When I say our AI program is about amplifying our people, not replacing them, I mean it. But, such an outcome cannot be guaranteed.
Our software engineers now use AI to hunt defects in production code. Much of what it finds, the team already knew about: weaknesses never quite high enough priority, hoping a user never triggers them, or a bad actor finds and explout them. Now the team has the capacity to fix it. That isn’t replacement. That’s getting to work we could never get to.
While software demand may be bottomless. Other parts of a business may not be. Take parts of the business where they may be finite demand. You start with ten people, each amplifying their output with AI. In a year that output can be achieved with eight. Then six. In time, perhaps two. We never set out to reduce headcount, yet amplification can arrive at the same destination. Yes, people can simply do more, to a point. And even if we don’t reduce headcount, we may stop hiring in certain areas, and for a regional employer that not something we want to just fall into. Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas is a timely reminder of what a job means to a person and their community and we cannot take our responsibility as a regional employer lightly.
This dilemma cannot wait, because AI refuses to behave like previous technology. SaaS and RPA were ROI investments: better, faster, cheaper than today, but predictable impacts on roles in an organisation. AI goes beyond this. AI is entering a period of recursive improvement, AI building better AI. In three years it will be unrecognisable from what it can do today. Any workforce assumption built on today’s capability is already dated.
Here is where I currently sit. AI adoptions remains a cause worth pursuing. If a day comes when we need fewer roles, that will be a reflection of great performance, not poor by the individuals who embraced AI. We always hear the saying AI won’t replace you; a person using AI will. We are deliberately training our people to be the person using AI, whether that remains with us, or in their next chapter.
I can’t see the genie going back in the bottle. Our job is to have the honest conversations now, so we choose the organisation we want to become and not arrive there accidentally and unprepared.