Summary:

• AI-driven layoffs are accelerating across Europe as Lufthansa, Siemens and TikTok restructure for automation. 

• The sharpest strain falls on those who stay: instead of job hopping or quiet quitting, many Stayers slip into functional freeze. They lose connection to purpose, motivation and collaboration frays.

• Research from Yale suggests AI’s labour market effects are still largely speculative, yet disengagement already drains around $500 billion a year from the global economy (Gallup). 

• The competitive edge is staying human: invest in developing problem-solving, relational and collaborative skills.

Artificial intelligence has been present in our collective consciousness for longer than we might think. Alan Turing was already playing with the idea in the 1950s, wondering whether machine intelligence could one day be capable of thought. With the rise of computer technology, pop culture embraced the topic as well: from the 1980s onward, movies about AI poured out in abundance. Think of the rebellion of the computers in Tron, the dystopian future of The Matrix, or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, who threatened that he would be back - and did, more times than he should have.

These Hollywood creations all warned us that artificial intelligence would take control of our world or perhaps destroy us. Yet, we never saw a single action movie in which Bruce Willis had to face losing his supposedly secure job as a Java programmer because of AI.

And yet, in the new era of AI, this global anxiety has swept across our collective consciousness, and however much we may have dismissed the thought as exaggerated fear, we are in fact right in the middle of this process:

• Europe’s third-largest airline, Lufthansa, will eliminate 4,000 administrative jobs by 2030 as part of its transition to AI.

• The social media titan TikTok is shutting down its entire Berlin operation and moderation team to outsource these tasks to AI.

• Spain’s Telefónica is letting go of 6,000 employees to implement its new strategy.

• The German industrial giant Siemens is preparing for layoffs affecting thousands, and to remove any doubt about AI’s role, one of the stated reasons is that “the automation business had to become faster and more agile.”

• And to bring in a Hungarian connection: the second most valuable Hungarian-owned company, Docler Holding, has announced that it will lay off more than 100 employees due to the introduction of artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile,

• headlines instantly seize upon every new announcement;

• dozens of analyses speculate about the future and opportunities of the dismissed workforce;

• and we watch anxiously to see who will be next—

yet we forget to ask one question: