Denial is a river in Egypt, and your goalposts about AI are on wheels.

Every time AI crosses a line you swore it couldn’t, you just draw a new one:

“AI can’t draw hands.” → “Okay, it can draw hands, but the images look fake.” → “Okay, the images look real, but it’s not creative.” → “Okay, it’s creative, but it’s not truly creative.”

Meanwhile, companies aren’t debating any of this. They’re not asking whether AI has a soul or whether creativity is sacred. They’re asking three questions:

• - Can this do what we pay people to do?

• - Is it cheaper?

• - Is it easier to manage?

If the answer is “yes” or even “close enough,” the conversation is over. For them, anyway.

So we have to talk about what that actually means.

The Soul Argument

"AI art is soulless. People will always want a human to do their art."

I'm sorry, which art? You guys got people doing your art? Last time I checked companies were paying artists their money, not the everyday individual. Would you care if the man with the fancy moustache on your Pringles can is hand drawn by an artist with an art degree, made using Canva by a marketer with a business degree, or made by AI? The consumer doesn't really care about who made the packaging, as long as the packaging looks good. We have studies that prove this.

Now, companies can create good looking packages without paying the package designer thousands every month, without dealing with his "human-ness" and without considering their rights as a person. Companies can just have an AI create it for a fraction of the cost.

"But AI art has no soul!"

Okay. Let's talk about soul.

When you say AI art is soulless, you're claiming the soul exists in the creation process - in the human hand, the human intent. So is the "soul" there because of the viewer, or the artist?

Do you have stickers on your wall? Did you purchase paintings from Amazon? What about your carpet, does it say "Live, Laugh, Love" in a beautiful font? All those objects, do they have soul? Were they lovingly designed and handcrafted before being sent to you, or were they mass produced by machinery?

Something I'm sure you also noticed is: An AI-generated image circulates on social media. People like it, share it, feel moved by it. Then it comes out that it's AI-generated. Suddenly those same people call it soulless slop.

So what changed? The image didn't change, your experience of it didn't change, only your knowledge of its origin changed. And that made you retroactively decide it had no soul.

That's not a sign that the artwork in question doesn't have a "soul".

You know who else made the "soul" argument? Woodworkers and blacksmiths when machine manufacturing started. "People will always value handcrafted furniture. There's something special about items made by human hands that machines can never replicate."

Where are they now? Tell that argument to your IKEA chair. Tell it to every piece of mass-produced furniture in your home. The "soul" argument lost then. It's losing now. You're just repeating history and expecting a different outcome.

AI art is already everywhere. It gets engagement. The consumer doesn't care how it was made. You can cling to your "soul" story if it makes you feel better, but the market doesn't care about your feelings.

The Economy Is Bad, Companies Overhired During COVID, AI = Actually Indian

"The economy is bad right now. Once things improve, companies will hire again."

No, they won't. At least not at a scale we hope for.

The economy isn't bad for the top 10-20%. Look at the numbers. GDP is growing. Markets are hitting new highs. Productivity keeps increasing. The economy feels fine for the top 10-20%. For you? It feels like a recession. That's the new normal.

What you're watching isn't a temporary downturn. It's a restructuring. Companies are reorganizing away from human employment. They're betting on AI, and they're making that bet with real money and real layoffs. They're the market makers. Their preferences shape the future. Their decisions become reality. And they've decided that AI is the future.

"But what about the Metaverse and NFTs!"

NFTs failed because market makers decided they were useless. The common folk were into NFTs. The Metaverse was just one company's vision, the rest didn't follow suit.

We're seeing more and more mass layoffs around us, and while the companies who are doing the layoffs are saying it's because of AI, somehow you don't buy that. You say things like "Where's the proof? If these jobs were actually replaced by AI, there would be news about it! We would see it!"

Except you dismiss them when there are news! When tech companies come out and say "Yeah we're using AI a lot. Our codebase is now 50-60-70% AI written code" you claim they say that because they want to pump the stock. Look around you, every professional is using AI to do at least a part of their job now. How can you not see this? I've seen software engineers complain about how they need to "fix AI written code" while simultaneously claiming that companies aren't using AI to automate jobs. Make it make sense.

