Is AI Replacing Us? Good News For Knowledge Workers – Forbes

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“Is AI replacing us?” That’s one of the most common questions I hear from my students. If AI automates repetitive tasks, doesn’t that mean fewer jobs? Business consulting firms often push this narrative, but they’re missing the bigger picture. I “replaced” myself with an AI clone as a teacher. Here’s what I found. AI is augmenting knowledge workers, not replacing them. It makes them more efficient, allowing them to create more value. And as any enterprise leader or CEO knows — when more value is created, the demand for skilled professionals increases. In the long run, AI will generate more jobs, not fewer.

AI Replacing Jobs or AI Creating Jobs?

Let’s examine four case studies across law, telecommunications, education, and healthcare.

_{LAW & AI: OCR Created More Lawyers}

Take the legal profession as an example. A well-documented case is OCR (Optical Character Recognition). OCR is based on AI, and it revolutionized legal work. Before OCR, legal teams relied on staff to manually read, annotate, and organize documents — a slow, expensive process. With OCR, lawyers could search and analyze text instantly, dramatically reducing costs and increasing efficiency. By lowering costs, OCR democratized access to legal services, increasing the overall demand for lawyers. Today, AI is once again reshaping legal work. That’s why I invested in FLANK.AI, a company that automates legal document summarization. Instead of spending hours reviewing paperwork, lawyers can now focus on higher-value tasks like strategy, case analysis, and client advocacy. Some clerical work was replaced by OCR, and people who only did that type of work might have been “replaced.” But in the larger context, it created value. If we focus only on a single area, we might miss the bigger picture.

Telecommunications & AI: AI Replacing Jobs but…

Another example is the AT&T switchboard study — it analyzed how automation replaced switchboard operators. Those jobs disappeared, but cheaper, more accessible communication fueled an explosion of new industries, businesses, and job opportunities leading to more job growth for the next generation.

AI Replacing Jobs in Education? My AI Clone at eCornell

Last year, I built one of the first online certificate — Designing and Building AI Solutions — where I, as a teacher, replaced myself with an AI clone. First, I created a clone that looks like me (see video). Moreover I used r2decide, a company that creates AI sales agents, to clone all my knowledge. You can now chat with me about AI 24/7. The clone is public – test it out here.

AI Supercharge Education

Why did I do this? To supercharge education:

1. With an AI clone, this is now a no-code course. My Students can imagine business ideas and have the AI clone write the necessary code.
2. Because I cloned myself, we now have a 24/7 teaching assistant that students can consult at any time.
3. My AI clone demonstrates AI in action, complementing the many examples I provide in finance, tech, and other fields.

It’s easy to see the positive impact of a virtual Lutz on the course “Designing and Building AI Solutions”. Doest this mean that I replace myself as a teacher? Not even close! AI can summarize information, but it can’t predict future trends. Try having a meaningful discussion about the risks of AI — you won’t get deep insights. That’s not surprising, given how Large Language Models (LLMs) work. We lack historical data on AI risks, so an LLM struggles to provide accurate assessments.

Teaching is more than just delivering knowledge. My students can replace my readings by going to ChatGPT. And they should — it makes them faster, and that’s a good thing. My teaching is becoming more about understanding and evaluating AI trends to find the best ways to use AI for business.

AI & Health: The Changing Role of Doctors

One other powerful use of AI is in healthcare. I built several AI-driven tools for Google Health and later for a small insurance company. One of my good friends, Pete Clardy, formerly faculty at Harvard Medical school and now one of the brightest medical minds at Google Health, reviewed ata a recent Cornell Tech Symposium how technology has changed the medical field.

1. During his medical training, memorization was key. “I was a better doctor if I could memorize the seven stages of disease progression.”
2. Then, as the internet made digital information easily accessible, this changed. “Now, I was a better doctor if I could summarize information effectively.”
3. With AI, this is changing again. Transformer models (like MedicalBERT) can summarize better than humans. The key skill now is critical thinking.

Note, also that might soon be challenged by new AI models such as O1 and O4 (see my review here). But those further advancements will free doctors to focus on human connection, improving medicine overall.

Is AI Replacing Us? No—It’s Pushing Us to Evolve

AI isn’t an existential threat to jobs—it’s a tool that enhances human capabilities. AI is good news, especially for knowledge workers—engineers, managers, educators, doctors—because it is expanding opportunities rather than eliminating them. Maybe watch the 2004 movie I, Robot. The protagonist recounts how a robot saved him instead of a younger girl, having calculated her survival chance at just 11% — lower than his own.

The phrase “11% is enough” became a meme and it captures the belief that not everything should be reduced to cold calculations. Unlike machines, humans possess compassion, making choices that defy pure logic.

Adaption Needed – The Future is Uneven Distributed

Will we need to adapt? Absolutely. Those who only perform static, repetitive work may need to retrain. There is a question how we can best work alongside AI as a colleague.

The future arrives unevenly, and the real question is: How do we, as a society, support those who need to learn new skills? And yes — AI will help with that too under the guidance of a human.