Ben Goertzel sees it coming fast. The CEO of SingularityNET, who helped coin the term artificial general intelligence, or AGI, predicts human-level AI in the next year or two. Superintelligence follows right behind. And then? “I think that once you have a human-level [AGI], then, a super intelligence shortly after that, the vast majority of human jobs become obsolete,” he said on the Work 2.0 podcast (YouTube link).
Obsolete. Not reshaped. Gone. Goertzel’s words, from a Yahoo Finance report dated April 30, 2026, cut through the noise. He carves out one exception: preschool teachers. Everyone else? Lawyers vanishing before plumbers. Graphic artists fading faster than electricians. “You can’t tell which specific skill is going to be obsoleted when… Like the fact that lawyers and graphic artists are obsolete before plumbers or electricians or research mathematicians. I mean, that wasn’t obvious to anyone,” Goertzel added.
It’s not hype. Tech giants are already moving. Meta plans to slash 10% of its staff—about 7,800 jobs—by May 20, citing efficiency in a Bloomberg dispatch. Microsoft offers buyouts to 7% of its 125,000 U.S. workers, per CNBC. AI figures in both.
Goldman Sachs economists quantify the drag. AI substitution erased 25,000 U.S. jobs monthly over the past year. Augmentation added back 9,000. Net: 16,000 fewer jobs each month, hitting Gen Z hardest. Unemployment ticks up 0.1 percentage point. “These negative effects fall largely on less experienced workers,” writes economist Elsie Peng in a Goldman Sachs analysis from March 18, 2026. Over a decade, 300 million jobs worldwide face automation. In the U.S., tasks equaling 25% of work hours could go.
But. Reshaping outpaces replacement, says Boston Consulting Group. Over two to three years, 50% to 55% of U.S. jobs change—amplified, rebalanced, enabled by AI. Only 10% to 15% vanish outright. “Aggregated across roles, this suggests that 50% to 55% of US jobs could be reshaped over the next two to three years,” per their April 3, 2026, report.
Entry-level white-collar roles? Doomed soonest. Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Microsoft’s Kai-Fu Lee warn 50% could disappear in one to five years, as noted at the 2026 Transform AI conference and covered by Spectrum News on April 16. Cornell experts push back, tempering the speed. Still, postings for repetitive tasks dropped 13% post-ChatGPT. Demand for analytical, creative work rose 20%, Harvard Business School’s Suraj Srinivasan finds in a Harvard Business Review piece from March 4, 2026. “Rather than solely eliminating jobs, generative AI creates new demand in augmentation-prone roles,” he says.
China acts. A Beijing court ruled companies can’t fire workers just to swap in cost-saving AI. Firings overturned. Labor laws demand major business changes first. Trending on X today, posts from @Pirat_Nation and others highlight the case, signaling global pushback.
And yet. AI births roles too. LinkedIn data shows 640,000 new jobs from 2023-2025, per a Wall Street Journal report cited in LinkedIn news on April 3, 2026. Head of human-AI solutions. AI ethicists. Prompt refiners—for now. Box CEO Aaron Levie argues on X that AI induces demand. More code means more security needs. Easier video spurs media managers. “There are far more categories where AI agents making things more efficient will induce demand for that skill than spaces where agents eliminate the work,” he posted April 6.
Scars linger. Tech-displaced workers spend a month jobless, take 3% pay cuts. Earnings lag 10 points over years, Goldman warns in an April 6 Fortune analysis of 40 years’ data. Older, specialized workers suffer most.
Goertzel doesn’t sugarcoat. Pivot fast. Build connections. Toughen minds and bodies. Universal basic income in rich nations. Free time for what matters. But the shift won’t be gentle. Skills flip overnight. Prompt engineering? Already toast.
Wall Street watches. AI stocks soar amid layoffs. Goldman eyes 6-7% U.S. displacement over 10 years, half-point unemployment bump. PwC data shows AI-skilled workers earning 56% more, per a April 27 Forbes article. The divide widens.
OpenAI’s framework pegs 18% of jobs at high automation risk, 24% facing declining employment. Box CEO Levie again: AI accelerates output until human bottlenecks emerge—lawyers for AI-spawned disputes, doctors for efficient referrals.
Predictions clash. Geoffrey Hinton, AI godfather, sees “many, many jobs” replaced in 2026. World Economic Forum: 85 million gone by then, but 97 million new. IMF: 60% of advanced economy jobs at risk.
Reality bites now. Tech layoffs top 50,000 in 2026’s first three months, AI-cited in 25% versus 5% last year, Barron’s reports via Forbes. Five percent of total U.S. layoffs, though. Not mass yet.
Goertzel’s superintelligence looms. Benevolent AI could liberate. Malevolent? Disaster. But jobs first. Vast majority. Obsolete.
Adapt or fade. The clock ticks.
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