After OpenAI's generative artificial intelligence model ChatGPT debuted in 2022, speculation about which jobs would soon vanish became a major social concern. The at-risk occupations included not only translators and counselors but also professionals such as lawyers, tax accountants and certified public accountants. With AI readily answering questions and producing expert documents, the sense of crisis was inevitable.
Until last year, whenever fears of job losses flared, people could take solace in the refrain that "it is humans, not AI, who ask the questions." The logic was that AI was merely a chatbot — a conversational counterpart responding to human queries. Companies rushed to roll out chatbot services, but none gained significant traction.
Then, within a matter of months, the game changed again as AI chatbots evolved into reasoning agents. AI no longer just answers questions. Given a task, it poses its own questions, makes judgments and handles work it was never explicitly told to do. It serves as a tireless assistant 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. With the emergence of open-source code, the technology has advanced to a point where anyone can build an AI assistant using freely available code.
Reasoning is a series of question-and-answer processes. When given a task, AI asks and answers its own questions to produce results. Humans simply accept the output or request refinements. Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer of Palantir, which provided key technology during the strikes on Iran, described that conflict as "the first AI-led war." Once an AI is given a strike target, it runs its own simulations and identifies the optimal method of attack. The commander only needs to decide whether to press the final launch button.
The pattern of Big Tech layoffs has shifted since the advent of reasoning AI. Oracle joined the wave of layoffs last week, cutting thousands of workers to secure astronomical capital investment funds. A look at the 539 positions Oracle plans to eliminate next month at its Kansas City, Missouri facility reveals 85 software developers, 43 systems analysts, 39 program managers, 35 sales representatives and 24 consultants. White-collar job losses are nothing new, but this time a significant number of core personnel are included. As coding novices can now write code through agents, even developers find themselves in a precarious position.
Blue-collar workers, once thought safe from white-collar job crises, can no longer be confident about their future either. At the headquarters of Applied Intuition, which I visited last week, various autonomous construction equipment was showcased as a solution to aging populations and construction labor shortages. A company official emphasized that a single remote operator can control dozens of machines, eliminating the risk of losing $40 billion projects due to labor shortages and the need for grueling 12-hour shifts deep inside mines. The landscape of Korean construction sites, where recruiting foreign workers is in full swing, may change soon.
Debating whether AI can replace humans is a meaningless argument. As years of Big Tech layoffs demonstrate, AI is already taking jobs. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, often called the emperor of AI, has said "AI will create more jobs," while also noting that "some jobs will emerge and some will disappear" — signaling industry-wide restructuring. In the past, laid-off workers could return when the economy improved, but in the AI era, only those who have adapted to AI will be able to come back.
Amid the frenzy to develop reasoning agents, major Big Tech companies are pouring investments totaling approximately 1,000 trillion won this year alone. How many of the departed employees will be rehired remains unclear. But one thing is certain: only those who can skillfully wield AI will return. Even elite Go players, known for their pride, are now learning from AI and finding ways to survive in the AI era. Handwriting speed cannot beat computer typing, and Lee Se-dol could not read every move of AlphaGo. Anyone who approaches AI as an adversary is destined to lose. Only those who know how to use AI can coexist and work alongside it.
