If you’re a middle manager, AI is coming for your job. Who is safe? Tradies and jobs involving some sort of human creativity or judgement beyond what AI can or will ever do. And we will always need people to work one step above AI. But overall, yes, AI is coming for your job.
Lufthansa Group says it will shed 4000 jobs by 2030 with the help of artificial intelligence, digitalisation and consolidating work among member airlines – even as the company reported strong demand for air travel and predicted stronger profits in the years ahead.
Most of the lost jobs would be in Germany, and the focus would be on administrative rather than operational roles, the company said.
And of course that’s just one example and just the start. AI will do to white-collar jobs what robotics did to blue-collar jobs. In fact it’s already doing it.
Lufthansa said it was moving to deepen the integration among member airlines and is “reviewing which activities will be no longer necessary in the future, for instance due to duplication of work.”
In other words, why hire slow and expensive humans to fill in forms and send emails when AI can do it for free.
[…] It said in a statement that “profound changes brought about by digitalisation and artificial intelligence” would increase efficiency across business areas and activities.
See my comment above.
[…] The company is a globally operating aviation group that includes network airlines, point-to-point airline Eurowings and service companies. It had 101,709 employees in 2024 and generated revenue of 37.6 billion euros (NZ$76 billion). Its registered headquarters is in Cologne, Germany, while executives and operational offices are located in Frankfurt.
As I’ve said, Lufthansa Group is only one example.
Take law for instance. It’s already difficult enough to get a job in law (one apparent prerequisite is having a vagina). Within minutes, sometimes even seconds, AI can already draft contracts that have no mistakes: a task that could take a qualified lawyer or legal executive hours, maybe even days. Why hire a junior lawyer to do donkey-work like looking up case law and such when AI can do it for free and much better?
And then we have IT. It’s no exaggeration to say it’s blissfully sleep walking off the edge of a very high cliff. The naivety here is astounding.
Why hire a team of developers when you can hire just one developer with good AI prompting skills?
And then you have what’s called ‘vibe’ – or programming using AI and telling it what to do. Vibe coding has been given a bit of a bad rap with critics saying it generates sloppy code. But here’s the thing: AI is still in its infancy and continually improving. And also a lot of the blame can be put on the user himself. In other words just saying ‘make it so’ isn’t going to cut it.
As for nativity there’s even a post by a senior AWS executive saying that developers need not worry and that AI will in fact make their jobs easier. Jesus wept.
Also, take middle managers. OK, to be fair most middle managers, such as project managers, can already be replaced by a parrot taught to say ‘How’s that project going?’ But yeah, if you’re a middle manager AI is coming for your job.
So who is safe? Tradies are, obviously. And also jobs involving some sort of human creativity or judgement beyond what AI can or will ever do. AI will never have the X factor.
And we will always need people to work one step above AI.
But overall, yes Virginia, AI is coming for your job.
Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/360839043/lufthansa-group-cut-4000-jobs-2030-help-ai-sees-stronger-profits-ahead
Kevin is a Libertarian and pragmatic anarchist. His favourite saying: “There but for the grace of God go I.” This article was first published HERE
5 comments:
AI has been “getting better” for near on a decade now. Since the Transformer breakthrough in 2017 and GPT-1 dropping in 2018, we’ve been promised year after year that it’s “just around the corner”—the one that will finally nail it. Spoiler: as of 2025 it’s still only getting it right on 58% of trivial, single step agentic tasks and spectacularly flunks multi-step (mostly 2 step) with 60-80% failure rates. So if you’ve been hearing “trust me, bro, it’s gonna get better” since 2017, congrats, you’ve just been stuck on an eternal AI hype loop.
Meanwhile, this “coming for your job” AI actually slows down programmers by 19% and makes workers fix an endless mess of AI screw-ups. The tech sounds confident but is basically bluffing, not delivering. Betting your paycheck on AI today? That’s comedy gold. This isn’t a tech revolution it’s a decade-long game of “AI just needs more time trust me bro” played on repeat while we clean up its mess.
Deloitte to pay money back to Albanese government after using AI in $440,000 report
Hahahaha
I remember when those new-fangled "computers" were also going to supposedly decimate employment figures.
AI in its present state is no more than a glorified version of that now defunct "office assistant" with its much hated "CLIPPY". For those who might remember - it interrupted at seemingly random intervals, incorrectly guessing your intent, trying to solve problems that weren't there, and always trying to give you help when it wasn't needed
AI has already come for the job I was hoping to do in my 50+ years. Translation German to English. I started a PostGrad Diploma in Translation Studies but working with Computer Aided Translation programs was like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I wanted to use my brain to TRANSLATE not operate a computer program. I was able to do a fine analysis / correction of Google Translate text which was still substandard in 2019. The only translation work available now is high end literary and technical / scientific. I did some basic online translation work for Amazon / EBay until I had TAUGHT THE MACHINE so I was no longer needed
When desktop computers arrived in the 1980s they were TOOLS which still had to be operated by humans. In 1988 the marketing manager in the arts org I was working for dropped a Mac Classic on my desk plus the manual and told me to see what I could do with it. I did really useful things with the customer database including conceiving a workable if basic ticketing system which could also calculate subscription payments etc. Later we moved it all onto a PC
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