They told you automation would free you.
Give you more time, more creativity, more leisure.
What they meant was:
It’ll free us—from needing to pay you.
Let’s be clear:
Automation doesn’t get rid of jobs.
It redistributes them.
Some go to machines. Some go to developers. Most just… disappear into quarterly earnings reports.
The ones that remain?
They get worse.
More surveillance. Less pay. Fewer humans. More metrics.
You know who thrives in this future?
The already-automated elite. The people who use AI as leverage—not labor.
They build tools to reduce cost.
You become the cost.
While you’re out here using AI to write resumes, they’re using AI to eliminate your entire department.
And here’s the kicker:
This isn’t inevitable.
It’s engineered.
By people.
With choices.
But as long as we let “efficiency” be the only god tech worships, the outcome is locked:
- Wealth gets automated upward.
- Labor gets squeezed downward.
- And all the shiny slogans about “democratizing technology” fade into the glow of your third side hustle app.
Automation could liberate.
But liberation requires intention. Equity. Imagination.
And right now, we’re automating faster than we’re thinking.