Growth without work: The human cost of the AI revolution — SkimNews
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- India's medical transcription industry collapsed as American clients shifted to automated platforms by March 2024, with 25-year-old Bengaluru worker Aakash seeing hundreds of jobs vanish at his firm despite a CEO's earlier assurance that AI was 'at least five years away.'
- India's tech sector shed more than 500,000 jobs between 2022 and April 2024, including 425,000 layoffs in 2023 alone; former HCL Technologies CEO warned that 70% of IT roles could disappear, and net hiring across India's top five IT companies totaled just 17 in the first nine months of 2025.
- Anthropic's 2026 study found that occupations with higher observed AI exposure are projected to grow less through 2034, with women disproportionately at risk in five of six countries studied—contradicting the assumption that education and qualifications provide protection.
- Cognitive professions once considered untouchable now show steep AI exposure: bioengineers at 84%, mathematicians at 80%, and editors at 72%, while contractors annotating products like Gemini and AI Overviews describe training their own obsolescence.
- IMF and OECD analyses frame the shift as a Great Divergence—capital flows to AI-deploying economies while developing nations absorb displacement; OECD estimates generative AI could add up to 6.4% to advanced-economy GDP while eliminating millions of jobs, a pattern labeled 'growth without work.'
- The 1945 New York elevator operators' strike showed how technology erases professions gradually over decades, but AI is hollowing out entire job classes simultaneously—concentrating losses on the young, clerical, feminized, and Global South workers who once powered the outsourcing middle class.
Why it matters: The traditional link between GDP growth and job creation has fractured: OECD estimates generative AI could add 6.4% to advanced-economy GDP while displacing millions. Anthropic's data shows the most exposed workers are educated women, not low-skilled laborers, and the IMF warns developing economies will absorb the losses without capturing the gains that flow to AI-deploying nations.
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