Every few weeks, someone asks me a version of the same question. A cousin finishing his engineering degree in Mangalore. A colleague in a completely different industry, quietly wondering if he should be learning AI. A friend who saw a headline about layoffs and just went quiet. All of them, at some point, asking the same thing: “Should I be worried?”
I work in AI and Data at one of the largest telecom companies in the world. I am in my early twenties, and this field has been my focus since I entered the workforce, researching, building, and deploying AI systems across government and enterprise projects in the UAE. So, when people ask me that question, I try to give them the honest answer rather than the comfortable one.
Here is what I see.
The layoffs are real, but not for one reason
When you read about mass layoffs at major tech companies, it is easy to assume AI is the villain. The truth is more specific than that.
A significant portion of the layoffs happening globally are corrections for over hiring. Between 2020 and 2022, companies expanded aggressively. When growth slowed, they cut. These layoffs are painful, but they are not new, this is a business cycle most industries have seen before.
But there is a second category. And this one is different.
When an accountant who used to spend eight hours reconciling spreadsheets can now do the same work in four hours using AI tools, the company does not give her four free hours. They reduce how many accountants they need. No one is fired dramatically. Headcount quietly shrinks. New positions are not opened. This is happening right now, in finance, in legal processing, in customer service, in logistics, in data entry. It is not sudden. It does not make headlines. But it is steady, and it is real.
What is actually atrisk
What makes this wave of automation different from everyone before it is where it is landing. Previous automation replaced physical, repetitive work. Factory lines. Assembly tasks. This time it is replacing entry-level white-collar work, the junior analyst, the document processor, the support agent following a script. These were the roles people used to start careers from. Many of them are quietly disappearing.
Some jobs will not be transformed. They will simply be needed less. That is an uncomfortable truth, but it is the honest one.
Where the opportunity actually is
Here is what I also see, and this part I say not to reassure, but because I watch it happen.
The people building the most value right now is not necessarily those with the deepest technical backgrounds. They are people who understand their own field deeply, healthcare, logistics, finance, education and have learned enough about AI to use it as a tool and enough judgment to question it when it is wrong. Because it is wrong often. Confidently and often.
In the Gulf specifically, organizations are adopting AI faster than they can find people who understand both the technology and the domain it is being applied to. That gap is where careers are being built right now. I see it directly in the work I do.
A word to whoever is asking that question
I understand what it means for someone to board a flight to Dubai carrying a degree and a plan. I am not writing this to cause fear.
But I think you deserve a clearer picture than “everything will be fine, new jobs will appear.” Some will. But the transition for those whose roles disappear will not be smooth, and it will not be automatic.
The honest question to sit with is not whether AI will affect your field. It will affect every field. The question is whether, when it arrives fully, you are the person guiding the tool or the task the tool was built to replace.
That answer is still yours to shape. But the time to shape it is now, not after the headline lands.
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Rahman Mohammad Ali is an AI Engineer based in the UAE, originally from Kasaragod, Kerala. He works on enterprise AI and automation systems at one of the world’s largest telecom companies, across government and private sector projects.
Great insight rahman