More companies want to replace your job and your coworkers too

• Mechanize says it wants to replace all work with AI. No job is safe.
• Anthropic claims we’re a year away from AI employees who have roles and memories.
• Zuckerberg says most code will be written by AI in 12 to 18 months.
• Duolingo is already cutting contractors and replacing them with AI.
• The pitch isn’t about helping humans—it’s about getting rid of them.

So here we are standing at the edge of something big and what’s that we see over there Mechanize yelling “We’re gonna replace every job you’ve got.” Not some jobs. Not just the boring ones. Not just the ones that drain your soul. Nope. All of them.

And yeah maybe you're thinking “Isn’t this just another wild idea from some tech guys in hoodies?” I get it. But Mechanize’s founder ain’t even pretending to be chill. In what read more like a bad guy speech than a product update he said they plan to “make virtual work environments benchmarks and training data to allow full replacement of all work.” That’s right. All. No job too human. Your barista’s gone. Your therapist too. That guy in HR? Bye forever.

Think it’s just one company going off the rails? Nope.

Enter Anthropic. Their security guy Jason Clinton says we’re a year away from AI workers with usernames passwords and memories. That’s right memories. Now your robotic coworker can remember when you ignored them at last year’s party. Cool cool.

But wait there’s more.

Mark Zuckerberg saw the AI parade and said “Yeah let’s crank it up.” He’s betting that in a year or so most code will be written by AI. Not just autocomplete either. Full-on bots setting goals testing fixing bugs doing it all better than human engineers. Basically Mark’s saying “Here comes the Matrix and I brought snacks.”

Duolingo's cheerful goodbye to humans

And then there’s Duolingo. CEO Luis von Ahn says they’re going “AI-first.” Translation? “We tried people, AI’s cheaper.” They’ve already ditched 10 percent of their contractors. And now they’ve got a rule. Only hire a person if the AI flops. Somewhere Henry Ford is slow clapping.

But don’t worry they say they “care deeply” about staff. Right. That’s why they now judge employees based on how many AI tools they used. This ain’t a team anymore it’s a survival game where algorithms win.

So... is this fine?

On one hand yeah who wants to sit around translating “the cat is on the table” all day? Replace that junk. But where does it stop? If every job can be done by a bot what do we do? Watch TV till AI decides it’s better at that too?

Whether it's a net benefit or not, I think AI is here to stay, at least, people won't let go of this tech unless they get badly burnt by it. We've never passed on an opportunity to make our lives easier, and AI at least on the surface seems to be offering just that. The tradeoffs? They're only barely beginning to shape up, we'll see that iceberg when we reach closer.

Goodnight human race try not to get replaced before breakfast.

Last modified 01 May 2025 at 09:37