Remember the >Thanos SNAP< in the Avengers movie? Half the universe gone in an instant, because in theory, it solved a ‘resource problem’.
That is exactly what is happening with AI in boardrooms right now.
AI arrives, the CFO sees the cost savings, the CEO starts smiling, and suddenly every company wants to be “AI-first” because this fashionable technology looks cheaper, faster and incredibly cool to use.
Then the >SNAP< happens.
Teams shrink by 50%, hiring freezes, and roles get “redesigned” (corporate-speak for “we think software can now do enough of what you do”).
But remember…after Thanos snapped his fingers, the world did not become better… it became broken, messy and incomplete, because removing people also removes memory, judgement, trust, context and the ability to handle the situations that do not fit neatly into a workflow.
And this is what companies are starting to realise about their miracle AI solutions, that they don’t work as well as they thought they would.
Recent research revealed that more than 80% of AI projects failed, and US$30 to 40 billion in enterprise GenAI investment generated near ZERO measurable returns.
In Endgame, to undo the damage by Thanos, Bruce Banner (The Hulk), wearing the gauntlet, did the >REVERSE SNAP<… but the world he brought them back into was not the world they left.
Five years had passed. Buildings had changed hands. Relationships had moved on. People came back to a world that had already rearranged itself around their absence.
I believe this is the AI story that is about to play out in the job market.
As companies discover that AI is not free, clean or commercially reliable because they were sold “Silicon Snake Oil”, they will need to undo a lot of the ‘Transformation’ that was done… and ironically, they will need to hire the ‘experts’ they fired in the first place.
However, these companies will not simply rehire the same people to do the same jobs again… instead they will hire people who can “fill the gap” between the machine and the business… people who combine human experience, AI fluency and business judgement.
The million dollar question is, are you that person?
Here are 3 pieces of advice I’d like to share.
1. If You’re Let Go Because Of AI, Take The Break To Rest, Recharge And Regroup
Spend the time figuring out how to use AI and become familiar with the latest ‘toys’. Get your hands dirty, build models, create games. Don’t spend time memorising useless terms like RAG, LOOP, LLM… just jump in and start playing!
2. Become AI-Fluent Specifically In Your Field, Not Merely “Generally AI-Literate”
“Learn AI” is lazy advice, and I say that to clients who arrive at my desk having done a weekend course and nothing else.
- If you are in HR, learn how AI is changing screening, workforce planning, employee sentiment and policy drafting.
- In finance, learn what it is doing to forecasting, variance analysis, fraud detection and reporting automation.
- In sales, learn how it reshapes prospect research, proposal drafting, CRM intelligence and client segmentation.
- In legal and compliance, learn how it changes contract review, regulatory monitoring and risk flagging.
- In operations, learn how it touches workflow redesign, exception handling and productivity tracking.
Don’t just learn ChatGPT (big deal, I’ve seen 5 year olds using it). Learn the AI tools in the context of your field.
Use AI inside your actual profession, solve one real problem with it, and be able to describe the before and after in a single sentence.
3. Network Into The Problem Before The Job Is Even Advertised
Don’t waste the downtime. Call an old boss, message a former colleague, check in with a past client or vendor and ask how their AI rollout is actually going, what’s working, what’s not, where it is saving time, and where it is creating more work than it removed without anyone admitting it yet.
Companies rarely advertise “we need someone to fix our AI mess”… but behind the scenes, a growing number of them need exactly that… someone to audit a workflow, retrain a team, review AI output for the things a model cannot catch, or even reconnect an automated process back to commercial reality.
That opportunity is rarely marked “vacancy”…instead, it’s usually marked as a “Transformation Challenge”, so stay close to the market.
So yes, AI may take some jobs, and a few of them will not come back in any recognisable form.
And badly implemented AI is creating the next wave of opportunity in the background, so sooner or later every company will remember that technology does not run a business on its own.
People do.
And the people who get invited back through that door will be the ones who spent their break getting sharper, more current and more commercially dangerous, while everyone else was still arguing about whether AI was good or bad.
Be that person.
In the meantime, Keep Calm and Career On!!
