1. The Big Question of Our Time
Few topics are currently being discussed more intensely than artificial intelligence and its impact on the world of work. Which professions will still exist in the future? Which tasks can be automated? And what will human labor still be needed for at all?
Many believe that jobs primarily performed on a computer are especially at risk: administration, marketing, analysis, communication, back-office work. In other words, all areas where information is processed, texts are created, or decisions are prepared. Some even assume that, in the long run, almost everything will become replaceable - except perhaps skilled trades, caregiving, or areas where physical presence and human interaction remain indispensable.
There is probably some truth in many of these assumptions. And yet today, I would like to offer a quiet counterargument.
2. Technological Progress Has Rarely Simply Made Work Disappear
Whenever machines have made human labor more efficient or replaced it in the past, predictions quickly followed that hardly any people would soon be needed in that field anymore. We have seen this pattern many times before.
One example is the automotive industry. Decades ago, increasing automation and mass production led many to believe that very few people would eventually be needed to build cars. And indeed, machines now perform many tasks that were once done manually. Yet hundreds of thousands of people still work in this industry today. Not despite technological progress, but precisely because of it.
Recently, I came across an interesting thought: If we were building exactly the same cars today that we built in 1970, we would indeed need very few people. But modern vehicles are no longer just mechanical products. Tens of thousands of people now work on software, sensors, user interfaces, driver assistance systems, and digital services - areas of work that simply did not exist in the past.
Technological progress has therefore replaced certain forms of labor while simultaneously creating new complexity and with it, entirely new tasks.
3. Efficiency Primarily Changes Expectations
Perhaps this is precisely the aspect that is still underestimated in many AI debates: Technology makes people more productive. But productivity rarely leads to permanently working less. More often, expectations regarding quantity, speed, and quality simply increase.
If someone previously spent a week preparing a presentation, the same task may now take only a few hours. AI can assist with research, structuring, visualization, and wording. The result is produced faster and often more professionally. But the consequence is usually not that the person now has the rest of the week off.
The expectation is more likely to be that significantly more presentations will now be created. Or more variations. Faster revisions. More comprehensive analyses. What becomes technically possible changes, with remarkable speed, what organizations perceive as normal.
4. Progress Often Creates New Work Instead of Less Work
That is why I do not believe the key question is whether AI will replace work. Of course it will. What I find more interesting is something else entirely:
What new expectations will emerge because of it?
Every new technological possibility usually also raises expectations toward companies and employees. Customers expect faster responses. Communication becomes more immediate. Products become more individualized. Processes become more complex. The amount of information continues to grow. And many things that would have seemed extraordinary just a few years ago quickly become standard.
I see examples of this every day. The case studies candidates are asked to complete during executive search processes have become vastly more extensive and complex than they used to be - because it is already “priced in” that AI will be used to create them.
A lawyer friend of mine has become significantly more efficient through AI. As a result, he now takes on more clients and handles cases much faster - which, in turn, raises his clients’ expectations for the next case.
Perhaps this is one of the great patterns of technological progress: Efficiency rarely reduces work permanently. It mainly changes the level of what is considered appropriate.
5. My Impuls
Perhaps we should therefore spend less time discussing which work will disappear - and more time thinking about which new expectations emerge once technology makes things easier and faster.
Because progress rarely means that people no longer have to do anything. More often, it means that people do different things. And that what counted as strong performance yesterday becomes merely the starting point tomorrow.
