On June 3rd during the FutureTech MeetUp: Artificial Intelligence — The Future in a New Reality, we hosted real tech debates! 

Two teams, two different views on the future of work, and one conclusion — humanity is on the verge of huge changes.

The debate topic was more relevant than ever: AI threatens unprecedented job losses in 10 years — agree or disagree?

Supporting the statement: Mykyta Artemchuk, CPO at Prom and Tymofiy Mylovanov, President of KSE. Against: Oleksandr Klimenko, CTO at Zibra AI and Serhii Sahun, CEO of SmartTender and Signy.

The panel was moderated by Vladyslava Zatsarynna, CEO of DOU.

The Process Will Be Gradual, But It’s Already Happening

The “pro” team started first, with Mykyta Artemchuk expressing his position. He emphasized that job losses will be gradual, but non-hiring due to AI is already actively happening:

There won’t be a day when millions of people wake up unemployed. This will happen gradually, Mykyta explained.

He shared his own example from Prom:

Technologies allow us to optimize processes and not hire large numbers of employees in linear departments where people do monotonous tasks.

In his opinion, job losses over the next 10 years are primarily about non-hiring rather than layoffs.

Tymofiy Mylovanov reinforced the team’s position with a fact from his experience:

I fired communicators and essentially replaced them with AI and a few students. And now I have Facebook coverage of 100 million per year and over a billion on Twitter…

Tymofiy also cited other cases:

Mateusz Demski, a journalist from Krakow — lost his job, his radio station replaced hosts with AI avatars. Annabel Bills, a copywriter from the UK — fired after her employer started using ChatGPT.

AI Creates Nothing, It Replaces Existing Human Cognitive Functions

One of Mylovanov’s main arguments — AI is fundamentally different from previous technologies:

When welding technology emerges, new products appear. When AI emerges, it doesn’t create something new, but replaces human language processes. All AI is now focused on replacing existing human functions… So what new jobs will appear?

Oleksandr Klimenko was convinced it’s not so straightforward:

Artificial intelligence changes the entire ecosystem. What does this mean? 80% of all software is outdated — meaning it will have to be rewritten. Of course, programming will look different, but there will be a lot of work.

In his opinion, the new reality will require complete ecosystem transformation, and this will create additional jobs. However, what kind of work this will be — we can’t predict yet.

Mylovanov countered:

That’s all great, but where specifically should a 50-year-old factory worker go? Here’s a person who currently cuts grass on my golf course with five machines… Now a robot with AI arrived — they’re shocked about what to do now? Unfortunately, this is really a threatening technology.

The AI Autonomy Problem Argument

The “against” team sought arguments in the historical plane:

In 1956, the founding fathers of information technology planned to solve problems of natural language processing, abstract thinking, and creativity in 2 months. As of today, only the first problem from this list has been solved — and it took not 2 months, but 65 years, Oleksandr Klimenko reminded.

His key argument — the AI autonomy problem is still unsolved:

Human creativity is fundamentally unpredictable, and therefore any speculation about AI autonomy today is irrational, Oleksandr added.

Most business isn’t just operational processes. It’s non-standard decisions, conflict situations, ethical decisions. AI is an assistant, but it can’t replace it completely, Serhii Sahun supported his colleague.

But of course, if we solve the autonomy problem in the coming years, we’ll live in a completely different world.

Specific Practical Examples

When asked about industries where replacement is already obvious, Mykyta Artemchuk shared Prom’s experience:

The most successful — moderation and anti-fraud. This allowed us to significantly reduce costs. The second direction — product and content moderation.

The opposing team had an answer. Serhii Sahun recalled an example of a Swedish banking startup that initially cut many employees but was forced to resume hiring within a year:

They saved money, optimized processes, but lost quality and started losing clients, Serhii said about Klarna’s case.

Experience from Previous Technological Revolutions

Serhii Sahun called for no panic and recalled historical parallels:

In the 80s, many bank employees also feared losing jobs due to ATMs and automation.

Then, it worked out without mass layoffs: routine processes were automated, and managers started focusing more on investment projects and customer service.

Oleksandr also noted how humanity usually goes through tech transformations:

The main thing is the pace of artificial intelligence implementation in real business, in real cases. The speed of innovation is limited precisely by society’s adaptation to it. This process takes plus or minus one generation…

That’s the problem — humans adapt much slower, and therefore will be left without work, Mylovanov was convinced.

How Do Education, Policy, and Regulation Affect AI Implementation Scale?

Everyone talks about transformation… But for us to move to a new level, we need education at the level of top US universities, which we as a country can’t afford. So we’re in a deep crisis.

Mylovanov was particularly direct:

Life shows — through wars and not only — that a small group of very influential people can unfortunately aggregate enough power to move the world. Governments, especially in poor countries, will be forced to use services from companies like OpenAI to provide people with services. And so they themselves will become dependent, and therefore this fight against AI will be lost. So we’ll all live in AI slavery.

Final Arguments

Before voting, each side summarized their position.

The pro team insisted on the scale of the threat.

Tymofiy Mylovanov:
The arithmetic doesn’t add up because in the past, changes happened gradually and in separate industries. But now AI affects all industries simultaneously with unprecedented cognitive power.

Mykyta Artemchuk:
My position also remains unchanged. I don’t think that in the next year, two, or three, AI will lead to super-massive layoffs, although they’ll happen somewhere. Rather, many times more people simply won’t get jobs they could have gotten if not for AI. And this is already happening.

The opposing team called for not fearing technology.

Serhii Sahun:
A person who now starts learning and using these technologies will definitely be more competitive than one who simply denies this.

Oleksandr Klimenko ended on an optimistic note (which, however, didn’t convince the audience):
We’ve been through this, we’ll go through it again. The job market will transform, it will look completely different. It looks scary because it talks to us — but actually, this is another technological revolution.

The Audience Verdict

Despite convincing arguments from both sides, most see AI as a threat — even among the tech community. It seems real examples and statistics outweighed historical analogies.

The debates showed that the future of the job market in the AI era remains uncertain and unpredictable. 

One thing is obvious — changes are happening right now, and everyone must decide how to prepare for them.