Sharewritten by Erik Bayer, CEO of Peruzzi Solutions
In December 2022, a new era began. OpenAI launched ChatGPT, whose mission was to create “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans.” It received widespread media coverage, everyone started chatting with the chatbot, and old movies such as The Terminator began to feel more like a realistic dystopia rather than science fiction. Microsoft invested in OpenAI as soon as two months after the launch of ChatGPT, and by 2025 they owned a 27% stake in OpenAI Group PBC, with over 800 million weekly active users, emphasizing how big of a success they had hoped AI would become.
Many tech billionaires started envisioning the future of AI and how it would be the biggest innovation since the industrial revolution. However, the world also started to speculate about how AI would replace workers and entire professions. Graphic designers by Midjourney; writers, content writers, and journalists by ChatGPT; academics by DeepSeek; social media and marketing managers by Meta AI; or programmers and software engineers by Claude. But this did not come true. While coding and content creation look very different today, AI is not ready to replace human workers.
AI – doomsday and world domination
We envisioned doomsday, when AI and robots would take over humanity and join forces against the human race, dominating our world. Despite these utopian illusions, it looks like we have reached the limits of AI. In the end, AI chatbots are chatbots: you write prompts, the chatbot breaks them into small pieces called tokens, predicts which token should come next, and then returns the result to you. If you’d like to learn more about how AI actually works, read our previous article: What is AI and how does it really work? A practical guide.
What were the hopes of AI?
AI was supposed to change the world by being very cost-effective through replacing the human workforce, especially programmers whose salaries were continuously increasing the past ten years. Imagine: instead of hiring multiple software developers for an average annual salary of £80,000–£120,000, you could replace them with Claude or ChatGPT for £18 per month. Perhaps you could hire a student part-time as a prompt agent for £25 per hour.
Once you replaced all the software developers, you could move on to making graphic designers redundant, keeping only one junior or student and buying a Midjourney subscription. Then marketers and sales could be replaced by ChatGPT as well, and it would be best to send away customer service representatives too and integrate a chatbot into the webpage. And you’re done! Fast, cost-effective, and you can take out a huge bonus for yourself at the end of the day.
This is exactly what we saw: massive layoffs in IT departments at big tech companies like Zoom or Google, with tens of thousands of software developers of all seniority losing their jobs. These layoffs were to fulfil the expectations of replacing programmers, not because chatbots were actually this effective. In fact, something started to shift. Even though more and more chatbots emerged in recent years, they were not “smarter” or more intelligent in any way than the first ChatGPT. Naturally, they are faster, more accurate, and more precise, but slogans such as “ChatGPT is the third-best coder in the world” were exaggerated - very much so.
The reality and disappointment of AI
What AI is really useful for is reviewing code, checking wording and grammar, and summarising lengthy documents: and it might replace junior or student programmers, but not seniors. It did, however, keep one promise: to make tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, or Jeff Bezos even richer. Nonetheless, they need to hear the truth: artificial intelligence is overrated, and we have reached its limits. AI will not overtake the world. ChatGPT is perfect for giving you advice on puppy training or recommending attractions while travelling, and Claude can really help you debug your code, but it will not replace professionals.
What’s the truth? According to The Guardian, newspaper readers largely reject AI-generated writing, helping to preserve journalists’ roles, and chatbots often cite fictitious cases. Legal, taxation, and financial advice generated by tools like ChatGPT is frequently inaccurate, meaning jobs in these fields remain safe. Data privacy issues, response quality inconsistencies, and made-up, unreliable citations and sources have also started to surface.
The AI psychosis and data concerns
Beyond this, the most problematic issue has started to emerge: the so-called AI psychosis. More and more people are turning to AI chatbots for emotional support and even developing a form of therapeutic relationship with ChatGPT. Combined with the aforementioned data privacy issues, this is an even bigger problem than it seems. Not only do these interactions increase loneliness and the lack of personal relationships, but these tech corporations may know even more about our mental health than they ever should. All of this information can be sold to Meta, after which all kinds of advertisements can be targeted at these vulnerable people – starting from pseudoscience and extending to potentially harmful content.
The real future of AI
So, is it still worth funding new AI implementations in your business? Absolutely yes – but we have to be very specific and careful. If you would like to replace your employees with AI, that is far beyond our reach. However, if you’d like to save time by automating file organisation, summarising lengthy documents, automating workflows, or even detecting fraud or defects, AI can be a great help.
Overall, if you have tasks that are repetitive and require speed and accuracy but not creativity, different AI solutions can be effective. Before you start implementing and pouring thousands of pounds or euros into AI projects, read our previous article about the 3 questions we always ask before starting an AI PoC.
Key takeaways
- AI has significantly changed how we work, but it has not replaced human professionals in complex, creative, or high-responsibility roles.
- Most AI tools have plateaued in intelligence, improving mainly in speed and polish rather than true reasoning or understanding.
- AI is best suited for supportive and repetitive tasks, such as summarisation, code review, workflow automation, and basic analysis.
- Overreliance on AI introduces serious risks around data privacy, misinformation, and mental health, especially when used for emotional support or advice.
- Businesses should adopt AI strategically and cautiously, focusing on efficiency gains rather than workforce replacement.
- The future of AI lies in augmentation, not domination – helping humans work better, not eliminating them.
Sources:
https://zapier.com/blog/best-ai-chatbot/
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/02/in-2026-ai-will-move-from-hype-to-pragmatism/
https://www.pwc.com/us/en/tech-effect/ai-analytics/ai-predictions.html
https://www.ibm.com/think/news/ai-tech-trends-predictions-2026