Should AI Companies Help Humans Be Employed?

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
​author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick 

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During 25+ years in higher ed, I’ve listened to many commencement addresses and never heard boos. Unfortunately, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt heard some a few weeks ago while addressing the 2026 graduating class of the University of Arizona. His embrace of AI cost him the young crowd, many of whom understandably fear that the unprecedented technology will impede their employment. The ethics of booing speakers aside, students’ outcries spur an important question: Should AI companies be responsible for humans’ jobs?
 
Schmidt wasn’t the only commencement speaker booed this May. Real estate executive Gloria Caulfield received a similarly cold response at the University of Central Florida after innocently referring to the rise of AI as “the next industrial revolution.”
 
It’s fitting to talk about AI in a commencement address; it’s also okay to feel nervous about the tech, as many people do.  A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that only 16% of registered voters believed that AI was mostly good, versus 35% who thought it was mostly bad; 45% were neutral.
 
One well-known leader who has struck a cautionary AI tone is the head of the Catholic Church. Pope Leo recently issued a papal encyclical warning of risks of artificial intelligence including control of weapons, abuse of children, and loss of jobs.
 
There are good reasons for recent college grads and the Pope to be concerned about employment:

• In an effort to refocus its operations on AI, Meta, parent of Facebook and Instagram, recently cut the jobs of 8,000 workers worldwide.
• Intuit, maker of QuickBooks and TurboTax, plans to lay off 3,100 employees, or about 17% of its workforce, to enable more to be spent on AI.
• So far in 2026 over 115,000 tech sector employees have been laid off; although it’s not clear how many of those job cuts were AI-related.
• For the second time, fast good giant McDonald’s is working to implement drive-thrus serviced by AI.

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In addition, Fortune sounds an alarm saying, “Workers are anxiously awaiting the fate of their careers as more employers tout the opportunity to automate certain roles, and even whole departments.” Similarly, Bloomberg suggests that new grads face “the toughest job market since the pandemic.”

However, some maintain a more optimistic employment outlook. Strada Institute for the Future of Work recently surveyed nearly 1,500 executives and senior talent leaders across the U.S., from companies of various sizes and industries. Nearly three times as many respondents expected that the use of AI tools would increase entry-level hiring, versus those who said the tech would decrease it.
 
Jeff Bezos’s employment outlook is even more positive. In an interview with CNBC, the Amazon CEO predicted that AI-generated gains in productivity could lead to a labor shortage.

In sum, we all know that AI use is exploding. Total revenue from AI, which was estimated at $214 billion in 2024, is projected to reach $1,339 billion by 2030. What we don’t know is how exactly the technology’s pervasive reach will impact us socially and economically, including jobs. Some claim to know, but realistically, no one does.
 
As an avid consumer of business news, I’ve watched AI’s trajectory closely over recent years, and synthesizing the analyses of many tech leaders, it seems the conventional wisdom about AI’s job impact has evolved as follows:

1. AI will increase employment opportunities.
2. People won’t lose jobs to AI but to people who use AI.
3. AI will replace the work of a significant number of entry-level employees.
4. We may be on the precipice an unprecedented job displacement.

 
Technology taking the jobs of people is nothing new. Human history is full of examples that most people probably would say were for the good, e.g., using tractors vs. farming by hand; using bulldozers vs. digging with shovels; using conveyor belts vs. moving heavy freight by hand.
 
Still, AI is different. In the context of all living things, physical prowess has never been humans’ competitive advantage. Many members of the animal kingdom can beat us easily in contests of strength and speed, but none can outthink us. Because AI can, it cuts to the heart of our competitive advantage as humans.
 
For that reason, in the history of innovations, retooling people for different jobs is unlike it’s ever been. It’s not easy to work harder, smarter, and faster than AI.
 
Yet, in many fields there’s work that AI can’t do, for instance in personal selling, AI can’t share a meal with a potential customer, tell an original story, interpret contextual clues, or express genuine emotion. A smart salesperson understands these unique human advantages and also uses the right AI tools to work more efficiently and effectively, e.g., for prospecting, roleplaying, and identifying the best product solutions.
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AI isn’t replacing all human’s jobs, but it’s certainly replacing many and ultimately may end up replacing more than any technology ever has. Given that profound impact, a reasonable question is, should AI companies be responsible for identifying and/or providing work opportunities for humans?
 
Those who subscribe to the economic thinking of Milton Friedman might argue that there’s no place for such business benevolence. Instead, a corporation’s only responsibility is to produce profit and increase shareholder wealth.
 
