The Robots Are Coming for Your Job Sooner Than You Think: AI Researcher – Newsweek

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For most people, artificial intelligence is still associated with chatbots like ChatGPT—a helpful, if imperfect, tool for answering questions and generating conversational responses. But that perception may vastly undersell the scale of change that AI is about to bring.

For those clinging to the belief that automation and robots are still decades away from significantly impacting the workforce, Adam Dorr, director of research at the think tank RethinkX, has a stark warning: this change is going to be fundamental, and it’s coming faster than nearly anyone thinks.

“What we’re seeing with AI today follows the same historical pattern we’ve seen with every major technological shift,” Dorr, an environmental scientist and technology theorist who wrote a recent essay on the topic, said in an exclusive interview with Newsweek. “It doesn’t take 50 or 100 years for industries to change. It takes 15 to 20 years, sometimes even less.”

The future of AI isn’t a distant possibility—it’s already here, Dorr says, reshaping industries at a breakneck pace. AI is no longer just a tool for streamlining tedious tasks; it is advancing so quickly that entire professions are at risk of disappearing whole cloth.

AI will not remain confined to a computer, Dorr said, arguing that one of the big watershed events on the horizon will be the marriage of advanced AI with robotics. He predicts that the first major sign of this revolution will be self-driving cars, which are already operating in a handful of American cities and which he believes will take over the country’s roads within the next two years.

“When people start seeing fully autonomous cars on the streets—no driver, no steering wheel—that’s when the public will finally understand how fast this is moving,” he said. “And once AI is in vehicles, it won’t stop there. It will quickly move into other robotic forms, including humanoid robots.”

That timeline doesn’t leave much room for complacency. A recent poll by data research firm Prolific found about two-thirds of respondents believe AI will lead to significant job losses in the next decade. And according to Dorr, they are not wrong. Humanity is standing at the precipice of a transformation that will not only automate entire sectors of the labor market faster than expected but also fundamentally alter the economy, resource distribution and even society itself.

“There’s no long-term escape from this,” Dorr said. “By the 2040s, there will be almost nothing a robot can’t do better and cheaper than a human.”

Will the technology create jobs? Yes, but then it will take those jobs, too.

Which Jobs Are at Risk?

Most jobs aren’t singular activities; they are a collection of tasks, Dorr argues, and AI will gradually chip away at them. At first, AI will assist workers, improving efficiency and productivity. But as it improves, it will eliminate the need for human involvement altogether.

“That shift will have profound consequences for employment,” he said. “AI will not replace workers overnight. Instead, it will erode jobs one task at a time.”

The cost advantage is undeniable. A survey by ResumeBuilder found that 37 percent of companies using AI have already replaced human workers, with 44 percent planning layoffs in 2024 due to AI automation.

However, despite the mounting evidence of AI-driven job loss, some insist that fears of a workforce apocalypse are overblown. The idea that AI will replace the labor force entirely is dismissed by many in the tech world, who claim that automation will instead enhance human capabilities rather than eliminate them.

Dr. Cain Elliott, Chief Legal Futurist at Filevine, shares this cautious optimism—particularly in the legal industry, where AI has begun reshaping workflows.

“AI is a tool, not a replacement for legal judgment,” Elliott told Newsweek. “When that tool malfunctions, or worse, is misused—the responsibility still falls squarely on the human operator.”

Dorr, however, warns that the assumption that AI will only affect low-skill, repetitive jobs is dangerously outdated. While factory workers and truck drivers may be among the first to feel the impact of automation, white-collar professions are just as — if not more — vulnerable.

Paralegals, financial analysts, customer service representatives, and even journalists are already seeing their roles altered by AI. AI-driven software can analyze contracts faster than human lawyers, trade stocks more accurately than some of the best financial quants and even write entire articles and scripts—tasks once thought to require human intuition.

“We need to stop thinking about AI replacing entire jobs all at once,” Dorr said. “Instead, we should be looking at how it takes over tasks—slowly at first, and then all at once.”

