Who Carries the Burden of AI? (Hint: It’s Not the Ones Building It)
Last week, a message from Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman went viral. It was candid. Direct. Even admirable in tone—an executive telling his team the uncomfortable truth:
“AI is coming for your job. It’s coming for my job, too.”
Kaufman’s note has been praised for its honesty. And yes, there is something refreshing about a tech leader skipping the sugar-coating. But let’s be clear: this message, like many others, subtly shifts the burden of AI disruption onto the individual, while those at the top, the ones building, funding, and deploying AI, avoid meaningful accountability for the consequences.
The narrative sounds like this:
“You’d better get good, exceptional even or prepare to be left behind.”
But the real question is:
Why are workers now expected to solve a problem they didn’t create?
The Human Cost Is Getting Lost
Let’s zoom out. This message isn’t really about job titles or performance. It’s about the shifting of responsibility. In this version of events, the worker, the jobseeker, the recent graduate must now fight for a place in a system that is rapidly being automated without their input. They didn’t ask for this. They didn’t train the models. They didn’t sign off on your data being used.
And yet, they’re told:
Upskill or be obsolete. Adapt or get left behind.
This comment from a recent AI panel video viewer says it best:
“What irritates me is that it’s become the average person’s burden, even though we never asked for this. We didn’t fund it. We didn’t agree to our data being used to train it. And now we’re expected to deal with our jobs becoming obsolete and our entire world being transformed almost overnight. Meanwhile, the people who created this are sitting at the top, saying, ‘Oh no, where is this going?’, as if we can do anything about it now.”
This isn’t just frustration. It’s a warning that can’t be ignored. And it’s not about denying progress. It’s about ensuring people don’t get crushed under it.
It’s Time to Talk About Shared Responsibility
We started prepareto.work because we believe it’s time to stop leaving workers to figure this out alone.
It’s time for a serious, honest conversation about ethical deployment.
It’s time for businesses, leaders, and governments to take real responsibility for the human impact of AI.
People don’t need more alarm bells without answers. People need action.
What Now?
We’re not anti-AI. We’re pro-people.
We help companies prepare to use AI responsibly, building strategies that account for the human side. We help workers prepare themselves for a fast-changing world of work, without shaming them or blaming them for systemic change.
We can build a better future of work.But only if we stop treating this like a self-help problem and start treating it like the societal challenge it is.
This is not just a tech issue. It’s a human one.