So Google is offering packages to a large proportion of its employees due to resources going to AI and its ad revenues are way down because people are using AI instead of the Google search engine.

Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees as AI leads to efficiency push

Oh sure, AI is going to impact some things, maybe a lot of things, but I find it all desperately over-hyped, to the point of ridiculousness. Musk is saying “there’s no point in saving” because in 20 years you won’t need money (so why doesn’t he give his away?). Others talk breathlessly about the Armageddon of jobs, and so forth.

And I’ll say that in the software coding industry it’s gonna do some stuff. Not, perhaps, the originality that humans have been known for - or maybe it will do that too, no way for me to know. And it’s probably gonna have some impact on music, making soundtracks for movies, maybe, or pop-tunes on demand. And creating pictures of dancing cats, and, uh, writing steamy romance novels that already read like AI slop.

But how is it going to impact the life of a plumber? Electrician? Garbage collector? Retail clerk? Fast Food worker? Nail salon tech? Hairdresser? Auto mechanic? Highway asphalt worker? Copper miner? Lineman for the county? Physical therapist? Lawn treatment and home pesticide workers? Window installers? Aircraft mechanic? Bricklayer? Carpenter? Restaurant chef? Flooring installer? Cop? Fireman? Ironworker? Millwright? Tailor? House painter? Or the technicians that keep wind turbines, heavy machinery, boilers and trucks, forklifts and diesel engines, and all the rest running?

Is it going to eliminate sports and sports stars? Vendors and stadium builders? How about movies, whether made for streaming or theater houses? Will there not be another Hitchcock or Tom Cruise or Meryl Streep? Imagine Broadway shows without the human handiwork. Or art museums.

Is it going to eliminate advertising? That seems doubtful in a hand-waving attention economy. Will it change it? Probably, somehow, but then YouTube and Facebook already have, so what is one more iteration from “produced content” to “self-produced content”?

Is AI going to eliminate the extraction economy? Gold, zinc, oil, minerals? Will there be no more farmers? What about all the jobs that turn those raw materials into finished goods? Don’t we already have a lot of automation which eliminated entire layers of jobs? What makes anyone think they’re *all* going to go away? The largest sector of the US economy is service. How much of that is as risk? (See list of blue and pink collar jobs, above, for starters.)

Then there are two other sectors large enough to matter: knowledge work and decision work. (And, of course, government work, which I predict will continue.) Knowledge work will surely be impacted, heck it already is judging on the headlines at the top of the post. Decision work? Will there be no more managers, CEOs, CIOs, corporate VPs - or in smaller business units Comptrollers, General Managers, Sales Managers, Maintenance Managers and the rest?

Baloney. AI is a thing, I’ve said so before. It may even be a very big thing, but it’s not going to be *everything*. Calm down, already.