The Least Secure Part of Every Job

Originally written in Traditional Chinese: 鐵飯碗從來不是一個職業：荷蘭政府用 AI 變小，最先拿掉的是「照以前那樣做」

"A government job is the safest job." Many parents have told their kids that. Late last month, one government recalculated it.

On October 26, the Dutch cabinet announced a plan to cut about 25,000 full-time positions from central government by 2035, out of roughly 160,000 at the end of 2025. That is about one in six. Police and defence are excluded. The target is annual savings of about 3.5 billion euros from 2035.

Part of it relies on AI: administrative work and answering citizens, including 24/7 chatbots. Part of it is not AI at all: simplifying or scrapping at least 500 rules every year.

The official in charge put it simply: "We cannot keep doing what we have been doing."

What I care about most is not the 25,000. It is the 500 rules. Before a government gets smaller with AI, it has to admit that a lot of work exists only because it has always existed.

My take: in the age of AI, the least secure thing is not a job title. It is the part of every job that is done "the way we have always done it."

So what gains value? MIT researchers Isabella Loaiza and Roberto Rigobon (2024) grouped the human capabilities AI struggles to replace into EPOCH: Empathy, Presence, Opinion and judgment, Creativity, and Hope, vision and leadership. Work that relies more on these is less exposed to AI substitution and more likely to be augmented by it. What the Dutch plan removes is the part you can write down as a procedure. What remains is the part no procedure captures.

To be clear: 25,000 positions is not 25,000 dismissal letters, as Dutch analysts point out. How the cuts will be spread across departments has not been announced, and AI plans come in early 2027. The state secretary himself warns that AI is no miracle cure, and Dutch tech outlet Computable notes that past digitalisation projects have often ended up adding staff. I am not saying the plan will work. I am saying the sentence applies to all of us.

Try this today. Write down three things you did this week only because they have always been done. For each, ask: Can I drop it? If not, can AI draft it first? If not, which human capability does it need: empathy, judgment, creativity, or leadership? That last answer is where to invest next.

Parents: when your child asks what job is safe, try asking, "Which part of this can AI not do?"

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