Eugenia Kuyda, founder of the AI chatbot startup Replika, has voiced sharp concerns about the impact of artificial intelligence on employment, predicting that protests driven by job insecurity and AI disruption will soon escalate. She highlighted that outside optimistic tech hubs, people face severe challenges finding work, a situation she believes will deteriorate as AI adoption grows.
Kuyda dismissed the common argument that AI will generate new jobs in the same way past technologies have, noting that companies—including her own—have already scaled back hiring for junior-level positions. She explained that employing inexperienced workers has become prohibitively expensive and unsustainable for startups, signaling a structural shift in the labor market driven by automation.
Despite her apprehensions about job losses, Kuyda remains hopeful about AI’s potential to democratize creation and innovation. She envisions AI enabling a broader range of people to develop software and products independently, reducing dependence on specialized developers and designers. This shift, she suggested, could disrupt traditional models and prompt the emergence of new platforms and operating systems more aligned with user needs than corporate interests.