AI threatens every trade, but only programmers are complaining

AI threatens every trade, but only programmers are complaining

While YouTube fills up with videos of programmers complaining that artificial intelligence codes badly, writes worse and is stealing their livelihood, the other affected professions —teachers, doctors, lawyers, civil servants, translators— maintain a silence that is hard to miss. The awkward question hanging over the sector is this: if AI can already work wonders with code, why is the public lament concentrated among those who, in theory, are best prepared to use it?

The diagnosis circulating among tech workers is twofold. On one hand, some argue that **anyone who feels threatened is simply a bad programmer**: the tool saves them work, it doesn't replace them. On the other, the thesis that **programmers will be the last to fall** is gaining ground, because they are the ones who have to implement AI in companies and public administrations. The paradox is that they automate their own jobs in the process.

The legal sector, the first to feel the tremor

Where the ground is really shifting is in the law. In the United States, the legal sector has taken the first hit: if a lawyer's job is, in practice, filling out legal forms, AI does it without charging by the hour. In Spain the issue is even more glaring because of the figure of the procurador, a layer of intermediation that, according to the harshest critics, does little more than forward emails and issue engagement letters at fixed fees. Thousands of procedures that the machine dispatches in seconds.

The classic objection —who signs off on it?— falls apart easily, according to some participants. The civil liability of an automated opinion can be covered by insurance, and if millions of users pay into it, the premium comes out cheap. The argument that no one will be incivil liable for what AI says runs into a stubborn reality: **the liability of judges, prosecutors and lawyers is already, in practice, diffuse**.

Translators and designers, first on the list

The profession that has already seen the ground open up is translation. For court or notarial documents a human signature will still be required, but there will be fewer of them and they will charge more. The pattern repeats in almost every affected trade: **jobs are destroyed wholesale, and what remains is concentrated in an elite that masters the tool**.

Graphic designers have lived through their own earthquake. Someone who spent years mastering Photoshop now watches a layperson generate in minutes an illustration that used to take hours. The consequence is not only economic: AI-generated designs tend to look alike, which raises the value of the professional able to sell something unique. The paradox of the creative trade is that the tool makes everything cheaper while driving up the price of what is truly scarce.

The hidden bill: the token is not free

There is a fact the enthusiasts forget. Every inference consumes tokens, and even if the unit price falls, consumption skyrockets with intermediate processes. What seems sustainable today can turn into an expensive dependence on an external provider that raises rates whenever it wants. The analogy is the arcade machine: when the coins run out, you have to insert another one.

That cost is the reason many companies have not made the leap. Implementing and maintaining AI takes money, and if the system is made simple, the first person who becomes redundant is the programmer who built it. The threat, in reality, makes no distinction between trades: it reaches everyone, but some sooner than others.

Civil servants and teachers, the great absentees from the lament

The loudest silence comes from the public administration. A mid-range AI, with a mediocre prompt, can replace an entire administrative department for a monthly subscription, according to one participant. In Spain, a country of signatures and stamps, the excuse is that someone has to validate the document. But validating is not the same as producing, and the real work —tabulating data, drafting documents, reviewing case files— is exactly what the machine does better.

The same happens with teachers. AI explains, examines and adapts the pace to the student without losing patience. No one has gone to the media to say it does a bad job. It is simply ignored, as if it didn't exist, while the public debate remains stuck on whether the generated code compiles.

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The question left unanswered is not technical but political: why the narrative of the threat is monopolized by the trade with the greatest capacity to make noise on the internet. The other professions are not safe. They are, perhaps, distracted.