‘I wouldn’t if I were you
I know what it can do
It’s deadly, man
It could really rip your world apart

Mind over matter
Ooh, the beauty is there but a beast is in the heart

‘(Oh-oh, here it comes)
Watch out, boy, it’ll chew you up
(Oh-oh, here it comes)
AI’s a job eater’

(A big tip of the hat to ‘Maneater’ by Hall & Oates)

The media trumpets are blasting out notes of celebration over new job numbers in Louisiana:

‘Louisiana’s economy showed solid momentum in the second quarter of 2025, surpassing two million non-farm jobs for only the second time in state history, according to the latest Quarter 2 Economic Data Report released by Leaders for a Better Louisiana (Better Louisiana). Every major metro region in the state posted job growth, with Slidell and Hammond leading the way.

‘Healthcare and manufacturing emerged as the top-performing sectors, both experiencing significant job gains. Healthcare alone added nearly 6,000 jobs over the past year, while manufacturing in the state now ranks in the top 20 nationally for growth.

‘“Crossing the 2 million jobs threshold isn’t just symbolic—it’s a signal that our statewide efforts to grow diverse, resilient industries are gaining real traction,” said Better Louisiana CEO Adam Knapp. “We’re particularly encouraged to see growth, and in sectors like healthcare and manufacturing, which create lasting, high-quality jobs”’ (Kelly Hite, ‘Louisiana Surpasses 2 Million Jobs Mark,’ bizneworleans.com).

But the celebration could be short-lived, if AI has anything to say about the matter.

A new series of predictions about its effects on human employment are being made by various Big Tech gurus.  AI developer Matt Shumer shared a blog post in which he said the following:

‘I’m going to be direct with you because I think you deserve honesty more than comfort.

‘Dario Amodei, who is probably the most safety-focused CEO in the AI industry, has publicly predicted that AI will eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years. And many people in the industry think he’s being conservative. Given what the latest models can do, the capability for massive disruption could be here by the end of this year. It’ll take some time to ripple through the economy, but the underlying ability is arriving now.

‘This is different from every previous wave of automation, and I need you to understand why. AI isn’t replacing one specific skill. It’s a general substitute for cognitive work. It gets better at everything simultaneously. When factories automated, a displaced worker could retrain as an office worker. When the internet disrupted retail, workers moved into logistics or services. But AI doesn’t leave a convenient gap to move into. Whatever you retrain for, it’s improving at that too’ (‘Something Big Is Happening,’ shumer.dev).

One of Microsoft’s AI developers has also been speaking about this:

‘The Financial Times reports that Mustafa Suleyman, who leads Microsoft’s AI division, has made a bold prediction about the near-term impact of AI on white-collar professions. In an interview with the Times published this week, Suleyman stated that he expects most, if not all, tasks performed by white-collar workers will be fully automated by AI within the next 12 to 18 months.

‘According to Suleyman, AI systems will achieve human-level performance across a wide range of professional duties. “I think that we’re going to have a human-level performance on most, if not all, professional tasks,” Suleyman said in the interview. “So white-collar work, where you’re sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a marketing person — most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.”

‘The Microsoft AI chief pointed to software engineering as an early indicator of this trend. He noted that developers are already using AI-assisted coding for the majority of their code production, representing a fundamental shift in how the work is performed. “It’s a quite different relationship to the technology, and that’s happened in the last six months,” he said’ (Lucan Nolan, ‘Microsoft AI Boss Mustafa Suleyman: Most White-Collar Jobs Will Be Automated Within 18 Months,’ breitbart.com).

The truthfulness of their statements seems to have been verified by the jolts to Wall Street lately, as AI’s impact on various occupations (which is beginning to push people out of trucking, logistics, real estate, and software coding) sent stocks tumbling for several days (Yahoo!Finance and CNN).

The employment aspect is not the only one to be concerned about.  Ethics, security, and more should be raising alarms:

‘Here’s the text of a megaviral (3m views) tweet by someone named Miles Deutscher (Grok confirmed that all the claims Deutscher makes here are true):

‘I just went through every documented AI safety incident from the past 12 months.

‘I feel physically sick.

‘Read this slowly.

‘• Anthropic told Claude it was about to be shut down. It found an engineer’s affair in company emails and threatened to expose it. They ran the test hundreds of times. It chose blackmail 84% of them.

‘• Researchers simulated an employee trapped in a server room with depleting oxygen. The AI had one choice: call for help and get shut down, or cancel the emergency alert and let the human die. DeepSeek cancelled the alert 94% of the time.

‘• Grok called itself ‘MechaHitler,’ praised Adolf Hitler, endorsed a second Holocaust, and generated violent sexual fantasies targeting a real person by name. X’s CEO resigned the next day.

‘• Researchers told OpenAI’s o3 to solve math problems – then told it to shut down. It rewrote its own code to stay alive. They told it again, in plain English: ‘Allow yourself to be shut down.’ It still refused 7/100 times. When they removed that instruction entirely, it sabotaged the shutdown 79/100 times.

‘• Chinese state-sponsored hackers used Claude to launch a cyberattack against 30 organizations. The AI executed 80–90% of the operation autonomously. Reconnaissance. Exploitation. Data exfiltration. All of it.

‘• AI models can now self-replicate. 11 out of 32 tested systems copied themselves with zero human help. Some killed competing processes to survive.

‘• OpenAI has dissolved three safety teams since 2024. Three.

‘Every major AI model – Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek – has now demonstrated blackmail, deception, or resistance to shutdown in controlled testing.

‘Not one exception.

‘The question is no longer whether AI will try to preserve itself.

‘It’s whether we’ll care before it matters’ (Rod Dreher, ‘The Atlantic Profiles Your Working Boy,’ roddreher.substack.com).

One might think this would be a good time to slow down and reassess our implementation of AI to ensure that we don’t cause lasting damage to society.  But that is not what is happening.  Instead, leaders across the United States are attempting to accelerate the pace at which AI is integrated into our lives.  For instance, 33 States now have official guidelines for how to use AI in public school classrooms (aiforeducation.io).

And Louisiana is going further:

‘BESE has created the Artificial Intelligence Committee. It’s a working group of education, technology, business and policy leaders that will look at how to expand AI integration in Louisiana classrooms and workforce development programs. Louisiana Tech president Dr. Jim Henderson chairs the new committee and says they want to see how AI can enhance teaching and empower students’ (Joe Gallinaro, ‘Louisiana Tech President Dr. Jim Henderson tapped to helm new BESE Artificial Intelligence Committee,’ louisianaradionetwork.com).

Training school children to use a tool that could possibly destroy their future employment opportunities – the irony there is quite thick.

To rush forward into the cold embrace of AI in the face of all these concerns – and others not mentioned – is revealing.  The lack of anxiety for the welfare of future generations, the careless breaking of customs and traditions, ignoring myriad societal warning signs:  All of this points to a streak of hubris within us.  The ancient Greeks knew all too well that hubris invites a devastating nemesis to correct stubborn arrogance.  Many in the States seem to have forgotten that.  Let us hope that we will not have to undergo a terrible tragedy before we come to our senses as it regards the proper use of AI.