‘AI’s threat to labour’ was the title of my The Agenda piece here five Sundays ago. My piece prior to that was entitled ‘The AI valley of good and…’ Some of my readers have labelled my forecasts about artificial intelligence (AI) and the impact that it is having, and will soon have, on blue- and white-collar jobs as “over-hyped” and “inflated”.

Unsurprisingly, those who claim I am over-hyping the impact that AI is having on jobs have latched onto conjecture as evidence, suppositions as facts, and unverified utterances as proof. Those snares will not catch me.

Rural folks often say, “Nuh watch di noise a di market, watch fi yuh correct change.”’ Or, “Don’t watch the noise in the market, watch the sale.” These sayings have similar meaning. That is, focus on the specifics and, more importantly, on the facts, and do not let the detractors and distractions derail your focus.

Our forebears created these adages through hundreds of years of lived experience. More of us need to attend to the practical and philosophical genius of aphorisms like these, instead of the snares of empty “chattins”.

The following job losses during 2025 into 2026 are not a figment of my imagination:

• UPS: 48,000

• Amazon: 32,000

• Intel: 27,159

• Microsoft: 15,387

• Nestlé: 16,000

• Verizon: 15,000

• Google: 12,000

• Chevron: 8,000

• Paramount: 7,000

• Walmart: 7,000

• Procter & Gamble: 7,000

•Estée Lauder: 7,000

• Citigroup: 6,500

• Disney: 5,500

• Salesforce: 5,000

• HP: 5,000

The management teams of these companies, many of which are tech firms, often use various euphemisms to gloss over the reality that thousands of people are losing their livelihoods.

When America sneezes, Jamaica catches a cold. It bears repeating, as night follows day: Companies in Jamaica will soon start inhaling the flu droplets from up North. Those who want to bury their heads in the sand, like the proverbial ostrich, are deluding themselves. Denial and wishful thinking cannot stop the forces of the AI hurricane heading to our shores.

“There you go again, Higgins, over-magnifying the impact of AI,” some will bellow.

Convenient blindness is very dangerous, especially for developing countries like Jamaica.

I watched the recent presentation of the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Kristalina Georgieva at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The IMF chief warned that AI is impacting the labour market like a “tsunami”, with projections showing AI will affect nearly 40 per cent of jobs globally, and approximately 60 per cent of jobs in advanced economies.

The IMF head said the AI transformation risks increasing income inequality and recommends governments strengthen social safety nets and offer retraining programmes.

Those who do not worship at the altar of foolish and convenient blindness can read the ‘Gen-AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work’ report on the IMF’s website.

A tsunami is a life-threatening event. Common sense dictates that, to preserve life and limb, people must move as quickly as possible to higher ground — and do so long before the giant and destructive waves hit the shore. Those who want to wait for the arrival of the killer waves to take selfies and/or those who want to experience the ultimate surfing thrill, can go right ahead. Well-thinking Jamaicans need to stay sober.

EXPERTS SAY…

Professors Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, and Yann LeCun are known as the Godfathers of AI. They are recognised globally as pioneering researchers in AI. They won the 2018 Turing Award for their foundational work in deep learning and neural networks. Their decades-long collaboration enabled major breakthroughs in computer vision and speech recognition. The groundbreaking work in the field of AI by these three giants is acknowledged internationally as the primary driving force for today’s AI boom.

I quoted these international experts and made reference to several others in my two mentioned columns. I would rather believe the utterances of these kinds of individuals over people who downloaded their academic credentials from social media.

As we grow and develop as a society we must increasingly and strategically limit our reliance on self-acclaimed gurus. The utterances of wannabe experts, charlatans, and fly-by-nights are often not helpful. We must embrace more evidence-based thinking from friends of facts, not crowing quacks.

Based on current wealth and influence, these nine individuals are the most prominent tech leaders in the world: Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, xAI), Larry Page (Alphabet/Google), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Sergey Brin (Alphabet/Google), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Jensen Huang (NVIDIA), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft), and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI — a leading AI research company behind ChatGPT, DALL-E, and GPT-3. In media circles, they are often referred to as tech bros or tech titans.

Several credible media reports indicate that the AI industry — largely controlled by the nine individuals mentioned — is investing some US$500 billion in data centre infrastructure over the 2025–2026 period. When businesses shell out this kind of money they expect a very handsome return on their investments one way or another.

Businesses exist to make a profit, and I have no issue with that, since profit keeps businesses in business. Anyway, credible reports also say that the mentioned tech bros plan to spend another US$500 billion on the build-out of data centres across the United States of America shortly.

Data centres are the energy warehouses needed to power AI technologies. These facilities consume gargantuan amounts of energy, namely electricity, and water (specifically potable water, not seawater). Some experts are already arguing that the environmental damage they are causing and will cause is not worth the economic benefits they will enable.

