'AI Ruined My Life': Why White-Collar Professionals Are Ditching Their Careers For Traditional Jobs

Across the globe, white-collar professionals are abandoning long-held career paths as artificial intelligence reshapes the job market. For many, the promise of stable, fulfilling work has been replaced by uncertainty and the need to find roles that AI cannot easily replace.

California-based Jacqueline Bowman, a freelance writer, told the Guardian that her career unraveled when clients began replacing human writers with AI-generated content.

“Some even told me how great it was that we don’t need writers anymore,” she said.

Bowman was offered work as an editor, fact-checking AI-produced articles, but found herself working longer hours for half the pay. By January 2025, she could no longer afford her health insurance and decided to retrain as a marriage

and family therapist, seeking a profession she believes is “AI-proof.”

Trading Desk For Kitchen
Janet Feenstra, an academic editor from Sweden traded her specialized editing role for a career in baking.

“It’s complicated because, in a way, I maybe should be grateful to AI for prompting this change,” she told Guardian. Yet the transition has been difficult: lower pay, longer hours and physically demanding work have forced her to adjust her lifestyle, including moving her children to live with their father while she completed retraining.

Future-Proofing Through Trades
Others are taking similar precautions. Richard, a health and safety professional in Northampton, opted to retrain as an electrical engineer after noticing AI’s growing role in writing policies and automating procedures in his field.

“You need to pick something which has resilience,” he told the outlet, noting that trades currently remain less exposed to automation than clerical and professional roles.

What Experts Said About The Shift
Experts said that these transitions reflect broader labor market trends. Carl Benedikt Frey of the Oxford Internet Institute noted that while AI is affecting a wide range of industries, trades and roles requiring dexterity and problem-solving remain harder to automate.

Klein Teeselink of King’s College London added that while software engineering and consultancy face the biggest AI disruptions, new opportunities- especially for those who learn to work with AI- are emerging.

While some professionals are finding ways to integrate AI into their work, for many, the rapid pace of automation has forced difficult decisions: abandoning long-held dreams, taking pay cuts or entering physically demanding trades.