“Hire AI instead of humans” - What does this really mean for us all?

I came across another company yesterday, with slick branding, offering the chance to “hire AI agents” instead of human marketers, designers and researchers.

The message was simple: scale faster, spend less and skip the friction.

Yet, when we stop for a second and really think - underneath this promise is a quiet rewriting of what work is and who it is for. If companies can “hire AI instead of humans,” what exactly will be left for people to do? 

We’ve been here before

This kind of logic has a long history. In factories, in classrooms and in open-plan offices, people have often been treated as parts to be optimised. In each case, there has been resistance: movements that insisted humans are more than what they produce.

As Gert Biesta (a contemporary educational theorist and professor who has written extensively about the purpose of education and how it should serve democratic, human-centred and meaningful ends) puts it:

“The point of education is not to learn how to function, but to learn how to exist.”

The same is true of work - when it is reduced to a list of tasks, something essential gets lost: context, identity, care, ambiguity and growth.

Meaning doesn’t scale

We cannot deny that AI tools can do impressive things, but they work by pattern and not presence. They do not (yet) interpret culture, question power or really care if something is ethically uncomfortable. They do not ask: should we really be doing this?

Mikhail Bakhtin (a philosopher and literary theorist known for his ideas on language, dialogue, and meaning-making) reminds us that:

“The word in language is half someone else’s.”

Meaning is always shared—social, situated and shaped. When machines produce content without a sense of responsibility or response, something human, specifically accountability, is removed from the process. 

So why should we still be here?

Not to mimic machines or to match their speed, but rather to hold the things that cannot be automated:

• The slow work of trust

• The ability to sit with not-knowing

• Ethical judgement

• Relational thinking

• Cultural memory

• The strange, beautiful friction of collaboration

This is where human value sits - in bringing something different to the table.

So what now?

There is no manifesto here, but rather a few thoughts I’m holding:

• Be aware of the language we use - “replace” is not a neutral word.

• Use the tools if they help, but do not let them flatten our work.

• Keep making room for human ways of working: thoughtful, relational and sometimes slow.

• Name the value of work that is not always measurable, but still matters.

In his book, Education for Critical Consciousness, Paulo Freire said:

“Education is an act of love, and thus an act of courage.”

If we choose, work can be that for us too.