Are AI layoffs and rapid automation signs of the Economic Singularity? Futurist Calum Chace explores AGI, jobs, investment, and the future of work.

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Futurist and author Calum Chace returns to examine how artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape employment, investment, infrastructure and the commercial economy. Calum is the author of The Economic Singularity and Surviving AI, a co-founder of the AI company Conscium, and co-host of the London Futurists podcast.

In this interview, we separate three very different stories that are often grouped together as “AI layoffs”: workers directly displaced by automation; employees cut or reallocated when companies restructure or abandon AI projects; and conventional layoffs that may be “AI-washed” to make ordinary cost reductions sound like technological transformation.

We also explore the growing AI backlash. Is today’s anxiety simply part of the normal adoption cycle surrounding a disruptive technology, similar to earlier resistance to the internet, e-commerce and electric vehicles? Or is AI fundamentally different because it can compete directly with human cognitive labor, creativity and professional expertise?

Calum shares his predictions for AI agents, artificial general intelligence and artificial superintelligence, along with the commercial AI applications most likely to generate real value. We examine whether the enormous investment in AI infrastructure represents a speculative bubble, a necessary technological overbuild, or some combination of the two.