A few months ago, during a conference, a hotelier told me— with the enthusiasm of a child who had just discovered dinosaurs:
“In five years, we won’t need half our staff anymore.”
He said it with a smile.
I smiled a little less.
This week, I read about a Chinese court ruling that an employer cannot dismiss a worker simply because an AI system is capable of performing the same job.
The story is interesting for reasons that go far beyond labor law.
For once, someone had the courage to distinguish between technological progress and what can only be described as technological fetishism.
For years, I’ve watched the same ritual unfold.
Every new technology is presented as a kind of modern deity to which departments, salaries, and organizational charts must be sacrificed.
First outsourcing.
Then globalization.
Then automation.
Now artificial intelligence.
The tools change.
The narrative remains exactly the same.
The ironic part is that China—a country of humanoid robots, algorithmic surveillance, and technological ambitions worthy of a heavily caffeinated William Gibson novel—seems to have understood something that many Western AI evangelists still refuse to acknowledge:
Work is not merely an economic function.
It is also a social contract.
Now, to be clear, I’m not defending Luddism.
Anyone who knows me understands that I consider AI, autonomous agents, and digital workers about as inevitable as death and taxes.
(And frankly, I’m not even completely sure about death anymore.)
What I do find curious is how many executives talk about “efficiency” with the same expression worn by someone delivering layoffs while sporting a luxury watch worth more than an employee’s annual salary.
Perhaps the real question isn’t whether machines will replace human beings.
Perhaps it’s who will replace the people making decisions that are worse than the machines’.
See you next week,
SIMONE PUORTO
