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The story
A survey of 37 countries by the US-based Pew Research Center found that in most countries, including Japan, a majority of respondents expect AI adoption to destroy more jobs than it creates. As generative AI increasingly takes over tasks once done by humans, a 5ch thread saw optimists arguing that ‘new jobs will emerge, just like after the Industrial Revolution’ clash with pessimists countering that ‘no new jobs appear unless demand grows.’ Many posters cited specific jobs like engineers and office workers, describing a real sense that replacement is already happening on the ground.
It has come to light that in most of the 37 countries surveyed worldwide, including Japan, people expect ‘AI to cause job losses rather than job growth.’
Generative AI is capable of replacing a wide range of tasks that used to be handled by human workers, fueling growing concern that AI adoption will shrink employment.
Some argue that ‘like the Industrial Revolution, AI will wipe out some jobs while also creating new ones,’ but a survey of 37 countries by the US’s Pew Research Center found that in most countries, including Japan, people expect ‘AI to cause job losses.’
Source: pewresearch.org / Read the original article here
What people said
Sure, more people will get pushed into unpopular jobs nobody wants, but that's not exactly 'growth.'
Guess I'm next lol
Save me, AI-sama!
We've got a labor shortage anyway, so maybe that's actually about right?
■ 404♡NotFounds – "Escape Key"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stJDcZypObs
If this had been made with real idols, it would've taken 100+ people and a budget well over ¥10 million.
With generative AI, one person can make it for a few tens of thousands of yen (not counting the creator's own labor).
Sure, generative AI and cloud services are creating jobs of their own,
but they might end up cutting jobs for real idols, songwriters, choreographers, and film studios.
Also waiting on Astro so I can handle drafting/technical drawings too.
What the employees who remain will need is creativity and the ability to negotiate with clients.
Just wait until it can write code without needing you around either
No demand means no new jobs get created.
It's great that AI is starting to plow through it.
Whether people can keep up,
and whether there's enough money to go around, those are the real questions now.
But this time it looks like the punchline is just going to be 'why not let AI do that too?'
Why not let AI do the work and let humans take it easy?
Funny how nobody's out there saying 'thanks to AI, in the future everyone will be freed from labor and life will get easier.'
Even though that's obviously exactly how it's going to turn out.
It's fine if a country's food and resource self-sufficiency is high, but if it's low, people end up going hungry.
Even if you hand labor, trade included, over to humanoid robots and AI systems,
if those AI systems and humanoids are themselves imports or run on foreign subscription contracts,
your digital trade deficit just keeps piling up.
In the end the whole country goes bankrupt and has no choice but to be absorbed by whichever nation leads in AI or humanoids.
Probably the US or China.
Japan hasn't prepared for any of this at all.
This time even mathematicians, some of the sharpest minds humanity has, are facing unemployment, so obviously ordinary people aren't needed.
Even among researchers, there are already people who are basically just AI's hands and feet.
Pretty soon the only job left for humans might be taking responsibility and bowing in apology.
Generation Alpha can just go blue-collar.
Replacing existing jobs while keeping the total amount of work constant requires more demand and consumption than before, but with AI lately, supply is clearly overshooting with no healthy outlet to absorb it, so all that supply just keeps pouring into replacing existing fields instead.
Probably those Gulf countries that keep building AI data centers one after another?
They're not just building data centers either — nuclear plants too…
the first thing to get eliminated is the human management layer.
After all, AI has no personal ambition.
Bank employees already need fewer people thanks to automation, and once PCs spread, even career-track staff got cut by roughly half, right?
Hiring is still booming in that hire-a-ton-then-weed-them-out style, but thanks to AI, even licensed professionals probably can't find work.
Pick a course and AI runs the fully automatic wash.
Beep, boop, done — fully automatic delivery.
Beep, boop, done — fully automatic taxi.
What else is there?
Professional athletes
Comedians/entertainers
Service industries built around human contact in general
First off, all blue-collar jobs survive.
Any people-facing job done through a screen is toast though.
I cracked up at the story of a job applicant using an AI avatar for their online interview.
Background and key points of this debate
This survey, run by the US’s Pew Research Center in 2026, asked ordinary citizens across 37 countries how they think AI will affect employment in their own country, and the results show that in most countries, including Japan, expectations of ‘job losses’ outweighed expectations of ‘job growth.’ During the Industrial Revolution, mechanization destroyed jobs while also creating new ones, but the thread raised points that set this moment apart from past technological revolutions: ‘AI-driven replacement is outpacing supply, with demand failing to catch up enough to absorb it’ and ‘operating costs like token fees are a barrier to adoption.’ At the same time, some pushed back with the argument that ‘new jobs, like AI maintenance, should emerge,’ and in practice the optimist and pessimist camps talked past each other rather than converging. Worth noting: this survey only captures people’s ‘expectations’ — it’s easy to misread, but actual employment statistics have not confirmed any AI-driven job losses.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Science News+) thread ‘It has come to light that in most of the 37 countries surveyed worldwide, including Japan, people expect ‘AI to cause job losses rather than job growth’.’
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