Stop focusing on AI replacement and start worrying about displacement

Sam Altman's recent ousting from OpenAI has rekindled many conversations about AI and how far it has come.
Among those conversations, the topic of AI replacing humans at their jobs has seen another surge in popularity. That debate is ongoing in many fields, with plenty of new content across platforms explaining in detail why AI won't or will take job X.

Regardless of their opinion, they're all critically flawed: they're analyzing the situation from a binary, all-or-nothing point of view to establish if a machine can replace a human.
Why is this flawed? Because long before 100% of a job's tasks and responsibilities are taken away from humans (i.e., replacement), discreet aspects will be assigned to machines (i.e., displacement), and even a 10% displacement can render a job valueless from a human point of view.

Here's an example I'm close enough to share confidently as a bystander: technical translation.
- 30 years ago, it was a well-paid job with many freelancers and agencies. Translation and proofreading jobs were paid by the page.
- Today, humans proofread what machines translate, spending almost as much time as before but being paid by the word, excluding repetitions.

In all the milestones in between, namely the introduction and adoption of Computer Assisted Translation tools, machine translation, different types of automation related to CICD pipelines, translation and localization platforms as a service, and others, the market changed enough to drive most agencies and freelancers away.

Humans are not yet replaced, but for so many people, just the displacement caused by the introduction of CAT tools 20-something years ago was enough to make the job no longer an option due to pay cuts.

So, if you are in an area where AI has been excelling, and there are plenty of those in Design, stop thinking about being replaced, as that might never happen.
Instead, start looking into what could be taken away from your tasks and responsibilities now and how that might affect your job because displacing something like 10% of your duties might mean a 50% cut in your paycheck.

A few people have been hinting at this, Jakob Nielsen being the most well-known, warning that change is inevitable, and it's up to you to choose if you want to be a bug or the windshield.