The AI Job Apocalypse That Isn't Coming
How R/GA's 12-person AI team for Moncler and Hollywood's learning curve with AI reveal the real future of work
[Author’s Note: First, I will be taking vacation for the last two weeks of June. The last mailing for June will be on the 19th. I will be back in action the week of July 5th.]
Second, two updates for PARQOR Platinum subscribers:
I am aiming to get a presentation done for next week. I have a few questions from readers for the first presentation. I’d like to have a few more :) Please send your questions by responding to this email or DM me on Substack.
I am also aiming to get a live interview with one of the generative AI entrepreneurs I have previously spoken to. He has been making leaps and bounds in the past few months. Please DM me for more details. ]
Dario Amodei—CEO of Anthropic—made headlines after he shared a scary warning with Axios: “AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years.”
Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott envisioned a similar dynamic for Agentic AI (AAI) in his recent interview with The Verge. AI agents enabled to transact on websites on behalf of users seems to complicate traditional definitions of engagement and raises uncomfortable questions like, are businesses building relationships with these AI agents or the humans are guiding them?
In generative AI (GAI), Netflix President Amy Reinhard announced at the May Upfronts that the company would be launching AI-generated interactive advertising midroll and pause ad formats beginning in 2026. At 94 million ad-supported subs, the announcement is (incredibly) a smaller scale version of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision that the future of online advertising will be shaped by AI tools meeting the needs of both “hundreds of millions” of small businesses and millions of creators.
This suggests AI seems poised to conquer traditional business models, in part because—as tech analyst Mary Meeker wrote in her most recent Technology as Innovation (TAI) Report for Bond Capital—the “AI-driven evolution of how we access and move information is happening much faster” than any evolution that came before it.
But, there is also a marketing component to it, too: Better to be seen by investors as keeping up with the curve—if not dictating it with technology and scale—than to be perceived as a laggard. Reinhard told advertisers that the foundation of its ads business is in place and, going forward, “the pace of progress is going to be even faster.”
Despite these equally ambitious and dire predictions, market signals suggest GAI and AAI are more likely to augment rather than replace human jobs in culture and commerce.
Key Takeaway: Dire predictions about AI eliminating 50% of jobs are wrong—market evidence shows generative AI and agentic AI will require more human oversight than predicted. Businesses should prepare for expanding specialized human roles rather than mass unemployment.
Generative AI
Meta’s and Netflix’s plans for 2026 present an uncomfortable question for human creatives: What will be the role of human creatives in fully automated GAI advertising?
The implicit answer is that there will be none.