AI & Employment in 2025: The Good, The Bad & The Slightly Terrifying

Artificial Intelligence isn’t just knocking on the office door in 2025—it’s already sitting at the desk, automating tasks, screening CVs and possibly even writing emails better than you. But is AI here to steal jobs or just change them? The truth, as always, is a little bit of both.
 
AI: The Ultimate Office Assistant (But Without the Coffee Runs)

Let’s be honest—most of us don’t love the admin side of work. Spreadsheets, invoices, scheduling, compliance reports… if AI wants to take over those, we won’t fight it. And that’s exactly what’s happening. AI-powered tools are now handling repetitive, time-consuming tasks across industries, giving professionals more time to focus on strategic, creative and people-driven work.

HR teams, for example, are leveraging AI for smarter recruitment, using algorithms to scan thousands of CVs in seconds and match candidates based on skills rather than just keywords. Finance teams have AI handling fraud detection and transaction processing. Even marketing is seeing AI generate content, crunch campaign data and personalise customer interactions in ways humans never could at scale.

But before we celebrate our newfound freedom from spreadsheets, let’s talk about what AI can’t do.
 
The Jobs That AI Can’t (Yet) Take Over

For all its intelligence, AI still has the emotional range of a teaspoon. Sure, it can analyse data and predict outcomes, but it lacks human intuition, creativity and the ability to build genuine relationships. Roles that require complex decision-making, leadership, emotional intelligence, or ethical reasoning remain firmly in human hands.

Think of jobs in healthcare, coaching, strategic leadership and creative problem-solving. AI can assist, but it can’t be the doctor who comforts a patient, the manager who motivates a struggling employee, or the designer who crafts a campaign that feels just right.

However, AI is creeping into creative fields too. Writers, designers and even musicians are finding AI-generated content becoming eerily competent. The key? Learning how to work with AI rather than against it. Those who master AI tools will have a serious advantage over those who resist them.
 
The AI Job Boom

For every job AI disrupts, it’s creating new ones. AI specialists, ethics officers, machine learning engineers—the demand for AI-related roles is skyrocketing. And then there’s the rise of "prompt engineers"—people who don’t code AI but know how to tell it what to do (and, more importantly, what not to do).

This is where adaptability comes in. The employees of 2025 who will thrive aren’t necessarily those who know how to code but those who understand how to integrate AI into their work. AI isn’t here to replace humans—it’s here to change how humans work.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a little bit terrifying.
 
And now, the Slightly Terrifying Part…

AI doesn’t mean to be creepy. It’s just… unsettlingly good at things we once thought were uniquely human. In 2025, AI isn’t just automating tasks; it’s making decisions. Who gets hired. Who gets a loan. Who gets flagged for security risks. And while AI is fast, efficient and (in theory) unbiased, the reality is that it’s only as good as the data it’s trained on—which, as history has shown, isn’t always perfect.

Bias in AI remains a huge concern. Algorithms can inherit prejudices from flawed datasets, leading to unfair hiring practices, discriminatory loan approvals and skewed decision-making in everything from law enforcement to healthcare. And the worst part? AI doesn’t realise it’s being biased.

It just runs the numbers.

Then there’s the question of surveillance. AI-driven workplace monitoring is on the rise, tracking employee productivity, analysing emails, even detecting "sentiment" in messages. Are we heading toward a world where AI decides who’s underperforming before a manager even speaks to them?

For now, AI is a tool—one that can make life easier, businesses smarter and jobs more efficient. But if left unchecked, it has the potential to reshape the workplace in ways we might not be ready for. The key question is: are we using AI, or is AI using us?

That, my friends, is the slightly terrifying part.