However, in the age of AI, a concern for every corporation should be that unemployed people have little money to purchase companies’ products. Although AI may be responsible for unprecedented productivity gains, AI doesn’t buy products; people buy products, and for those purchases to happen, people need income, which usually comes from jobs.
 
Enlightened companies also recognize that people increasingly want to buy products from, and work for, businesses that care about more than their own bottom lines. Many in Gen Z, especially, want to buy from and work for organizations that are that socially responsible.
 
Archie Carroll’s Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility synthesizes well the premise that beyond being economically, legally, and ethically viable, organizations should look to have positive impacts in specific ways on their communities.
 
There’s also the reality that most people truly want to work, not just to earn money but because a fulfilling job, or meaningful work, is often one of the most important things in a person’s life. For that reason one of the greatest gifts organizations can give individuals is to employ them.
 
In sum, people need the products and jobs that businesses provide, and businesses need people to buy their products and, in many cases, to work for them. Beyond those mutual dependencies, businesses also do a societal good when they provide meaningful work.
 
So, at a time when human jobs are being lost to AI, what can businesses do to help people remain gainfully employed? I’ve given the question considerable thought. I also asked ChatGPT to share its perspective.
 
AI and I had several of the same ideas. Each of us also had some thoughts that the other didn’t. Below are our combined suggestions for how AI companies can help humans find jobs. Noted in brackets is who the idea came from: ChatGPT, me, or both.

 1.) Train people to use AI: [Both] Projecting just a few years forward, it’s easy to imagine a future in which virtually everyone uses AI in their personal lives and in their jobs. For those reasons, it’s important that people become familiar with the technology and comfortable using it in at least basic ways, e.g., effective prompt writing.  

Although people can and should learn to use AI on their own, companies with strong AI capabilities can provide resources and opportunities that transcend those that most individuals can access personally. AI firms should create and distribute training tools, likely online asynchronous modules, first for their own employees but also ones that the general population can access.
 
2.) Identify and create new opportunities for employment: [Both] Historically, as technology obsoletes some jobs (e.g., telephone operator) it creates others (e.g., computer network administrator). Granted, AI’s impact on highly skilled labor is unique, but some uniquely human opportunities have already emerged, and there will likely be others.
 
Although AI-integrated robotics are rapidly achieving human-like performance in many physical tasks, there likely always will be ones that robots either won’t be able to do as well or that people will simply prefer to have humans do. For instance, although it’s already possible for AI-enabled robots to teach students and perform music, many people will likely prefer to learn from other humans and be entertained by them.
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Marketing certainly has not been immune from AI’s job impacts; for example, AI can make in minutes logo designs that might take a good graphic artist hours or days to create. However, AI designs are often amalgamations of existing ones that lack originality. In a recent Ad Age article, Greg Hahn expressed a unique opportunity for humans in the field, “AI can automate the mechanics, but human judgment and creativity are what drive impact for brands.”

3.) Advocating for public policy solutions: [ChatGPT] Besides AI companies, government is the other big player that can make a significant impact on jobs for humans in the age of AI. California governor Gavin Newsom recently issued an executive order calling for, among other things, expanded training programs for white collar workers, aimed at offsetting AI-related job displacement.
 
While those kinds of public policy initiatives may come from within government, they also can be spurred by businesses that imagine them and advocate for them. Companies often are able to wield economic influence that individuals cannot. [Both]

4.) Help job seekers in the search process: [Me] As mentioned above, people need uniquely human jobs and possibly training to do them, likely using AI. However, those opportunities don’t matter if people can’t find them. In some ways, job hunting has never been easier; in other ways, it’s never been harder. 

The same technology that allows applicants to easily customize resumes and cover letters for every organization to which they wish to apply also enables companies to screen resumes using AI and even have chatbots interview job candidates. Best practices for job hunting are rapidly changing. AI companies are well-equipped to help job seekers navigate the challenging new landscape.
 
Of course, not all businesses are able to assist with each of these four recommendations, and some, because of their size and limited resources, may not be able to do any. Several that should be able to have significant positive influence on human jobs are firms such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and NVIDIA, as well as those with leading AI models like Anthropic, Open AI, and Perplexity, and enterprise AI leaders like Databricks, IBM, and Palantir.
 
There likely always have and always will be people who ‘boo’ new technology. Such cynicism can be helpful for ensuring that refinements are made, guardrails set, and support given so technology helps people, not harms them.
 
While our future with AI is uncertain, what is certain is that people need jobs, mainly because meaningful work is an important part of life for most people. Although it’s challenging, we need organizations that look beyond themselves and their own AI use to help humans find meaningful employment. Such firms are responsible for some of our world’s most Mindful Marketing.
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