AI Is Taking My Rice Bowl — and What We Should Prepare Anyway

Wherever you go these days it is AI. In restaurants, on the subway, outside a school. And the conversation always ends the same way, with a sigh: "So all human jobs will disappear, won't they." I have sighed too. But sighing repeatedly made me notice I was skipping the question that actually matters.

Automation has always arrived

First there was the power loom, then the computer, then the ATM. Each time there were claims that jobs would disappear, and many jobs did disappear. Bank branches closed, and telephone operators almost vanished. Yet today more people are working than in those years.

What makes this round different is one thing. This time office work comes too. Writing reports, summarising, drawing, coding — AI is touching all of it. The idea that knowledge work is a safe zone is now an old phrase.

Three things to prepare

First, remember the saying that the person who uses AI replaces the person who does not. It is not that AI replaces you; someone next to you is simply using AI as a weapon. Hand search, drafts and summaries to AI and keep people on judgement. This is not grand study — it starts with one habit, like opening a search box.

Second, grow what only a person can do. Building trust, meeting eyes on site, persuading and caring. No matter how clever AI gets, it cannot produce the feeling "I want to hear this person out."

Third, ask for what the system owes you. Retraining for job transitions, re-employment support, redesign of working hours. There are clearly areas where individual effort alone is not enough.

Instead of a sigh

It is true that AI changes everything. But history teaches one thing: there were always more new jobs than lost ones. The difference is that the new jobs went first to those who prepared.

Today I wrote one line in my notes: "Write down one thing I saved this week with AI." That feels like it comes before the sigh.