In a shocking turn of events, Reddit user Joe has actually found out that AI is an excuse to layoff employees. He figured out the game, and has determined the real reason for the layoffs is actually one of the following:

• - Outsourcing

• - Overhiring during COVID

• - Economic downturn

The companies that are doing layoffs, they're seeing their stocks hit all time highs, and their profitability is solid. COVID was almost 5 years ago. The overhiring correction argument is outdated. There's some outsourcing happening, yes, but not enough to explain the scale of what we're seeing.

We just have to admit at this point, that more pain is coming. The economy is succeeding at making money without us.

Your Skills Don't Matter

"But AI isn't good enough to do my job."

So what? Most humans aren't good enough either.

Think about the office worker who keeps asking IT how to log into Gmail, what Slack is, basic shit that a five-minute Google search would answer. You think AI won't replace them? You think AI needs to be exceptional to take that job?

The overwhelming majority of humans are bad at their jobs. We make constant errors. We're inconsistent. We need breaks, sleep, management, motivation. We're expensive and we're unreliable, but we got hired anyway because there was no alternative. The bar was never "be excellent at the job." The bar was "be better than nothing."

AI doesn't need to be better than the best human. It needs to be better than the median human. You think that's a high bar to achieve?

People pretend that if you are replaced by AI, then you were bad at your job to begin with. You think the warehouse worker who got replaced by a robot wasn't good enough at moving boxes? What, he didn't take enough certifications on moving boxes and lacked work ethic? Customer support workers were lazy and were too incompetent, and that's why they were replaced by a chatbot?

"But my job requires skill and creativity."

Does it require exceptional skill and creativity? Because most jobs don't. Most companies aren't building rockets. They're processing forms, writing reports, scheduling meetings, creating marketing materials. These tasks don't need excellence. They need adequacy.

Skill isn't even what gets you hired in the first place. It's connections, timing, luck. Plenty of people could probably do your job right now. Maybe better than you. But they're not, because that's not how hiring works.

None of us is irreplaceable.

From a corporate perspective, you're a liability. You're expensive. You need healthcare, time off, management. You might form a union, demand raises, sue for discrimination. You're untrustworthy. If there's an alternative that doesn't have these problems, that can create outputs close to what you can, then your position isn't so safe.

You're competing against the economic calculus of acceptable performance at lower cost and responsibility.

AI Is Plateauing

"AI is plateauing. The improvements are slowing down. It's hitting fundamental limits."

Okay, Mr. LLM Researcher. No it isn't the dramatic slow down you hope for. And plateauing as opposed to what? Human intelligence and capability?

Even if AI development completely froze today - no more improvements, no GPT-6, no better models - we'd still see massive job displacement just from companies figuring out how to actually use what already exists. Most companies haven't even scratched the surface of current AI capabilities. They're still in the "let's see what this does" phase.

But let's say you're right. Let's say AI really is plateauing. So what?

Cars plateaued too. We're not making revolutionary improvements to the internal combustion engine anymore. Horses didn't make a comeback.

Tractor technology plateaued. Farmers still were displaced.

A technology doesn't need to keep improving at fast speeds forever to replace you. It just needs to get good enough once.

Lab-grown meat might never replace the wagyu steak at Kobe Steak Mouriya. That craft, that experience, maybe that stays human forever. Maybe there's always a market for the "authentic" version. But lab-grown meat doesn't need to beat Kobe beef. It just needs to replace the mystery meat chunks in your canned soup. The moment it's good enough for fast food burgers, frozen dinners, and cheap restaurant fare, the entire beef industry changes. The premium restaurants survive serving a tiny slice of wealthy customers while everyone else is out of work.

And you don't work at Kobe Steak Mouriya. You work at the canned food brand.

Your job doesn't need to be special. It doesn't need to be the highest tier of your profession. It just needs to be replaceable by "good enough," and most jobs are.

The System Won't Save You

"Mass unemployment would be catastrophic for society, therefore it won't happen."

This is not an argument. It's a fallacy. This is wishful thinking dressed up as logic.

