. The internet automated many administrative functions while generating millions of new roles in software, digital commerce, cybersecurity, logistics, cloud infrastructure, content creation, and mobile technology.

We believe AI will follow a similar pattern, though at a much faster pace.

In the near term, many organizations may experience workforce disruption as AI improves productivity and reduces the need for certain operational tasks. But over the longer term, we expect the global economy to create substantial new demand for:

AI Engineers
AI Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs)
AI Infrastructure Specialists
AI Workflow Designers
Human-AI Operations Managers
AI Governance and Compliance Experts
AI Security Specialists
AI Trainers, Evaluators, and Data Engineers
Industry-specific AI integration experts

One important trend already emerging in Silicon Valley is the rise of the AI Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) — engineers embedded directly within client organizations to customize and operationalize AI systems for real business environments.

At ABN Asia, we believe this reflects a broader reality: successful AI adoption is not simply about deploying a model. It requires deep integration into workflows, processes, compliance structures, operational culture, and human decision-making systems.

This creates significant demand for technical professionals who can bridge engineering, operations, and business execution.

We also believe many companies will increasingly prefer vendor-neutral AI strategies rather than becoming overly dependent on a single AI provider. As a result, organizations will need internal AI engineering capabilities and trusted implementation partners who can help them maintain long-term flexibility and technological optionality.

The future labour market may therefore look very different from today — but not necessarily smaller.

The more likely outcome is a large-scale restructuring of work:

fewer purely repetitive jobs,
far more AI-assisted roles,
and entirely new professions that do not yet fully exist today.

Rather than a permanent “jobs apocalypse,” we see AI as the beginning of a new industrial and cognitive transformation era — one that will reward adaptability, technical literacy, systems thinking, and the ability to work effectively alongside intelligent machines.

Organizations preparing early for this transition will likely gain major long-term advantages.

Author

Ai Base Network (ABN), ABN ASIA was founded by people with deep roots in academia, with work experience in the US, Holland, Hungary, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam. ABN Asia is where academia and technology meet opportunity. With our cutting-edge solutions and competent software development services, we're helping businesses level up and take on the global scene. Our commitment: Faster. Better. More reliable. In most cases: Cheaper as well.

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