# Talk of AI Taking Jobs, and Daily Life That Runs as Usual. The Gap Is Just That It Hasn't Arrived Yet > Online, people say AI will end human work, while outside, daily life still runs as usual. I think this gap is only that the change has not arrived yet, because in my own work it is already happening. In the Philippines, I think the change will spread quietly, little by little, and widen the distance between people who are protected and people who are not. - Published: 2026-11-13 - URL: https://abalol.xyz/en/posts/ai-labor-gap/ - Language: en - Tags: philippines, tech, ai, work - Author: Tomohiro Owada - Site: Tomo's Diary (https://abalol.xyz/llms.txt) --- Online, people say AI will end human work, but when I go outside, daily life still runs as usual. I think this gap is only that the change has not arrived yet. And the change is unlikely to arrive in some dramatic form, all at once on a single day. I think it will spread quietly, little by little, and widen the distance between people who are protected and people who are not. ## A post that said everything but artisan work is already over A discussion was spreading on X ([X trending 1](https://x.com/i/trending/2120332929129984226), [X trending 2](https://x.com/i/trending/2120411532198556062)). It started with a post by Will Depue, a former OpenAI researcher who worked on Sora, o3, and 4o. The gist was that AI would sideline human economic labor, and that everything but artisan-like work was already over. Then Tim Urban posted a sense of unease: serious news about AI lands hard online, but when you go outside, daily life is still running as usual. The discussion spread further from that post. According to figures from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a U.S. outplacement firm, of the job cuts announced from January through October 2026, 121,401 were attributed to AI. That is about 20% of all announced cuts ([Challenger's October report](https://www.challengergray.com/blog/october-layoffs-at-three-year-low-seasonal-hiring-plans-up-26/)). This counts the reasons companies gave in their announcements, though, not the number of people AI actually replaced. Overall announced job cuts are down 44% from the same period last year. An economist at Lightcast, a labor-market analytics firm, has said that the claim that AI is replacing large numbers of workers is not showing up in the labor data ([HRD America article](https://www.hcamag.com/us/specialization/transformation/ai-blamed-for-121401-job-cuts-but-the-labor-data-isnt-buying-it/594129)). ## In my own work, it is already happening I work as an AI engineer, remotely from the Philippines, for a company in Japan. In that work, the change is already happening. Work I used to ask people to do, I now give to AI. From the outside, nothing has changed. I work the same way every day, and live the same way. Even so, the work I stopped asking people for should originally have been someone's job. I have [written before](https://abalol.xyz/en/posts/ai-engineer-joy/) that it is fine for the engineering profession to be replaced by AI. This time the subject is a little broader: the social side. What is happening in my own work should, over time, reach daily life outside as well. I think the gap between the noise online and ordinary life exists because we are in the middle of that process. ## In the Philippines, a wide gap is already there Living in the Philippines, I feel there is already a considerable gap between the poor and everyone else. I wrote in [an earlier post](https://abalol.xyz/en/posts/ph-poverty-line/) about the difference between the government's poverty figures and the poverty people feel. The change brought by AI will arrive on top of that gap. I think analog skilled trades will remain. Factory jobs, on the other hand, may shrink. Even so, the slots are narrow. Not everyone pushed out of shrinking jobs will be able to move into them. That is why I think it will be hard. ## It does not matter to people close to the government In the Philippines, I think more and more people will truly lose their jobs, little by little. But that does not matter to people close to the government. So I feel it will keep getting worse until nothing can be done. Jobs are lost one person at a time. When one person loses a job, it does not become news. Even as the numbers grow, the everyday scene barely changes, and only the gap keeps widening. ## What it means that life still looks like it is running as usual In Challenger's figures, job cuts attributed to AI came to 1,265 in October, the lowest month this year. Challenger wrote that the reasons companies give are shifting from technology toward the economy. The noise looks as if it has settled down. But I think it is only that AI is being written less often as the reason. When I gave work I used to ask people for over to AI, there was no announcement anywhere, and from the outside nothing appeared to have happened. The ordinary, still-running life Tim Urban saw when he went outside is real. But that is not proof that the change has not arrived. I think the change will keep moving, little by little, through a life that still looks as if it is running as usual.