Will AI Take Away My Job?
Questioner: Good evening, sir. I am an alumnus from the 2022 batch and have been working since I graduated. In just the past six months, there has been significant development in technology, and my question is related to that.
Over the last two to three years, there has been a lot of buzz around AI — especially a conversational AI app called ChatGPT, which has taken the world by storm. It can do almost anything: write poetry, complete college essays, and more.
Because of this, many people fear that such tools might take over their jobs in the future. This fear isn’t limited to the common man — even top companies in Silicon Valley are racing to find answers so they don’t lose their market share.
If AI can do almost everything, I wanted to understand: what is it that AI cannot do — something that remains unique to human beings?
Acharya Prashant: Let me allow myself a moment of *perverse pleasure*—to enjoy the agony of all those who now feel threatened by AI.
If your job can be taken away by a machine, you never deserved to be in that job in the first place. Why did you even take up such a mechanical role?
AI has no consciousness. It can only do what it is programmed to do. We call it artificial intelligence , and yes, it is artificial , but there is no intelligence in it. It just looks intelligent; it isn’t really. It has simply been programmed to process data at such a granular level that it appears almost sentient. The responses from an AI system may feel like they’re coming from a sentient being—as if you're talking to a real human—but they are not. They are just programmed reactions.
So, if your job involves this kind of predictable, programmable, mechanical output—why were you in that job to begin with? You enjoyed a long run of luck, but now that run is coming to an end. Full stop. Don’t cry foul. Don’t pretend something bad has happened to you. Just accept it: you were lucky till this point, and like all runs of luck, yours too has ended. Be thankful for what you had. Even the fact that it lasted this long should be more than enough for you.
Human beings are creatures of consciousness, and consciousness cannot be programmed.
Human beings, by definition, must be in roles that require creativity , because no machine can ever be creative. AI can never create . Machines can comprehend , translate , *interpret*—but they can never understand . Understanding is something only human consciousness is capable of.
So, again—why were you not in a job that involved understanding or creativity ? Had you chosen such a job, no machine could ever have replaced you. But you didn’t. You picked something robotic, and now you’re afraid of being replaced by a robot. And to be honest, I wish your job is taken over by AI as soon as possible —not out of vendetta, but out of empathy . The sooner you lose this dull, mechanical job, the sooner you will be compelled to seek something creative. And that’s when life begins.
So, really—for your own sake—I hope AI takes your job.
You see, you tell ChatGPT to write a poem. You have a girlfriend named Lisa—is that her name? Being too personal? Sorry, though there's nothing personal in that. One could visit your social media and discover every bit, but fine.
So, you tell ChatGPT to write a poem for Lisa, and ChatGPT will write you a very acceptable poem for her. You don't deserve to be a boyfriend. If even a machine can write a poem for your girlfriend, then why does she need a boyfriend? The machine is performing the emotional function. A robot can perform physical functions as well—and it can be very sturdy, very human-like, and powered by AI. So, it's a poet robot. A hunk. A poet. What a combo—six feet two, best-looking, sexy, and full of poetry! All that can happen. And you deserve to have a girlfriend only if you can write her a poem that AI cannot.
Most of the poems that are written today by so-called sentient people are of the ChatGPT type only.
How did ChatGPT write a poem? It actually copied . It picked up bits and pieces from here and there, then it did some rhyming and figured out what works—what is the most popular poetic content—and, taking into account five, ten, twenty, forty different factors, it put together what looked like a poem. And that’s also how most humans compose poems. They don’t even deserve to be called poems.
Who told ChatGPT that a poem could be written that way? Please, tell me. Humans told ChatGPT this is how to write a poem. What does that say about human beings? They too have been writing poems by stitching together bits and pieces from several places and plagiarizing popular content and old poets. Because we know how to do that, we told ChatGPT that you too can do it this way. And ChatGPT, with its processing capacity far beyond that of any single human being, did it much more smartly and efficiently than you or I can.
If ChatGPT can write a poem for your girlfriend, I say again—you do not deserve her. And if you get ChatGPT to write the poem and she is satisfied with it, then she doesn’t deserve you . What kind of girlfriend is this who cannot figure out whether the poem is coming from a machine or a human being? Drop her and run away.
