February 17, 2026

When the laughter stopped

February 17, 2026 — Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Personal Reflection / Archival Memo

Author: Gerald M. Reyes, former Head of HR

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I was Head of HR for a Tech company when the “AI first” movement swept through everything. Early it felt like a novelty. Executives played with chatbots that spit out silly answers. A few managers tested products to improve scheduling. People laughed when the AI missed simple cues.

Then the laughter stopped¹.

Before I knew it we were replacing a dozen employees with singular products that could handle finances and customer support. I was caught in the middle, leading the meetings where each manager had to show how many roles could be handled by AI.

It felt both exhilarating and brutal.

We had gone through mobile first and cloud first.

Those never felt as close to the bone as “AI first”. It was no longer about where we stored our data and code or how we designed apps.

It was about automating the judgment calls that used to take a team.

I was used to the idea of technology changing how we work but I had never seen something move this fast. A younger recruiter on my team once told me, “Gerald, half of my daily tasks could be done by AI.” She was right. That was exactly what happened.

At first, everyone assumed AI was only good at simple “crunching” — you know summarizing, shortening, etc. That turned out to be a half-truth. Our copywriting group started using LLMs to draft press releases. The results were good enough to cut writing time in half. Some old-school folks insisted that true creativity would always need a human. They were partly correct, because the AI needed direction and final edits. Yet most of us were shocked that it could come up with catchy headlines on the fly.

When the real shock hit it wasn’t about the tasks themselves.

It was about a shift in how people viewed their own value.

Concrete objects can pull free of the earth more easily than humans can escape humanity. — IX. 9

I saw seasoned employees, who used to take pride in specialized tasks, suddenly feeling unsure about what they could offer. Our accounting lead said her group could now close the books in 12 hours instead of weeks, thanks to an AI that spotted errors in seconds. She was happy about saving time, but also unnerved by the idea of the system doing so much heavy lifting.

In some corners of the business world, AI was a hero. One shipping company revamped its entire routing strategy using a constellation of systems and it won awards for cutting costs and delays.

But I also worked with a small retailer that blew half its budget on a poorly integrated AI warehousing orchestration system. The system jammed constantly and flagged random items as out of stock. It left angry customers waiting and store managers furious. AI turned into snake oil for them because they never cleared up their messy data or trained staff.

The best leaders separated themselves by planning carefully. They took time to figure out what data to feed the models that was proprietary and how to train employees. A design firm I consulted with used AI to generate dozens of ad mockups for every client pitch.

They also ran each mockup by senior artists. That combination of AI speed and human taste struck the perfect balance. Their business soared.

At the other extreme, an ad agency tried to adopt a cheaper AI tool that churned out generic designs. It saved some money but clients lost interest.

Looking back I remember the voices that insisted AI was just another phase. They were wrong. It was was far deeper than mobile apps and cloud compute.

It ate into the core of what a company does, day after day. It forced us to ask how we could best use the skills of our human teams. Some predicted massive job losses. That happened in certain roles, but we also saw new jobs appear.

AI engineers, data curators, and integration experts became essential. Humans still brought the spark of empathy and purpose.

The rush to buy every AI solution was chaotic.

Many companies gambled on these tools without a careful strategy. I learned that we need a balanced approach. We should let ourselves explore new ideas but not jump in blindly. AI outperforms human efforts on many tasks yet it can also fail in ways we never expect. Keeping that in mind keeps us from going overboard.

The “AI first” era changed my view of work forever.

• I watched employees wonder if they would still matter.

• I watched leaders free up resources to focus on bigger plans.

• I saw companies struggle to handle a future they thought was decades away.

If there is one lesson I carry with me it is that AI will never be magic. It will not replace our own duty to think, create, and decide what matters. The real magic is the spark of humanity that alway remains when everything else gets automated.

1. The Great Displacement Is Already Well Underway