Every generation is faced with something they think is bigger than the last. For instance, I had family members who lived through The Great Depression and World War II, and I'm sure people thought those things would be the end of the world as well.
Even in my own life, I remember when people said the world would end with Y2K (when the century changed over from 1999 to 2000,) and that every computer would freeze up, and planes would fall out of the sky.
I do understand that AI, like everything that came before it, seems like the biggest challenge yet. A Christian friend once told me she wondered if God was purposely allowing (not directing, but allowing,) the population growth to slow down because He knows there won't be as many jobs with AI.
I think my generation is the last that was raised without the internet (it came into play when I was in college,) and I do wonder what that means for humanity.
I think there will still be jobs, but they'll be highly specialized, and unfortunately, only a few will qualify for them. I listen to a lot of company and financial news, and when the talk around AI started to explode, every major company was reporting laying off employees by the tens of thousands.
A few months later, the narrative changed, with many of these places finding AI to be limited, and now had to hire people back. However, the ones coming back obviously weren't those running for coffee and filing papers. It's only for those who are at the top of their game.
So I often wonder how those positions are going to be filled in the future. Every area of work is becoming more specific and complex. People in basic jobs are losing out to machines, but the people who know how to build, program, and fix those machines will have more than enough work cut out for them. I'm particularly interested to see what happens in the medical field (robots doing surgery, etc.), because with the TikTok generation, what human will have the concentration skills to perform 8-hour surgeries anymore?
But even then, who is going to be be able to build, program, direct, and maintain all these machines? (Of course, maybe we're headed for what the sci-fi movies tell us -- robots building, directing, and advancing robots, with minimal or no need for humans.)
The culture today is raising everyone to be the exact opposite of what it will take to fulfill those positions, if there are any left.
I listen to a lot of social commentary about how, for most people today, everything is about them: what they want, how they see the world, what they can grab while they can, and if things like responsibilities (paying bills, etc.) don't "serve them," they write it off and dig themselves into an even deeper pit. But it's always someone or something else's fault, never their own. And they think they deserve the world -- just for existing.
They complain about feeling lonely and isolated, but what they want is to meet people who will be all about them, without even bothering to ask other people what they like or want to talk about.
All the things needed to succeed in the jobs of the future -- patience, discipline, self-control, dedication, and a lot of sacrifice -- no longer exist into today's culture.
One thing I do know is that some how, some way, God provides for His people.
It might not be big and flashy. We all might have to learn do do with a lot less.
But during the Plague of Darkness in Egypt, God provided His people with light.
When Laban kept changing Jacob's wages, God made sure those sheep bore whatever Laban told him he would be paid with. If Laban would have said that Jacob would be paid with the sheep born with stars and stripes, well, you could probably place bets on what the next batch of lambs would look like!
I agree that we're living in worrisome times, but I can't think of a time, in my life at least, that society WASN'T worried about The Next Big Thing, because This Time It's Different. It's Always Different.
Believe me, I get very concerned, especially for my college-age nieces and nephews (who, praise the Lord, are all bright, smart, hard-working, and extremely disciplined.)
But even then, I pray over them constantly because I know it's a big, scary, impersonal, and very robotic world out there.
All I can do is what all Christians are to do -- cling to the promise that God is who He says He is, does what He says He will do, and that He will not forget us.
