‘They said it was more cost effective’: The young workers replaced by AI

When Liv* lost her job in spring last year, it felt like “being stabbed”. For nearly two years, the 27-year-old had been working as a content executive for an agency in Leeds, writing blog posts and product descriptions for clients. She loved it: she’d always enjoyed “reading and writing”, and the role offered her a space to put these interests into practice. “I was proud to say ‘I’m a writer’,” she says. She quickly bonded with her team too: “We were all really close, had great banter [...] I was friends with basically everyone. I loved coming to work every day.”

Months after Liv joined the agency, generative AI chatbot ChatGPT was launched by OpenAI, triggering global panic about long-term job security. At first, Liv’s company assured staff their jobs were “safe”, but in 2024 senior management began encouraging her to use ChatGPT to “speed things up”. She begrudgingly complied. “My role was to essentially ‘proofread’ the AI-generated content,” she says. Soon after, management began what she now describes as “the process of managing me out of the company through a personal improvement plan.” Weeks later, she was fired, and later learned that they had recruited an “AI specialist” as their new head of content.

ChatGPT has catalysed the ongoing AI boom, which is continuing to rapidly transform the world of work. Increasingly, AI is being touted as a cheaper and faster alternative to human labour: recent research from Microsoft suggested that translators, historians, mathematicians, coders, editors and writers are some of the jobs most at risk of automation. Analysis by the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) has found estimates that between one million and three million UK jobs will be displaced by AI by 2050, and there are nascent signs that AI has already ousted significant numbers of workers from their jobs: one King’s College London study found that between 2021 and 2025, firms whose workforces are highly exposed to AI capabilities reduced total employment by 4.5 per cent on average.

27-year-old Imogene also lost her job to AI this year. She previously worked as a social media and design executive for a sustainability company, managing “all of the company’s social media pages, from strategy and content creation to analytics and campaign planning”. Social media had always been her “passion”: “I’m completely self-taught, I didn’t go to university for it. I just fell in love with creating, building strategies and connecting with audiences online.”

Earlier this year, Imogene was told her role was “at risk” and made redundant shortly after. “They said they’d bought new AI software back in January that could supposedly do my job. They said it was more ‘cost effective’,” she recalls. “It was disheartening, but I’m trying to see it as a fresh start.” Now, Imogene is focusing on “applying for new jobs every day” alongside growing her own TikTok account, where she has more than 53,000 followers.

Is AI really the viable alternative to human labour that some employers are making it out to be? Neither Imogene nor Liv are convinced. “I don’t think AI can fully replace human creativity,” Imogene says. This chimes with Liv. “AI can throw up a bunch of words and make it seem interesting, but nothing beats content written by humans,” she says. “AI can’t begin to describe genuine human emotions and the way we experience the world. It will never truly relate to us on that level.” Still, she says she feels her “ability to compete with the future of AI feels like a battle I’ve already lost”, and as a result she’s pivoting to working in healthcare. “Primarily for the job security,” she adds.

One feature of capitalism is its ability to create work for people to do. A world without work is incompatible with capitalism

Professor David Spencer, an economist at the University of Leeds and author of Making Light Work: An End to Toil in the Twenty-First Century, is sceptical of the idea that AI is a silver bullet for inefficiency. “AI is often seen as a way to boost efficiency, but its ability to increase efficiency very much depends on how it is used,” he explains. “If it is used to replace tasks that are already inefficient, its impact may be to embed inefficiency.” It seems likely this is the trajectory we’re currently on, given that other technological advances made in the last 100 years have not made us more productive or led to any meaningful reduction in working hours (in 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the end of the century, a 15-hour work week would be the norm in the UK). And according to Spencer, this is a feature of the system rather than a bug: “One feature of capitalism is its ability to create work for people to do. A world without work is incompatible with capitalism.”

As time passes, could more and more of us fall victim to the AI boom? While Liv and Imogene’s experiences prove that the threat of AI to job security is very real, Spencer stresses that it’s likely too soon to draw conclusions about exactly how AI is impacting employment. “Data is hard to get – and it is probably too early to say,” he explains, adding that figures which compare current employment rates to employment rates pre-ChatGPT really tell us very little about AI’s impact on job security. “It is difficult to separate out job losses due to traditional cost-cutting from job displacement due to the adoption of AI,” he continues. 

Spencer is also keen to stress that we are not on a “predetermined” path with technological advances. “There is scope to redirect [technology], and not use it to compound inefficiency and embed work.” With a little imagination, he says, technology can be used in ways which makes work better. “If technology was democratised – developed and used with a view to making life better rather than just enriching a few already-rich capital owners – then society could look forward to a better future: one where efficiency allows us all to lead more rewarding work lives, while also enjoying more free time.” This resonates with Liv. “AI should be used as a tool to make people’s lives easier,” she surmises. “We should have AI handle tasks we don’t want to spend time on – cooking, cleaning, washing – not taking away our creativity and ability to think for ourselves.”

*Name has been changed