'You can be replaced by someone who has a better comprehension of AI' - U-Today

TEXT START: ‘We do not see jobs disappearing,’ says Rebecca Jekel, managing partner of the Delft-based business Kojac, a student employment agency for IT students in higher education.

The Dissection

This is a transition-management article aimed at keeping students employable—and calm—while automation removes tasks beneath them. It relabels substitution as “changing job content.” Its own examples contradict its reassurance: invoice processing is already automated, reminder workflows are being automated, AI-generated code requires cleanup, and analysis and advice are next.

The headline reduces structural displacement to individual competition: you may be replaced by someone who understands AI better. That is true in the first phase, but incomplete. The more dangerous replacement is one AI-literate worker—or an automated system—doing the work of several people.

The Core Fallacy

The article confuses task transformation with preserved employment. A job can change while the number of jobs collapses. Productivity gains reduce the labor required for the same output; newly created functions do not automatically offset the positions eliminated.

It also treats “checking,” “interpreting,” soft skills, and context engineering as durable human territory. Under P1, these are still cognitive tasks. As AI improves, the verification layer becomes another optimization target. Human review may persist temporarily because of liability, institutional caution, or imperfect systems, but that is lag protection—not a permanent economic moat.

The article describes servitor selection as opportunity. It does not establish sovereign ownership or control of the productive asset.

Hidden Assumptions

• Firms will use productivity gains to create enough new jobs rather than reduce headcount.
• Every new AI-related role will be permanent rather than transitional.
• AI skills will remain scarce instead of becoming embedded in standard tools.
• Human judgment, communication, and contextual interpretation cannot themselves be automated.
• Human checking will remain economically necessary at scale.
• Graduates can continuously retrain faster than AI changes the labor market.
• Competition, outsourcing, and falling labor demand will not overwhelm the new niches.
• Institutional and legal delays can preserve human employment indefinitely.

These assumptions are not demonstrated. They are the scaffolding required to make the article’s reassurance stand.

Social Function

Classification: transition management, ideological anesthetic, and prestige signaling built around a partial truth.

The article tells students to adapt, remain curious, and consume AI-related content so the employment pipeline remains functional. It acknowledges enough displacement to sound realistic, then converts the threat into a personal skills deficit. If someone loses work, the implied explanation is that they failed to keep up—not that the labor system is shedding its need for them.

Its industry collaboration matters: the piece serves employers by presenting labor adaptation as the solution while leaving ownership, bargaining power, and distribution of productivity gains unexamined.

The Verdict

The article accurately describes the opening phase of AI displacement and falsely presents it as the destination. “Different skills” initially create servitor niches for workers who operate, verify, and interpret automated systems. Under P1, P2, and P3, those niches contract as AI absorbs the same cognitive functions and institutions lose the capacity to preserve human-only economic domains at scale.

This is not evidence that jobs are safe. It is a brochure for competing to become useful to the machine before the machine no longer needs as many handlers.