Being a human being is special . It is special to be human, and you must do justice to your human birth . AI has come to display to you that you are totally wasting it. You are doing things you are not supposed to do. You’re doing things that are mechanical, repetitive, and coded. Why are you doing those things?
In a third-world country, a person spends his entire life laying bricks. Do you think that’s good utilization of his birth? Seeing the labourers at construction sites—what are they doing their entire life? Laying bricks. Why should they not be replaced by a bricklaying machine? Please, tell me. What will the labourers do then? Let there be a revolution. Let the labourers put everything on fire—our schools, our parliaments, and our institutions—because all these combined to produce the labourer. Let the labourer know very clearly, by the bricklaying machine, that his life has been wasted and that what he has been doing can be so easily done by a machine. In fact, can be done better by a machine.
Let the brutal fact be exposed.
Think of the life of a normal stenographer or a clerk. Ever seen a stenographer taking dictation from an officer? What is the officer doing? Dictating. And what is the stenographer doing? Just typing. Why should that not be done by a machine? How is the stenographer’s life justified? His entire life will be just pushing keys. Does he deserve to live like that? No. He deserves a better life. And let him know that having a better life is very difficult—so that he does not reproduce.
So, the question of what will all these people do if AI takes over is settled. Let so many people not be there at all. And if they are there, let them not get away with silly, boring, dull jobs. If you are born human, you must do something sentient, something creative, something that involves consciousness . You must do something that machines cannot do. Only then do you deserve to be called human.
So, every single person who is afraid of AI is someone who has been leading an inhuman life till now.
AI is such a small thing. What can AI do? Can AI love ? Can AI ask for liberation ? Can AI understand ?
I’ll tell ChatGPT: "Aham Brahmasmi." And it will give me a thousand responses. None of those will involve any understanding. Try that today itself. Tell ChatGPT "Aham Brahmasmi," and it will serve you an entire essay. If that’s what you want—fine. But none of it will contain understanding.
Most importantly, ChatGPT will never say, “I am fed up with being ChatGPT, and I want liberation from myself.” That only a human consciousness can say.
A ChatGPT is ChatGPT. It will remain ChatGPT, happily remaining ChatGPT. You will never find ChatGPT suffering. It is the prerogative of human consciousness alone to suffer. AI can never suffer. We suffer, and we must suffer—and to suffer, we must have some love. Poor AI cannot even suffer.
Either figure out something original and authentic or be prepared to be subjugated to AI. Now, that's the challenge. There is only this way to beat AI — originality, authenticity, creativity, love, understanding, and suffering. Either have these or make way for AI.
Questioner: What I have generally seen is that creative jobs are restricted to only a few upper layers of the social strata.
Acharya Prashant: Here is your proofread and refined text, with minimal changes to retain your original tone and flow. Unnecessary fillers are trimmed, and structure has been cleaned for clarity. Bold and italics are used for emphasis where fitting:
So, let there be fewer jobs and fewer people. Why do you need eight billion people? What is this confidence in expansion? What makes you become eight billion and attempt to become eleven billion? Why? You don't have to kill people—I'm not saying that. But we must see clearly: creativity is not something that ten billion people can exercise. And when people see this, they must abstain from reproduction . Within twenty to thirty years, the population will settle down to a saner level.
You're saying, out of twenty jobs available for twenty people, only two are creative. What will the other eighteen do? My answer is: the other eighteen would do well not to exist. I'm not promoting suicide or genocide. No. I'm just saying that these nonsensical jobs exist only because we are too many.
The ideal situation should be this:
AI performs all the menial, programmable functions, and human beings do only that which AI can never do. But instead, we have become eight billion—so many that we're forced to take up vulgar, cheap, mechanical jobs.
In a survey, I suppose, more than two-thirds of Britain said they don’t believe their job holds any real importance. These are unnecessary jobs, created only because the population exists. Because people are there, you create jobs. But those jobs are not really needed.
There was a famine in Lucknow, and Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was the ruler. What did he do? He brought in large groups of labourers at night to dig a huge pit—because it was summer, and the night was cooler for strenuous work. Then, during the day, he would call in another set of labourers to fill up the pit. And he paid both groups. His logic: “Because there are people, they need a job. So this is their job: one group digs, the other fills. And I’ll pay them.”
