Is Your Job at Risk of Being Handed Over to AI? (Part 1)
- John Gomez
- Jul 24
- 5 min read
Welcome to the first in a multi-part series from Illuminis Labs, where we challenge the mainstream narrative around AI’s impact on work. This isn’t about future hypotheticals. This is about what’s happening right now—in boardrooms, hospitals, law firms, marketing teams, and C-suites across America.
“Every time you delegate to a human what AI could do better, you're signaling waste.”
🎯 The Easy Test: Are You at Risk of AI Taking Your Job?
After conducting internal research at Illuminis Labs, we uncovered a startling but simple truth:
"The more education your job requires, the more likely it is to be replaced by AI."
Yes, you read that correctly.
AI excels in domains where humans spent years earning advanced degrees or required professional training. AI is better at pattern recognition, data synthesis, and language generation than most humans who trained for decades. The jobs once thought to be safe—those requiring a master’s or doctoral degree—are now squarely in the AI crosshairs. Not to mention professional positions that require you to accumulate strong technical or procedural skills - such as engineers, project manager or product and program managers.
In contrast, positions that demand hands-on, physical, or instinctual skill are temporarily safer. Not safe—just less at risk in the next 3–5 years.
A 2023 McKinsey Global Institute report found that “nearly 30% of the tasks performed by managers, directors, and senior executives could be automated with current AI technology.”
Goldman Sachs estimated that generative AI could impact up to 300 million jobs globally, with the greatest pressure on white-collar knowledge work and high-skill professions.
🧠 Who's at Risk Right Now?
We’re not talking about theoretical futures. We’re talking about current roles—actively being reshaped, reduced, or removed. Based on our findings, here are the white-collar roles at high risk today:
Chief Marketing Officer
General Counsel / Legal Departments
Chief Financial Officer
VP/Director of HR
Recruiting Leads
Marketing Directors
Paralegals / Legal Assistants
Software Engineers
CTO / CIO
Chief Risk Officer
Chief Revenue Officer
VP/Director of Sales
Call Center Supervisors
Product Support Managers
Lawyers
CISO / Compliance Officers
Chief of Staff
Board Members
And in the next 18–24 months, add these to the list:
Family Practitioners
Hospitalists
Intensivists
Pharmacists
Financial Planners / Investment Advisors
Chief Medical & Nursing Officers
Accountants / Tax Strategists
Probate Attorneys/Advisors
Product / Program Managers
Content Managers & Creators
Billing / AR Analysts
Investment Bankers
Spiritual Leaders (Priests, Pastors, Rabbis... yes, them too)
The CEO
🧩 A Real Example: The 1H Planning Problem
Let’s say it’s early Q3 2025.
The CEO asks the leadership team to develop the 1H 2026 strategic plan.
What happens next?
The CEO has to explain what’s needed and by when.
Each department head interprets the directive.
Weeks of planning, meetings, revisions, handoffs.
Marketing drafts messaging and campaign strategy.
Product scopes new releases.
Finance projects the budget.
Legal handles compliance.
HR forecasts workforce needs.
If the CEO is lucky, the first draft of the plan, will be done by October and a good chance it will not be completed before January 2026.
Now let’s imagine an alternative.
The CEO grabs their laptop while watching their kids play in the pool. They fire up an AI Agent and enter the following prompt: “Create a strategic operating plan and budget for 1H 2026 across marketing, product, finance, HR, and legal. Assume 12% YoY revenue growth, expansion into two new markets, and a major product launch. Include timelines, KPIs, headcount adjustments, and regulatory risks.”
An AI agent connected to the CEO's enterprise stack (ERP, CRM, HRIS, CMS, financials) returns a complete, coordinated plan in under 24 hours:
Timeline-linked milestones
Budget forecasts
Hiring/firing recommendations
Regulatory risk assessments
KPI dashboards
No meetings. No delays. No salaries. No drama.
Rough draft by the next day - a few more revisions with the AI assistant - plan is done in just a few days and ready for board review - which the AI can now create a solid PPT deck and Excel based preliminary financials.
The value here isn’t just cost savings. It’s clarity, speed, and adaptability. And it’s not just about the C-suite—this logic applies all the way down.
🧨 The CEO Is Not Safe
In an internal Illuminis Labs experiment, we found that replacing the CEO with AI agent technology delivered the highest return on investment of any role in the organization.
Why?
CEOs struggle to adapt, innovate, and evolve.
AI can be retrained. Humans can’t (easily).
Boards want results, not charisma.
Imagine a CEO agent built on the minds of Jobs, Buffett, Iacocca, and Robbins—adjusted per industry vertical. Now imagine it running every company acquired by a PE firm. One prompt replaces a $500K+ base, politics, and performance variability.
Sound far-fetched? Not anymore. “Solo AI founders” are already deploying full-stack AI companies.
🧬 Sacred Professions Are Cracking
Doctors now rely on AI to:
Diagnose patients
Generate care plans
Support clinical research
The only blockers?
Regulations—and those are already shifting (e.g., the “Big Beautiful Bill” and research pilots that expand AI authority in prescribing).
Likewise, therapists, clergy, and counselors are being challenged by 24/7 emotionally aware AI agents. Their sacred ground is no longer safe.
🛠️ What About Skilled Labor?
Plumbers, HVAC techs, nurses, electricians—they’re safe for now. But the only barrier is physical dexterity, not intelligence.
Today:
A robot can’t climb into your attic.
It can’t feel for a vein.
It can’t troubleshoot a breaker box during a thunderstorm.
But those are solvable engineering problems. AI-powered robotics is next.
🧭 Where This Is All Going
For the first time in modern business history, technology threatens top-tier leadership and white-collar professionals before it automates the bottom.
The pyramid has inverted.
And if you think your job, your title, or your tenure protects you—you are dangerously behind the curve.
🔮 Coming Next:
Part 2: The Capitalist Catalyst: Why capitalism’s endless obsession with margin expansion is fueling the rise of AI faster than regulators, ethics, or society can keep up—and how this may paradoxically lead to a new form of AI-powered socialism.
Part 3: What About You?We move beyond the org chart. Whether you're a solo consultant, a freelancer, a specialist, or a manager in denial—how do you really assess your personal risk? We’ll give you a self-audit toolkit, tactical survival strategies, and ways to reinvent your trajectory.
Part 4: What About Our Kids?From kindergarteners to college grads—what should we be teaching the next generation to prepare them for a world where intelligence is infinite, but meaning must be earned? We'll cover skills, values, and a new framework for future-proof education.
Stay tuned. Share this with your leadership team. And if you're sitting in an office with "Chief" in your title... it’s time to ask yourself a hard question:
What happens when the board realizes you’re not the smartest “person” in the room anymore?
Brought to you by Illuminis Labs: Real Talk for a Synthetic Age.
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