By Chip Cutter
DOHA, Qatar -- It is one of the biggest, unresolved economic debates: Just how many white-collar professionals will lose their jobs because of artificial intelligence?
At The Wall Street Journal's Tech Live Qatar event this week, the question came up on stage, over meals and in conversations alongside the conference. Even the most optimistic technology executives said the labor market should brace for at least some disruptions in the months ahead.
Exactly how much pain workers endure -- and which roles face the greatest likelihood of being overtaken by AI -- brought conflicting views. Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, said he felt confident that big-name musicians, athletes and live performers would be immune from AI's growing influence on entertainment. But he worried for those appearing in the background of movies.
"Extras are going to have a harder time," Ohanian said. "But superstars still do fine."
Analysts in law, banking and consulting look most endangered to Sam Englebardt, a media and technology investor who is a partner at Galaxy, the crypto-focused financial-services firm. "They're toast," he said. With some prompting, AI models can easily produce better work, faster, than those junior associates, Englebardt said.
His own team of analysts and associates is a fraction of the size it was a year ago because AI has taken over some tasks, he said.
"Especially if you put a little time into understanding how to prompt these models, there's no human team that can compete with it," said Englebardt, who is also a board member of the radio and podcast broadcaster iHeartMedia.
He dismissed the oft-repeated argument that companies will do more with their existing teams, allowing staffers to be more productive. If one person can do the job of 10 people with the help of AI tools, it is unlikely that companies will keep all 10 employees.
"It seems likely to me that we are going to enter a period of 10-plus percent annual GDP growth, maybe higher, and 30-plus percent unemployment," Englebardt said. "We've never seen anything like this."
Many of the executives in Doha had a rosier view of the future job market, insisting that humans had found ways to adapt in every wave of tech innovation over centuries. "This is going to sort of evolve into many more types of roles that we haven't even conceived of today," said Siddhant Ekale, a senior architect at Palantir.
Even so, the labor market is softening. The pace of hiring has fallen significantly this year, and a recent wave of layoffs at Amazon.com, Verizon, Target and other prominent employers has left workers across industries on edge.
Veteran technology executives made the case that the role of human discernment will take on greater importance, particularly as companies roll out more AI throughout their operations. Jane Horvath, Apple's former chief privacy officer who is now a partner in the Washington office of Gibson Dunn, reminded the audience that lawyers have been sanctioned for relying on AI to write legal briefs that cited fake cases.
"AI will get better and better, but the most important skill in the white-collar field now is critical thinking," Horvath said. "It's looking at the production in front of you and saying, 'Oh, that is written really well, but I actually need to fact-check this.'"
The focus on AI veered beyond the jobs debate to a discussion about which companies are likely to succeed in the escalating arms race for the technology. Ohanian said OpenAI's recent "code red" memo to employees -- as the company faces pressure from rivals such as Google and Anthropic -- showed the management challenge of maintaining momentum in a hypercompetitive time.
"How do you stir the dynamic of, 'You've got to kick some ass now, we need to work harder than we've ever worked before?'" Ohanian asked. While he wouldn't bet against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman -- he called Altman one of "the most cunning founders, CEOs -- whatever you want to call it -- that I have ever met" -- Ohanian noted that OpenAI faces a test.
"It is, I think, going to be a really interesting three to six months of: Can this company sort of reinvent itself and the hunger because they have real, real, real competition."
An OpenAI spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Among companies aggressively rolling out AI, it is possible to keep head count largely flat, some executives said. Authentic Brands, a brand-management company that owns Reebok, Quiksilver and Champion, now uses an internal AI tool to write legal contracts, help with accounting, generate creative materials and prepare royalty reports, CEO Jamie Salter said in an onstage interview.
"We've bought roughly $10 billion worth of new business, and we haven't really hired anyone," Salter said. "We've replaced a few people, but we haven't really hired a lot of people."
The reason, he said, is that the company's existing employees had largely leaned into AI, using more AI agents to augment their tasks. The AI era requires that workers overcome their resistance to learning new skills and discover how to use the technology to change how they operate.
"AI is magic," Salter said. "But you need magicians to make magic."
You can watch the full lineup of interviews from WSJ Tech Live Qatar on WSJ.com.
Write to Chip Cutter at chip.cutter@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 05, 2025 15:14 ET (20:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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