Will artificial intelligence make human workers obsolete?

The headlines are scary, reporting one round of mass layoffs after another from companies including Amazon, Microsoft, HP, General Motors, and UPS. Although the latest report from the U.S. Labor Department showed a slight uptick in hiring last month, the job market is far from stable, experts warn. Hiring remains at a record low, with 1.28 million fewer people getting hired in 2025 than in 2024.

With that, new and powerful artificial intelligence agents are emerging that can produce in seconds what it took teams of people months or years to achieve—most notably, OpenAI's GPT-5.3 Codex and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6. The release of both models on Feb. 5 triggered a flood of posts on Reddit and other platforms from users who fear these bots and agents will take their jobs.

With these widespread concerns as a backdrop, Johns Hopkins University will co-host a forum titled "Will AI Make Work Obsolete?" at 6:45 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 25, at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C.

People are on edge, with a Pew Research Center survey showing that 64% of Americans believe AI will lead to fewer jobs over the next 20 years. But is the picture that clear-cut—and can we blame recent layoffs and the struggling labor market on AI?

Read more: https://hub.jhu.edu/2026/02/23/will-ai-make-human-workers-obsolete/