For some reason, we as humans love an epic “Good Vs. Evil” story.
We love to see that there are two opposing sides, with no complicated gray area. We want to be able to know with all our hearts who the hero is, who the villain is, and who we want to cheer for (hopefully, the hero). We see this in books, in movies, in comics.
It’s hardwired into our mythos and religions–perhaps those beliefs are why we are so drawn to this. For whatever reason, it just makes sense to us.
And the worse part of all? There are very few examples in our daily lives where we get to really enjoy a truly good vs. evil situation. The gray area messes it up. Our heroes are flawed, our villains are more sympathetic that we are comfortable with. Sometimes, after we’ve chosen a side, there may come a time when we have to ask if we are actually the bad guys.
What does this have to do with AI? Well, everything. We are at an inflection point in the evolution of AI, and we will look back on this point and come to appreciate its significance in history.
You see, there is one underlying theme that is crucial for every single good vs. evil story, whether the sides are crystal clear or completely gray: Choice.
Our choices contribute to the end result of any story. The hero’s choices help determine if they win the day. Sometimes it’s not a single giant choice, but rather a series of choices that add up. And this is where we are with AI.
Yes, AI Is Taking Jobs
A news report in 2023 quoted a key AI industry leader, Dr. Ben Goertzel, as he estimated that “Artificial intelligence could potentially replace 80% of jobs in the next few years.” What has happened in the last 2-3 years?
A growing number of jobs have been replaced with AI. At that time, ChatGPT was not the general intelligence behemoth it has become today. Office streamlining tools were still trying to sort out the details, but a lot has happened in a short amount of time. We’ve learned a few key lessons.
First, AI is everywhere. While it was still a bit of a buzzword even in 2023, it has now become a daily part of life, with few restrictions on tech savviness, age, or any other barriers to advanced technology. Second, not all AI is created equal. There is a lot of garbage AI out there, and that could give a false sense of comfort that AI still has a long way to go. This is because, third, AI has become incredibly capable in many areas.
What’s the result of this? 2025 saw that companies directly cited AI in cutting 55,000 jobs. This isn’t anywhere near 80% of jobs, but it’s also 12 times the number compared to 2023. The trend is there, and AI continues to shock with its growing capabilities. In just the last few years it has passed the Bar Exam, it has helped write countless papers, it has befriended a concerning number of lonely people looking for a friend, and more. And 55K jobs are those that were directly attributed, from companies willing to admit it. This doesn’t count the jobs that have been indirectly affected by AI, which are likely much higher.
"I expect 2026 to bring AI contributions to longstanding unsolved problems, possibly including progress on challenges like the Clay Millennium Prize problems."
— SingularityNET (@SingularityNET) February 2, 2026
CEO Dr. @bengoertzel shares 9 predictions for AI in 2026: https://t.co/eYy0nigLQu pic.twitter.com/7aTYJWKnBK
Can We Make This A Good Thing?
First, a quick fact. While AI is taking more and more jobs, this rate might just be too aggressive as one study shows that over 50% of companies have some regrets in implementing AI over people. Is this because of their basic humanity? Hardly. It’s more because the AI has been overhyped, and companies trying to cut costs without really thinking it through are now scrambling with lower productivity, more bugs, and are even having to hire back those employees they let go.
Keep in mind, this is more a product of companies jumping at AI too early than it is AI not being capable of replacing many jobs.
The fact is, for a large number of jobs, if AI hasn’t replaced them, it means that it hasn’t replaced them yet. It will get there. But it does give a moment for us to pause and think about what’s happening. We are trying to replace processes that humans do with processes, and limited decision making that AI could do. Goertzel’s 2023 estimate was largely focused on paperwork-based jobs.
In other words, if you as a human take paperwork (data), move it around in different ways, look for outliers or patterns, find trends and their root causes, then suggest ways to resolve the issues found from that data… then you are just a few AI algorithms away from being replaceable. So how do we make THAT situation a good thing?
Let’s go back to the “good vs. evil” discussion. Believe it or not, we are at a point in this AI evolution where we are about to start accelerating at a dizzying pace toward “Artificial General Intelligence”, or AGI.
This is AI that is generally intelligent in the way that humans are: it can understand and learn many different things instead of being specialized, and we start to break the boundaries of autonomous thought and the idea of being self aware. We aren’t there yet, but LLM’s like ChatGPT provide an interesting preview as they try to imitate this behavior. We as humans have a choice at this moment of how we want to evolve AI, and how we should affect humans as a whole.
Those companies regretting layoffs for AI are seeing some of those key differences in automating processes rather than having decades of experience from a human, the ability to be creative in analysis and problem solving, and for those jobs that require complex mental/physical dexterity. We have the choice to see how we can, instead of replacing humans, pair them with AI to enhance their ability to do their job amazingly well. We are seeing more and more of this attitude, and if it continues then AI will turn from being a villain to human jobs, and instead become a crucial ally.
The Missing Piece
One question remains, however: who will control this AI as it evolves? There is an interesting series of debates and discussions that have dominated the AI philosophy over 2025, launched by Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) Alliance.
The series is called “The Ten Reckonings of AGI”, and it struggles to find answers on whether AI’s power will be consolidated to a few tech giants who will gain unprecedented global authority, or whether AI will achieve a decentralized state where independent AI tools will be able to work together across the world, have countless people involved in creating and managing small pieces of the ecosystem, and solve problems raised by the collective vs. the classically evil monolith corporation.
Dr. Ben Goertzel, who warned about the loss of jobs, is CEO of SingularityNET, which ironically is building the ecosystem necessary for the more optimistic and hopeful future. The other key voice in the series, James Barrat, takes a more pessimistic view of humanity’s ability to control something so powerful. While we hope for the positive outcome, we shouldn’t ignore the warnings of what we have to lose. And most importantly, we have to remember that we have a choice in which future we want to see.
