by Katerina Raptaki*

So, is Artificial Intelligence finally coming for our jobs? This question has been hovering over our heads for years now. Let’s be blunt: if your life’s dream was to beep groceries at a supermarket checkout, collect tolls on the national highway, or stick labels on courier boxes… then yes, you should be terrified. But let’s be honest, should those jobs have even existed? Is there a single human soul who will nostalgically yearn for them? Who will mourn their loss? They don’t really offer anything substantial, except perhaps the illusion that someone is “working.” Robots can definitely do them better: they’re faster, they won’t complain if you make them clean windows all day and they’ll never tell you “I don’t have change” because they can’t be bothered to count!

Robots at the wheel (and in the dock)

Then we have the great drama of self-driving cars. “They’re dangerous!” Because a Tesla once bumped into a pedestrian somewhere. Right. Meanwhile, the rest of us drivers, who daily mow down anything in our path—people, animals, birds, leaving behind a trail of orphans and widows because we drive drunk, angry, sleepy or just clueless—we’re perfectly fine! At least the robot doesn’t get road rage, swear or block a disabled person’s access ramp.

The Real Question

The question isn’t whether robots are going to eat our jobs. It’s that they’ll eat our brains. Because the more we outsource to “smart” systems, the more we ourselves become inert. The mind is like a muscle: if you don’t use it, it atrophies.

Let’s think about it: We used to learn foreign languages to get by on trips abroad. Now we say, “Relax, Google Translate will handle it.” We used to remember routes, look for landmarks and on the rare completely unknown journey, we used a map. Now we can’t even find our neighborhood grocery store without GPS.

We used to read newspapers, opinion pieces, even excerpts from literature. Now we chuck them at ChatGPT and demand a one-paragraph summary because we can’t be bothered to read.

Heck, to fry an egg we watch a YouTube tutorial (“How to fry the perfect egg”…).

The Consequences of “Convenience-laziness”

Slowly but surely, our most basic skills are withering. We have no patience to solve even the simplest practical problem. We make Copilot answer even the most basic emails. It feels like we’ve all just stopped being creative. We used to come up with our own stuff, but now we just grab the same, ready-made solutions. It’s wild, because while the tech gets smarter and smarter, we’re all getting a little… dumber. So what do we do? Say no to technology and move back into caves?

I remember a colleague back in the historic year of 1988, who double-checked all my spreadsheet calculations (on Lotus 1-2-3, no less!) with his pocket calculator. It took him a good three months to finally be convinced that the spreadsheet was, in fact, doing them correctly.

Here’s the critical point: We CANNOT go back. We can’t retreat to the mountains, put film back in our cameras, or ink in our fountain pens and live like it’s 1950. The solution isn’t to reject technology, but to find ways to make it our assistant without resigning from thinking altogether.

Instead of simply having ChatGPT summarize a text for us, we can read it first and then compare notes. And rather than blindly following GPS like a flock of sheep, we can actually observe the route and sharpen our own sense of direction and memory.

The Ultimate Question

So, the real dilemma isn’t “will robots eat our jobs?” The truth is, most jobs that will be “lost” were probably boring, thankless and meaningless. The real question is: will technological convenience make us dumb?

Will we become “stupid” because an app does everything for us? Will we forget how to write, memorize, compare and formulate our own opinions? Or will we find a way to use these tools to become more creative, more thoughtful, truly superior beings?

There’s also, unfortunately, the other phenomenon: those who stubbornly refuse to learn anything new and remain obsessively stuck in the past, blaming everyone who adopts innovative tech (self-checkouts, electronic tolls – see Portugal, self-service gas stations, etc.). They prefer perpetual whining over seeing the simple reality: if you don’t update yourself, the market will do it for you. Besides, you don’t need to become an AI engineer to stay in the game. You just need the curiosity to learn, play, experiment and understand how you can leverage the new situation to your advantage.

At the end of the day, technology is neither our enemy nor our savior—it’s just a tool. The question is whether we’ll let it work instead of us, or whether we’ll make it work for us.

And finally, Terminator-style scenarios are indeed science fiction. The reality, however, is that robots don’t need to kill us; it’s enough for them to just leave us utterly incapable without them!

Because, the way things are going, the real danger is living in a world full of “smart systems” where we have become the dumb ones.

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*Katerina Raptaki – Navios Group of Companies

Katerina Raptaki studied Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and has 38 years of experience in information and communication technologies.

She has led digital transformation, cybersecurity, data management and innovative maritime solutions projects and has extensive experience in managing IT infrastructure, ERP applications, cloud computing and maritime satellite communications.

She is a founding member, former President and current member of the Board of Directors of AMMITEC, the Association of IT Directors in Shipping, which actively contributes to shaping developments in the field of maritime technology and cybersecurity.