Margaret SpenceFounder, The Inclusion Learning Lab · AI Governance Strategy for CHROs | Author, When AI Breaks the Law | SXSW Speaker: Human+AI CoLab and AI Skills Gap for Women | Substack: AI Governance for HR & The Undisruptable Woman

AI Is Already Replacing Jobs: The Shopify Example #substack #shorts

19 Jun 2025 · 2 min

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1:35

In this short video, the speaker urges listeners to focus on upskilling and training for the emerging AI era. He asserts that AI is already displacing coding jobs, not merely a future threat, and cites Shopify’s recent hiring policy as concrete evidence: the company will only hire humans for tasks that AI cannot perform, otherwise the work is automated. The speaker frames this development as inevitable and warns that ignoring it will leave workers unprepared. He poses a rhetorical question about whether we will let AI replace us or proactively plan and acquire new skills to stay relevant in the AI‑driven workforce.

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I want to educate, um, those of you who are listening on what we should be doing around upskilling and training people for the next level of AI. Um, and yeah, um, I'm gonna agree with you, coding jobs are going to be taken by AI. Absolutely, 100%. It's already happening. It's not that it's going to happen, right? It's not that it's going to happen. It is already happening. And yes, it is sadly that it is already happening, right? It's not that it's going to come down the road. This is not down the road. Let me give you an example. Um, um, Shopify. All of you have heard about Shopify. If you're on YouTube, you know about Shopify. Um, they are the shopping thing for most entrepreneurs, right? They announced that if AI— they're not hiring anybody if AI can't do it. So AI has to do it, and, and then if AI can't do it, then they'll hire a human being. So if we think that this is not going to happen to us, then we're sadly mistaken that this is going to happen. The question is, do we let it happen to us, or do we plan accordingly so that we are prepared?