AI Disruption is Already Here: What It Means for Your Financial Security
While artificial Intelligence (AI) is the new kid on the block for technological innovation, it is already causing massive changes in our society and world. Most people don’t yet realize just how big and widespread these changes are, though.
In some ways, the “brave, new world” is sneaking up on us.
Now, I'm not going to try your patience with the details of programming or the debate about true artificial intelligence vs. today’s large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Gemini. (Large language models are what most people are calling AI right now. If you have an inclination towards the philosophical and the technical, the debate on whether they show true sentience or if that is an illusion is an interesting topic to read up on.)
No, what I'm going to get into is the more immediate impact of AI in our world already.
Because these tools can access so much information so quickly, they can massively increase productivity.
For example, if you have a smartphone (most of us in the U.S. do), you may have noticed, with more recent phone updates, prompts asking if you want to use AI to do things on your phone.
It’s a rather enlightening experiment to do.
AI provides some interesting and, at times, unnerving answers to your questions and requests. It provides them very quickly, often quite accurately.
In fact, there are a number of tasks AI does significantly better than humans…
Where AI is already better (and cheaper) than people
Researchers and corporations have adopted current AI tools for a number of tasks – here are a few examples:
- Law: AI models that help review massive document sets in legal discovery, outperforming humans in identifying key documents.
- Medicine: In medical imaging interpretation, AI systems have been proven to outperform human radiologists in certain tasks, like detecting pneumonia or cancerous nodules in chest X-rays and CT scans. A notable example is Google's DeepMind AI, which matched or exceeded radiologists in identifying breast cancer from mammograms.
- Translation: AI-powered translation tools now provide more accurate translations for many language pairs than a typical human translator.
- Research: A specially-trained AI model outperforms biologists in protein folding prediction.
- Logistics: IBM’s Watson AI manages supply chains better than human managers.
These are just a few examples to give you an idea of just how rapidly AI is not only outperforming, but replacing, human workers. CEOs love this! Replacing a full-time employee with an always-on, never-sleeps computer saves money and increases profits. Great for companies, not so great for workers…
I want to make this perfectly clear: Jobs are already being lost to AI.
For example:
- IBM laid off 8,000 employees after automating their jobs with AI
- Business Insider announced layoffs of 21% of its workforce
- AI integration allowed Microsoft to cut 6,000 jobs (including 2,000 software engineers)
- Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike reduced headcount by 500 thanks to AI efficiency
…the list goes on. It’s no wonder a recent survey showed that most Americans want businesses to be cautious with AI.
More than three-quarters of Americans (77%) want companies to create AI slowly and get it right the first time, even if that delays breakthroughs, the 2025 Axios Harris 100 poll found.
When you break down the details of that survey, the age group most comfortable with racing headlong into an AI powered future is Millennials, and even 63% of them want businesses to be cautious. Nearly all (91%) of Baby Boomers polled wanted businesses to be cautious.
What’s the concern?
Everything is changing. In some parts of the economy, jobs are simply vanishing. While AI hasn’t revolutionized every industry, that doesn’t mean that it won’t in the future.
Other concerns come up, though:
“Others doubt AI's world-changing promises and instead see an innovation that will kill jobs and flood the world with bad information.”
AI does a lot of things better than humans – but not everything.
AI’s impact on education
AI may be nearly brand new to the world, but it’s already throwing a giant wrench into the education world, just probably not in ways that you expected.
You may have thought that AI would disrupt how teachers work and maybe displace teachers themselves, and that is a distinct possibility in the future.
There are, after all, already efforts to create AI “life coaches" and AI "therapists.” Teaching could be not far behind.
The way that education is being disrupted doesn’t have to do with taking away teachers’ jobs at this point. It is very different. Erica Pandey with Axios writes,
Use [of AI] is ubiquitous in college. A survey of college students taken in January 2023, just two months after ChatGPT's launch, found that some 90% had already used it on assignments, New York Magazine reports.
That’s right, AI is being used to cheat on college campuses right now. Maybe you’re saying that it’s just college campuses, though, and they’re old enough to know the fallout of their actions (to which I would point you to the reputation of college frat parties and the lack of understanding of consequences, but I digress…).
On an amusing side note:
[Stephen Cicirelli, an English professor at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, New Jersey] captured the zeitgeist with a viral post on X about how one of his students got caught submitting an AI-written paper – and apologized with an email that also appeared to be written by ChatGPT.
Funny, yes – but sad, too.
It’s not just in colleges, though.