Just because an outcome would be bad, doesn't mean it won't happen. History is full of catastrophic outcomes that happened anyway.

- Every bank knew the housing market was a bubble, but they didn't avoid the 2008 financial crisis because everyone knew it would be catastrophic.

- The Weimar Republic didn't avoid hyperinflation because it would be destabilizing.

- We didn't avoid the opioid crisis because everyone knew it would be devastating. Pharma companies knew opioids were addictive.

"But capitalism needs consumers! If everyone is unemployed, who buys products? The system will collapse, so the system won't allow it."

The system isn't a coherent entity making rational long-term decisions. It's millions of individual actors optimizing for local incentives. Every CEO facing quarterly earnings pressure will happily replace workers with AI to cut costs. Every manager will automate their team to hit their numbers. Every investor will reward companies that improve margins by eliminating headcount.

None of them are thinking "but if we all do this, capitalism collapses." They're thinking "if I don't do this, the board fires me and hires someone who will." They're thinking "if I don't do this, my competitor does and I go out of business."

This is the tragedy of the commons. Individual rational behavior creating collective catastrophe. Farmers overgrazing shared land because if they don't, someone else will. Companies overfishing the ocean because if they don't, their competitors will. CEOs replacing workers with AI because if they don't, shareholders will replace them.

The tragedy of the commons doesn't avoid happening because the outcome is tragic. That's the entire point. That's why it's called a tragedy.

You're waiting for the invisible hand of the market to save you. But the invisible hand doesn't optimize for your employment. It doesn't optimize for social stability. It doesn't even optimize for long-term economic health.

It optimizes for profit, quarter by quarter, decision by decision, and right now, those decisions point away from human employment.

Why You Keep Lying to Yourself

The denial isn't irrational and you're not stupid. You're just practicing psychological self-defense.

If AI can do your job, then the years you spent building expertise might be wasted. Your professional identity might be obsolete, your income might vanish, you might have to start over with no clear path forward. Life is already tough. You don't need that.

That's unbearable. So your brain doesn't objectively evaluate the evidence. It searches for reasons to dismiss it. This is basic psychology: Motivated reasoning. You're not looking for truth. You're looking for protection from an unbearable truth.

This is why arguments against AI are so resistant to evidence. They're not empirical claims, but psychological shields. When one breaks (AI can't draw hands), you don't abandon it - you repaint it (AI has no soul). The goal isn't accuracy. The goal is maintaining the fiction that you're safe.

When everyone around you is coping, it's hard to see it as cope. You mistake consensus for truth. But consensus doesn't change reality. It just means you're all wrong together.

What Do We Do?

Look, instead of sitting there in denial, calling AI bad, waiting for the market makers to finally regret their decision to automate jobs, start a conversation around a post-AI society.

We need to talk about UBI. We need to talk about redefining human value beyond economic productivity. We need political movements that can actually grapple with technological unemployment instead of pretending it's not happening.

The market won't fix this. We've established that. Individual companies optimizing for profit will continue replacing workers because that's what they're designed to do. Waiting for them to suddenly prioritize social stability over quarterly earnings is waiting for something that won't happen.

So what's the alternative? Do we just accept mass unemployment and societal collapse as inevitable?

No. But let's first stop telling people who have been laid off that they have been laid off because they weren't good enough at their jobs. This is not an individual battle. It's not an "just upskill, learn AI" situation.

We need systemic change. We need to decouple survival from employment. We need to build economic structures that can function when human labor isn't the primary input.

Is that UBI? Maybe. Is that shorter work weeks? Maybe. Is that completely restructuring how we think about value, contribution, and human worth? Probably.

I don't have all the answers. Nobody does, which is partly why the denial is so strong. It's easier to believe AI will go away than to figure out how society functions when most people are economically unnecessary.

But denial doesn't change what's coming. It just leaves you unprepared.

So start the conversation. Push for policies that address this. Demand that politicians actually engage with technological unemployment instead of pretending it's not real.

Because the companies have already decided. The market makers have placed their bets. AI is coming for jobs, and they're helping it along. The question isn't whether this will happen. We have to build something to catch people when it does.