The AI Transformation: We May Already Be Cookedby Editor - Daniel Brindley | September 6, 2026

AI isn’t coming for process-driven work someday. Much of it can already be done faster, cheaper and with fewer people. I’ve just experienced it firsthand.

It’s late, and I’ve just had a reality-bites moment—or, as my kids would say, we are cooked.

I recently completed, in two days using AI, a project that took me 14 days four years ago. Back then, I had more than four people helping me. This time, it was just me and my AI assistant.

What was I doing?

Setting up a CRM platform and sourcing, cleaning, collating and managing large volumes of data. AI also helped me work through the logic, research content ideas and finish several draft articles.

This wasn’t a demonstration put together by an AI company. It was real work inside a real business—and the difference was staggering.

The uncomfortable conclusion is that millions of people are being paid to perform tasks that are already becoming redundant. That doesn’t mean millions of complete jobs will disappear tomorrow. It means much of the work within those jobs can now be completed by one capable person using AI.

Some process-driven marketing and software companies have already recognized this and are moving away from selling processes to selling outcomes. That is good news for buyers: more of their budget can now be tied directly to leads, sales and measurable growth, rather than being swallowed up by setup and administration alone.

But here’s the rub.

If you’re an older, experienced operator like me, you may not need as much consultancy as people assume. I know what a good result looks like. If AI produces poor work, I can tell it why and make the necessary tweaks.

AI gives experienced people huge leverage because we already have the knowledge needed to supervise it.

But how do young people acquire that knowledge if AI removes the junior work through which previous generations learned?

Young people have struggled to find good opportunities in parts of Europe for decades. The EU youth unemployment rate was 15.1% in July 2026, with rates above 20% in some countries. In the United States, the unemployment rate for recent graduates was about 5.6% in the second quarter of 2026, while 42% were underemployed. (Eurostat, Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

Now AI is starting to absorb many of the repetitive, process-driven tasks traditionally given to people at the beginning of their careers.

Hopefully, new industries and opportunities will emerge for our children, just as they did during previous technological upheavals. But hope is not a workforce strategy.

If you are lucky enough to secure an entry-level job, there is a good chance AI will help train you. Graduates may find themselves doing more sophisticated work much earlier in their careers, while AI handles the research, administration and traditional grunt work.

That sounds positive—and in many ways it is—but there is a risk.

Grunt work was often where people learned how a business really operated. It exposed them to mistakes, exceptions and awkward situations that no training manual covered.

We need to remove unnecessary drudgery without also removing the experience that creates sound judgment.

There is another interesting divide around AI. My daughter recently scolded me for creating a funny image with ChatGPT because of the water used to generate it. Younger people may be comfortable with the technology while remaining deeply sceptical about its environmental cost.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently pushed back on that concern. He claimed that approximately 38,000 ChatGPT queries use the same amount of water as producing one California almond. However, Altman admitted he was recalling the number from memory, and experts say there isn’t enough public data to verify the comparison properly. (CalMatters)

The exact number matters, but every major technology has costs as well as benefits. AI uses water, electricity and a considerable amount of physical infrastructure. We should question those costs honestly without pretending the technology is going away.

Because it isn’t.

This transformation is no longer something we can discuss as a future possibility. It is already happening inside ordinary businesses, including mine.

Two days instead of 14. One person instead of five.

That is an extraordinary increase in productivity. It is also a warning.

We need to start thinking seriously about how people will enter the workforce, gain experience and build careers when the bottom rungs of the ladder are being removed.

We may not be cooked yet—but the kitchen is getting very hot.