Did AI kill my job, or open up a next chapter?; Public Source, April 10, 2026

[Kip Currier: I posted the following note and excerpt from this Public Source essay for the graduate students in my The Information Professional in Communities course this term:

I'm sharing this Pittsburgh local journalism first person essay by writer Austin Harvey, which I serendipitously came across and have posted to all of my blogs. Given the work that I currently do as a university faculty instructor, the piece raises thorny questions and considerations for me about what information centers/professionals can do to assist and/or "be there" for individuals and communities who are being displaced by AI.

Also, in what ways do academic programs like this one need to better prepare MLIS students to navigate AI-related positive and negative societal changes?

In what ways will information centers/professionals, as well as information center users, potentially be displaced by AI?

In what ways can information centers/professionals proactively adapt and/or manage this disruptive technological change?

What kinds of advocacy and actions by information professionals are required and needed?

Who are potential partners with whom information professionals can confer and collaborate on behalf of communities to strategically address present and future AI-fueled impacts?]

First-person essay by Austin Harvey, Public Source; Did AI kill my job, or open up a next chapter?

"Many writers feared that they would be the first ones to lose their jobs to AI. I did not share this fear, though I feel my heart rate spike every time I use an em-dash now — and you can pry them from my cold, dead hands when I’m gone. I saw value in human writing. I still do, and believe most people agree. We’ve gotten better at identifying AI-generated text, and while there are certainly a litany of websites out there publishing AI-generated articles, readers generally seem averse to them now. 

I was foolish to think none of this would affect me. 

I wasn’t replaced by AI. In fact, ATI’s editors made it very clear that they would never publish AI-generated articles. But AI was still a disruptive force. Search traffic fell. Google changed the rules on SEO and AdSense. We had editors quit or move on to other jobs, but we never hired anyone else to fill their positions. Our team of 12 became a team of seven, and for the better part of two years we were struggling to put out enough content to satisfy the algorithms. I was burning out constantly, still holding on to the idea that this was surely better than self-employment. 

Then, I was called into a meeting and told I was being let go at the end of January...

It wasn’t that I was replaced by AI, or that AI-generated articles were taking all of the search traffic; it was that a great number of people have stopped reading entirely, opting instead to simply ask ChatGPT or Gemini for answers to their questions. It’s an extension of the same issue that has caused many local news outlets to cease operations or cut staff."