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The "AI will take all our jobs" story has been everywhere. Andrew Ng, one of the most respected names in AI, says that story is wrong and he's willing to put a name on what he thinks comes next.
Let's get into it.
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TODAY'S DEEP DIVE
Andrew Ng's Take on AI and Jobs
On May 12, 2026, Andrew Ng, founder of Google Brain and co-founder of Coursera, posted a detailed argument on X pushing back hard on the narrative that AI is headed toward destroying the job market.
The post takes aim at what Ng calls the "jobpocalypse" story, the idea that AI will soon wipe out jobs at a scale that leaves millions unemployed with nowhere to go. Ng says that narrative is not just wrong, but actively harmful.
The Core Argument
Ng's argument has several layers worth unpacking.
The first is historical. Technology has always changed jobs. It has never eliminated them on a net basis. The World Economic Forum's 2020 report on the future of work projected that automation would displace 85 million jobs by 2025 while simultaneously creating 97 million new ones, a net gain of 12 million. Prior waves of automation and computing transformed what workers did without triggering the collapse that critics predicted.
Andrew Ng | TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The second layer is about who benefits from the fear. Ng makes a sharp observation here. Frontier AI labs, he argues, have a financial incentive to amplify stories about AI's power. The more unstoppable AI sounds, the more valuable their products appear.
Similarly, enterprise SaaS companies typically charge anywhere from $100 to $1,000 per user per year, but if an AI tool can replace or significantly augment an employee earning $100,000 annually, charging $10,000 for that tool starts to look reasonable. Exaggerating AI's capabilities lets companies anchor pricing to salaries rather than to software.
The third layer concerns how companies talk about their own layoffs. Ng points out that framing a reduction in headcount as "AI-driven efficiency" looks far better in a press release than admitting the company overhired during the pandemic when interest rates were near zero and government stimulus was generous. The AI story is convenient cover for decisions that had little to do with AI.
What the Data Actually Shows
The U.S. unemployment rate held at 4.3% in April 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a level most economists consider healthy. That figure is not consistent with a labor market in structural collapse.
The software engineering picture is more nuanced than a simple "strong hiring" headline suggests. Overall software engineering job postings are well below their 2022 peak, and entry-level roles face real competition. But AI and machine learning engineering roles grew 163% year over year in 2025, according to Robert Half's analysis of BLS data. Security engineering, cloud infrastructure, and data roles are also in high demand, with tech salaries projected to rise 8 to 10% in 2026. The market is not shrinking; it is shifting. Engineers who can work with AI tools are the ones finding multiple offers.
Ng's claim that software engineering hiring broadly "remains strong" is an oversimplification. What is accurate is that skilled software engineers, especially those who can integrate AI into products and systems, remain very much in demand, while the market for generalist junior roles has tightened.
The Broader Pattern
Ng draws a comparison worth sitting with. He notes that societies have a long history of telling themselves scary stories about technology for years before the reality proves much more ordinary. Fear of nuclear plant safety led to chronic underinvestment in nuclear power.
The "population bomb" panic of the 1960s led several countries to implement harsh population-reduction policies. For decades, fear of dietary fat pushed governments to promote high-sugar diets that turned out to be worse. The fear was real. The predicted catastrophe was not.
He sees the AI jobpocalypse narrative in the same category.
The Prediction
Ng's counter-claim is specific. He predicts not a jobpocalypse but what he calls an "AI jobapalooza", a wave of new AI engineering roles, many of them outside the traditional big-tech employer base, as companies across every industry scramble to build, deploy, and manage AI systems. He is also optimistic about non-AI roles, arguing that the skills required will change rather than disappear, and that people who become proficient in AI tools will be well positioned regardless of their field.
The case is credible. AI and ML engineering job postings grew over 160% in a single year. Defense tech, financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing are all hiring aggressively for technical talent. The bottleneck is not the number of jobs but the number of people with the right skills to fill them.
The Bottom Line
Ng is not saying AI doesn't change jobs. He is saying the change looks more like previous waves of technology than a civilizational collapse of employment. The evidence on unemployment and AI engineering demand broadly supports that view, even if the picture for traditional software roles is messier than he lets on. The more important takeaway is his point about incentives, because the people loudest about AI taking all the jobs often have something to sell. That context matters when you are deciding how seriously to take the fear.
AI PROMPT OF THE DAY
Category: Career Planning
"I work as a [your current role] with [X years] of experience in [your industry]. Given how AI tools are changing the skills needed in my field, help me identify the three highest-leverage skills I should build over the next 12 months to stay competitive and open new opportunities. Be specific about tools, formats, and how each skill connects to real job demand."
ONE LAST THING
The most interesting part of Ng's post is not the optimism but the point about incentives. When a lab building AI software tells you AI is on the verge of replacing all human workers, that story happens to make their product sound very powerful and very worth paying for. Keeping that conflict of interest in mind is not cynicism. It is just good reading. Hit reply, I read every response.
See you in the next one.
— Vivek
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