In the medium and long term data centres do not create or facilitate massive numbers of on-site jobs. These centres are essentially storehouses for computer hardware. I will discuss the finer logistical points of these behemoths in another piece.

Anyway, just think about it, one trillion dollars worth of investments poured into AI and robotics in just a few short years. No one commits that kind of capital without expecting extremely handsome returns. Do you really believe these nine tech bros and their fellow investors lose sleep over the impact on individuals and families in places like Jamaica as they allocate their massive resources? Do you think they’re truly concerned about the millions worldwide scraping by on a dollar a day?

AI and robotics are perhaps the most revolutionary and transformative technologies in recorded history. These nine individuals and their confederates are shelling out billions because they foresee that their investments will grant them unprecedented global power and wealth for many decades.

How? The AI and robotics technologies being developed and enabled will allow especially large global companies to eliminate millions of jobs currently done by human beings. In so doing, company profits will expand exponentially, while the livelihoods of millions globally will be destroyed.

When will these things begin to happen? They have started already. Experts predict that AI systems and robotics will become as smart as humans within three to 10 years — and smarter than humans by 2045.

Welcome to our brave new world. In the old world, trained humans possessed a big advantage over machines. Critically, machines could not operate themselves. Cognitive and intellectual controls have been the sole preserve of human beings since recorded history. Understand this, without serious and binding local and international legislation, that reality could be upended if — more likely when — AI systems achieve what is called The Singularity.

Some people addicted to religious fanaticism and superstitious claptrap — along with those who drink the poison of conspiracy theories — will conflate the content of this piece to fuel their fixation with an inevitable apocalyptic crash of Earth. I am not a doomer. Robots and digital technologies have helped doctors make faster and more precise diagnoses. Technology has enabled faster and more efficient communication, transportation, manufacturing, and trading.

Genesis 1: 28 warns, “Subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Listen!

Previously I said, “The matter of AI and its immediate and longer-term impact on the lives and livelihoods of populations globally will be the hottest economic, social, and political issue in the coming years — I forecast. It will cause some illegitimate regimes and ill-prepared democratic governments to crumble.”

We must not be caught flat-footed. “He who hath ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mark 4: 9)

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER!

If Jamaica fails to speedily prepare for the oncoming tsunami of AI and robotics technologies we will face massive social, economic, and political fallout at levels unprecedented in this country’s history, I believe.

Five Sundays ago, I posed this and related questions here: What is this Administration’s actionable plan to address the job displacements and replacements soon to impact especially entry-level, computer-based jobs?

Subsequently, I heard Dr Andrew Wheatley, minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for science, technology, and special projects, state on a radio programme that Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness had recently established a committee to explore/guide, among other things, how Jamaica can better prepare for AI and robotics opportunities, etc. Then there was a column in this newspaper by Dr Wheatley which set out particulars of the committee’s and related preparation work. Well, as we say locally, “Better late than never.”

Here is something that might help the mentioned committee in their considerations: Professor Geoffrey Hinton says that, in preparation for the AI and robotics revolution, the best kind of education is one that helps people think critically.

“AI is lagging in physical dexterity. AI will replace especially intellectual entry-level jobs before it replaces jobs that depend more so on physical dexterity,” Professor Hinton forecasts.

Some experts predict that corporate giants in the US and some developed countries will, in the coming years, outsource thousands — if not millions — of entry-level intellectual jobs that are currently done with a computer. As I understand it, these jobs will require skills beyond those that our nearly 70,000 workers in the local business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, for example, currently possess. Jamaica will have to compete for jobs.

Many rich and poor countries are already very advanced in their preparations for the diverse opportunities that AI and robotics will facilitate. The United Kingdom is speedily implementing its ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’ (Gov.UK). Bangladesh is briskly implementing its 2026–2030 plans.. I could go on. We must step up the pace as AI is serious business!

Last September China announced mandatory AI education for all primary and secondary school students. Children as young as three years old will be required to participate in this initiative, making China the first country to mandate AI education nationwide at such an early level. As I understand it, this initiative is focused on rich sensitisation that is exciting children’s minds about AI, rather than examinations.

Finland has recently expanded its widespread AI literacy efforts, including integrating AI education into school curricula for children as young as six years old to help combat deepfakes and misinformation. Many other countries have already launched national AI initiatives to meet their respective needs. I recommend that especially legislators read the most recent Citrini Report entitled The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis. It examines the crucial issue of what happens when intelligence is no longer scarce.

Garfield Higgins is an educator and journalist. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com

From the year 2025 into 2026 UPS has cut some 48,000 jobs.

Elon Musk, one of the most prominent tech leaders in the world. 

HIGGINS … articles are devoted to one purpose — the unmitigated distortion of Peter Phillips’ achievements.