A reality check on the AI jobs hysteria

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/05/26/1137855/a-reality-check-on-the-ai-jobs-hysteria/

Publish Date: 2026-05-26 05:00:00

But a closer look at the data shows that students are not necessarily turning away from AI-related careers. Rather, they appear to be tailoring their skills to the changes they see underway as AI becomes increasingly important for various disciplines. Interest is rising in AI-adjacent fields like data science and cybersecurity. One fast-growing major: artificial intelligence itself (a recent addition to many college offerings).

Is this time different?

Anxiety over the potential of AI to replace workers is nothing new. I wrote “How Technology Is Destroying Jobs” in 2013, describing how a slew of new digital technologies, including AI, were beginning to threaten white-collar work. I wasn’t alone. It was a popular theme at a time when the labor market was sluggish and jobs were scarce.

In one of his last days in office in late 2016, President Obama issued a report written by his top economic and science advisors warning that AI was threatening workers. Among the findings was that automated vehicles—especially driverless trucks—could eliminate 2.2 million to 3.1 million existing US jobs. Around the same time, one of the pioneers of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, said that “people should stop training radiologists” because it was “completely obvious” the occupation was soon to be replaced by AI.

None of these predictions came true, of course (nor did so-called technological unemployment occur during several earlier tech-related job panics). The forecasts were often wrong about the pace of the technological advances—we’re still waiting for fleets of driverless trucks on the highways—and failed to understand the complex portfolio of tasks that make up many jobs. AI has indeed become a tool for screening radiology images, but there are more radiologists than ever. It turns out that human radiologists perform a multitude of valuable tasks, including interpreting results and interacting with patients, that can’t be accomplished with AI (yet).

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