The Economic Paradox of AI Efficiency: Are Companies Firing Their Customers?

I was recently interviewed on KOGO Radio in San Diego about artificial intelligence and its impact on the American workforce. The conversation confirmed what I have been telling executives across healthcare, government, and corporate sectors for months: we are in the middle of a workforce transformation unlike anything this country has ever experienced.

I did not sugarcoat it on air, and I will not sugarcoat it here.

The tools we have access to today—ChatGPT and others—can do the work of five, ten people within minutes. Not hours. Not days. Minutes. Organizations are waking up to a reality that many workers have already felt: the speed of this transition is not gradual. It is immediate, and it is accelerating.

The Historical Comparison That Doesn't Hold Up

One of the hosts brought up a common comparison I hear from executives and policymakers alike: "We survived the transition from horse and buggy to car. We'll survive this too."

It is a convenient narrative. It is also wrong.

That transition happened over thirty to forty years. Communities adapted. Workers retrained. Entire industries emerged to absorb displaced labor. The AI transformation is happening in less than a decade. And here is the critical difference that most leaders either cannot see or refuse to acknowledge: even when we went from buggies to automobiles, you still needed human beings. Someone had to build the cars. Service them. Sell them. Drive them. The infrastructure of human labor remained intact.

With AI software? You might need one or two people to oversee what once required an entire department. You do not need nearly as many human beings—or a comparable number—that you once needed to get work done in a demanding environment.

That is not pessimism. That is reality. And any HR leader, executive, or workforce strategist who fails to confront this reality is doing a disservice to their organization and to the people they are responsible for leading.

The Economic Paradox No One Wants to Discuss

Here is where the conversation gets uncomfortable—and where I find many executives stop listening.

You cannot tell businesses not to get more efficient. I understand that. The free market demands efficiency, and I am not against it. But there is a catch-22 happening in real time that too few leaders are willing to name: companies are cutting costs so fast that they are about to fire all their customers.

Think about it. If every organization uses AI to replace its workforce, who exactly is going to have money to spend? You might get more efficient, but if the economy collapses because nobody is employed, efficiency will not save you.

People still need to make money to spend money. There is going to have to be some balancing done. And right now, I do not see evidence that American corporations are thinking about this balance. They are thinking about quarterly earnings. They are thinking about shareholder value. They are not thinking about the long-term sustainability of an economy that depends on employed consumers.

What I Tell the Executives I Work With

After more than fifteen years of human resources management consulting—working with organizations like Mayo Clinic, Stanford Medicine, UCSF, Johns Hopkins, the San Francisco Police Department, and Fortune 500 companies—I have learned that the organizations that thrive through disruption are the ones willing to hold two truths at once.

Truth one: AI is here. It is not optional. You must use it to remain competitive.

Truth two: Human capital investment is not a luxury. It is a survival strategy.

If leaders at these institutions are smart, they will find the balance. Yes, use AI to be more proficient and efficient. But you must also invest in human capital—because AI gets things wrong. It does not troubleshoot the way a human mind operates. You need people who can catch the errors, who can identify when the software is producing garbage disguised as insight, who can make the judgment calls that algorithms cannot.

The organizations that survive this transition will not be the ones that went all-in on automation and gutted their workforce. They will be the ones that figured out how to use AI as a tool while retaining the human judgment that actually makes decisions work.

That is not a nice-to-have. That is survival.

A Call for Mass Organizing

I said something on air that I want to repeat here, because I believe it: I think people have a voice. I think people should have a voice. And I think there should be some mass organizing to protest how AI tools are coming in at warp speed and acting as a replacement for people.

At the end of the day, we still need a thriving economy. People still need to be employed. Institutions still need to function. And I believe that trying to replace people wholesale—thinking that this software is the answer to getting things done faster without the need for human capital—is a grave mistake.

This is not an argument against technology. This is an argument for balance. This is an argument for thinking beyond the next quarter and considering what kind of economy we want to live in ten, twenty, fifty years from now.

If you are ready to think strategically about how your organization navigates this transition—balancing AI implementation with human capital investment—I invite you to reach out.

Dante King is a Human Resources Management Consultant and expert witness who has worked with Mayo Clinic, Stanford Medicine, UCSF, Johns Hopkins, the San Francisco Police Department, and Fortune 500 companies on workforce strategy and institutional transformation. He is the author of The 400-Year Holocaust and Diagnosing Whiteness and Anti-Blackness.

Book a consultation at danteking.com/consultation

Listen to the Full Interview

I discussed all of this in more depth during my conversation with Leland Conway and Larson on KOGO Radio. If you are an HR leader, executive, or anyone responsible for workforce strategy, this conversation is worth your time.