1 in 4 13- to 17-year-olds say they use ChatGPT for help with schoolwork, per a recent Pew survey. That’s double what it was in 2023.
That's right 25% of middle school and high school students last year were already using AI to help with schoolwork.
And that only mentioned ChatGPT. That statistic doesn’t include X's AI, Google’s AI, Facebook’s AI, or any other AI, so the true number of middle and high school AI users is probably already higher than 25%.
AI is radically changing how students are approaching education. If our educational system doesn’t adapt, the next generation could graduate without learning anything beyond how to ask ChatGPT for answers to their homework.
While that’s a real concern, it’s not as immediate as AI’s impact on the workforce…
AI adoption means fewer jobs
With every technological development, the economy changes. New firms rise, old firms fall – new skillsets become vital, while others become obsolete.
This has always been true. Technology changes the economy and the job market. It always has!
Here’s an example:
Before petroleum products like kerosene and gasoline came along, whaling was a massive industry. Every year, thousands of whalers sailing the oceans, risking life and limb to harpoon whales. Why? Simply because whale oil was the best known source for both lantern fuel and industrial lubricants. But once engineers figured out how to process crude oil, kerosene emerged as a cheaper, safer, and more efficient alternative. Petroleum-based grease worked just as well as whale oil, too. The whaling industry virtually collapsed overnight.
These economic shifts can be wrenching, but they’re nothing new. They’re simply the price of progress.
Just like in the whaling example, the overall economy benefits.
Even when individuals (whether they’re expert harpooners or whaling ship captains) suffer. They lose their jobs and, since the entire industry vanishes, their skills are no longer nearly as valuable.
Back to the AI revolution. Will there be a permanent loss of employment? An article about Wharton Business School trained economist Paul Zane Pilzer noted in a 2011 interview with Debi Granite:
“...unemployment is not a macroeconomic problem, he says. It is a micro-economic issue, typically related to a skill deficiency on an individual level.”
Historically, every technological advance has eliminated some jobs while creating new ones. Think of the Industrial Revolution: factory machines wiped out many artisan trades, but created a wave of new manufacturing and service jobs. In the long run, total employment typically expanded, though certain groups of workers faced painful transitions.
With AI, we’re seeing a similar dynamic, but with a crucial twist: AI’s speed and scope of impact are unprecedented. Tasks in fields like data analysis, customer service, basic legal work, and even some creative work are being automated faster than new roles are emerging. This could create short-term net job losses in those sectors, especially for routine, repetitive work.
Longer term, AI might boost productivity enough to spur new economic growth, creating new jobs we can’t even imagine today. Some economists argue that AI will become a powerful tool that augments human skills rather than replacing them entirely. But the transitional pain – especially for middle-skill workers in administrative or clerical roles – could be significant.
Technology may or may not change the total number of employees a healthy, vibrant economy needs – we just don’t know. The specific skills workers need will definitely change.
There will be tens of thousands of well-paid, professional and expert employees see their entire careers disappear before their eyes. (Who knows, I might be one of them!)
That’s a huge amount of uncertainty to deal with! So how can we prepare ourselves today for a future we can’t see (and maybe can’t imagine)?
There are some things technology can’t change
Technology doesn’t change everything. Technology doesn’t change human nature.
People will still want to eat, sleep comfortably, be entertained, spend time with their loved ones and feel like they have some control over their lives.
Technology doesn’t change the nature of business – CEOs will seek to maximize efficiency, boost profits and (all too often) eliminate jobs. A lot of businesses will find their niche completely occupied by AI tools and simply cease to exist.
During times of transition, like the one we’re in right now, there’s no guarantee that those lost jobs will come back. The 8,000 human resource workers IBM terminated may never get another job in HR. Microsoft’s 2,000 laid-off software engineers find their skills as highly valued by the new economy. Worse still, there’s no way of knowing whether or not that will happen…
So let’s focus on what we can control. Technological advancements have yet to come up with a better inflation-resistant, safe-haven store of value than physical gold. Even those whose jobs disappear can benefit from diversifying with inflation-resistant stores of wealth. If they’re smart and start planning now, they can ensure there’s always food on the table and a roof over their heads. Because physical gold is in your control. Not an employer’s, not a government’s – and certainly not under AI control.
If you’re a radiologist, a software developer, a supply chain expert or currently employed in any of the dozens of fields where AI is encroaching, I strongly recommend you look into diversifying your savings with physical precious metals. And if you’re not, you might want to consider the many other benefits of diversifying with gold and silver. You can start your due diligence to take control of your financial world by getting our free 2025 Precious Metals Information Kit.
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