Some industries are already seeing this dynamic play out in real time. Users are replacing costly human nutritionists with AI assistants that generate highly personalized diet plans based on just a single human input. In fields like design and marketing, AI is delivering work faster and at a lower cost than human professionals. According to McKinsey, sales and marketing personnel are leading the way, with 14 percent regularly using generative AI at work.

A Brief Window to Adapt

Despite the growing alarm, there is still time to prepare. But that window is closing quickly.

Dorr stresses that societies must act now to navigate this transition in a way that ensures economic and social stability. Governments and businesses should be investing in research and experimentation to determine policies that will help workers adapt to a rapidly evolving job market.

Ideas such as universal basic income (UBI) are being discussed as possible solutions to the displacement of human labor. Other proposals involve restructuring education, rethinking economic models, and even redefining the very concept of work itself.

Dorr acknowledges that no single solution to such mass disruption exists, but waiting until millions of people are unemployed is not an option.

He estimates that the cost of robotic labor will eventually fall to near zero. A humanoid robot, he explains, could soon cost as little as $10,000, with a lifetime operational cost of just 25 cents per hour.

Once the robots can then build other robots, that cost falls further, to essentially nothing.

Who Controls AI?

As AI accelerates, another concern is growing about who has dominion over the technology.

Some fear that wealthy nations and corporations will monopolize AI, widening economic inequality. Countries that rely on manual labor industries—such as agriculture, textile production, or manufacturing—may find themselves struggling to compete in a world where automation dominates.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump announced the launch of “Stargate,” a joint venture involving OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and MGX, aiming to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the United States by 2029. But the recent Prolific poll found that 38 percent of Americans do not believe such an investment will benefit workers or small businesses.

Another challenge is AI’s energy consumption. Data centers require enormous amounts of electricity to run advanced AI models, raising concerns about the environmental impact if that energy comes from “dirty” power sources like coal. Scientists have estimated that the power requirements of data centers in North America increased from 2,688 megawatts at the end of 2022 to 5,341 megawatts at the end of 2023, partly driven by the demands of generative AI.

This is an area where Dorr exhibits some level of optimism, particularly about AI’s potential for decentralization. He believes that open-source AI models like China’s DeepSeek could allow smaller nations and communities to develop their own AI-driven economies.

“The goal should be to ensure that AI benefits all of humanity, not just a handful of powerful players,” he said.

A World Without Scarcity

If these big questions are handled thoughtfully — a big if — Dorr sees a potential that many utopian futurists have long predicted: an end of scarcity itself. A world where labor is made optional and human beings can pursue meaningful lives free from economic hardship.

“Imagine a world where AI-powered robots farm, build, manufacture, and provide services at such low cost that essential goods become as abundant as the air we breathe,” he said. “This is the opportunity AI presents.”

For most of history, economies have been built around the principle of limited resources—food, energy, labor. The assumption has always been that not everyone can have everything they want all the time. But if AI and robotics can dramatically reduce the cost of production, Dorr argues, societies could enter an era where goods and services are produced at near-zero cost.

Not everyone shares this optimism. Carter Price, a senior mathematician at the RAND Corporation think tank, cautions that while AI may reduce the need for certain tasks, it could also create demand for more workers in other areas.

“When thinking about the implications for specific jobs, these tools are more likely to replace tasks than jobs, which may mean that you need fewer people to do the work or it could mean that more people are needed because the productivity is much higher with all the low value work is being done by machines,” Price said.

Achieving Dorr’s best-case outcome will require careful planning and adaptation, he said. Without intervention, Dorr predicts wealth concentration and inequality will intensify—with the benefits of AI controlled by a small number of corporations and nations.

“The robots are coming,” Dorr said. “They’re coming for everyone’s jobs. “The question isn’t whether we can achieve this future of abundance. The question is whether we can transition to it smoothly, without chaos.”