Artificial intelligence is no longer a novelty, nor a passing disruption. It is infrastructure.

From tools that generate slide decks and images to systems that write code, analyze research, manage businesses, and edit video, AI has quietly embedded itself into the daily mechanics of modern work. Those who choose to opt out are not making a principled stand; they are choosing obsolescence.

It is increasingly difficult to imagine a future in which ignoring AI is viable. To refuse these tools is to insist on being only human in an environment that now rewards human–machine collaboration. The emerging workforce is not replacing people with androids; it is producing a hybrid reality in which analog purity becomes a liability rather than a virtue. What once felt authentic will soon feel inefficient.

Need a consultant on demand? A poem written in minutes? A first draft of a grant proposal? A research assistant capable of scanning thousands of papers in seconds? Tools like ChatGPT, Consensus, and Perplexity already perform these tasks, not perfectly, but fast enough to shift expectations. The real risk is not that AI will replace expertise, but that it will expose those who never truly developed it. Craft still matters. Mastery still matters. But AI now scales both competence and incompetence at unprecedented speed.

The economic signals are impossible to ignore. In the United States, Forrester projects the loss of roughly 10 million jobs between 2025 and 2030 due to automation and AI-driven restructuring. Globally, the estimates are starker. Goldman Sachs has suggested that as many as 300 million jobs could be displaced worldwide. McKinsey’s projections range even higher, with estimates between 400 and 800 million jobs affected by 2030. These are not speculative blog posts; they are sober assessments from institutions that shape policy and capital.

It is not unreasonable to suspect that universal basic income will become a serious policy consideration within a generation, perhaps within my daughter’s lifetime. Whether societies pair that shift with renewal or decline remains an open question. Technological revolutions have always produced winners and losers; what makes this one different is its speed and its reach.

The conclusion, however, is not despair. It is discipline. We would do well to adopt AI deliberately, ethically, and skillfully, while becoming exceptional at what only humans can do: judgment, synthesis, creativity, and moral reasoning. Ignoring AI is not resistance. It is surrender.

History is rarely kind to those who mistake nostalgia for principle. The choice before us is not whether AI will shape our future, but whether we will shape how it does.