We are on the verge of the age of human redundancy. In 2023, IBM’s chief executive told Bloomberg that soon some 7,800 roles might be replaced by AI. The following year, Duolingo cut a tenth of its contractor workforce; it needed to free up desks for AI. Atlassian followed. Klarna announced that its AI assistant was performing work equivalent to 700 customer-service employees and that reducing the size of its workforce to under 2000 is now its North Star. And Jack Dorsey has been forthright about wanting to hold Block’s headcount flat while AI shoulders the growth.

The trajectory has a compelling internal logic. Routine cognitive work gets automated; junior roles thin out; productivity gains compound year on year. For boards reviewing cost structures, it is the cleanest investment proposition since the internal combustion engine retired the horse, topped up with a kind of moral momentum. Hesitate, the thinking goes, and fall behind.”