The companies selling AI tools are also predicting they'll upend the workforce, and the planning implications are significant
In what some observers have called "doom trolling," AI leaders are warning of mass displacement while accelerating the very technology driving it. Anthropic's Dario Amodei once predicted AI could eliminate 50% of white-collar jobs, while OpenAI's Sam Altman warned that entire categories of entry-level roles were at serious risk. Both have since softened those claims, but the warnings they made while continuing to build and sell these tools left a genuine planning question for the organizations deploying them.
Ravin Jesuthasan, a future of work researcher and global leader of Mercer's Transformation Services business in Chicago, thinks the displacement risk is real, but conditional.
"I took their warnings as an indication of what was possible," Jesuthasan told HRD America. "These sort of dire outcomes are possible if we're not thoughtful, if we're not being mindful of how we're deploying these tools and how we're redesigning work around them. Not inevitable, but possible."
The burden of action falls on HR
The same companies selling AI tools to HR leaders are the ones publicly predicting mass displacement. For Jesuthasan, that's where the responsibility falls on HR.
"The burden of action is on the user," he said. "We've had tools like this before. These tools can be used for good, and they can be used in a way that generates harm. CHROs need to ensure that as they increasingly get tasked with enabling the organization to deploy AI, they are fully conscious of the implications, not just for their workforce today, but also for the communities in which they operate."
That responsibility, he argues, is only going to become harder to sidestep.
"I do think more and more CEOs and CHROs are going to face a lot more scrutiny about the consequences of their choices," Jesuthasan said.
He pointed to what he called "AI washing" of earnings reports, where companies attribute headcount reductions to AI when other factors may be at play.
"You can say, 'I'm only trying to keep up with my competition.' But there's going to be more scrutiny about the consequences, not just on the workforce today, but also for the workforce of tomorrow."
What investors are already pricing in
One of the more striking signals Jesuthasan cited came from Mercer's 2026 Global Talent Trends report, which draws on perspectives from nearly 12,000 investors, C-suite leaders, HR leaders, and employees worldwide. According to the report, 97% of investors say their investment decisions would be negatively impacted by organizations that fail to adopt agile, skills-powered talent models. The investor view, he said, has shifted considerably.
"A couple of years ago, investors might have cheered on the CEO talking about deploying AI and perhaps eliminating the need to hire new people or reducing headcount," he said. "Today there is this growing recognition that you can't be successful with deploying AI unless you're bringing the workforce along, unless you're upskilling the workforce, unless you're enabling that institutional knowledge that has been accumulated in the workforce to be retained and redeployed."
Workers themselves are already registering that uncertainty. The same Mercer report found employee concern about job loss due to AI surged from 28% in 2024 to 40% in 2026, while 62% of employees believe leaders are underestimating AI's emotional impact.
Planning at the task level, not the job level
One of the practical shifts Jesuthasan recommends is changing the unit of analysis in workforce planning entirely. Most organizations still plan at the job level. He argues they should be planning at the task and skill level instead.
"These technologies don't play out with entire jobs. They affect discrete tasks. They substitute some, they augment some tasks, they transform other tasks, and then they create demand for new human skills," he said.
A job title can survive AI disruption while the actual work inside it changes completely. Good preparation, Jesuthasan said, starts with scenario-based planning that honestly accounts for the range of consequences AI could have, paired with explicit guardrails to stop organizations from sacrificing long-term talent for short-term cost savings.
On employee communication, Jesuthasan said CHROs should be transparent about their organization's plan to deploy AI, the voice employees will have in that process, and how people will be supported if their roles change materially. How HR navigates that communication challenge may matter as much as the substance of the plan itself.
A defining moment for people leaders
The current moment is also an opportunity. CHROs sit between senior leadership and the workforce, which puts them in a position to turn the uncertainty around AI displacement into a concrete planning priority.
Jesuthasan pointed to Moderna, Atlassian, and ServiceNow as organizations where HR leaders are increasingly taking the wheel on AI strategy, with the CHRO role expanded to include AI enablement across workforce redesign and reskilling at scale.
"CHROs who are able to do this well are taking on more of a leadership role within their organizations," he said.
The warnings from AI leaders about mass displacement may be overstated or self-serving. But for CHROs willing to engage with them seriously, they're also an opening, a chance to lead on one of the most consequential workforce questions their organizations will face.
