I share the optimism that work will remain and its value-add will increase. At the same time, however, I see that companies are not hiring like they used to, young people are finding it really difficult to land their first job, and various companies are making layoffs more or less based on AI or efficiency grounds. According to a Stanford study, employment among 22–25-year-olds has dropped precisely in the occupations most impacted by AI: Canaries in the Coal Mine. In my view, these are pretty strong signs that middle management is thinning out rapidly, and many tasks that required their skills or the skills of juniors are no longer needed. If this transition brings even a pessimistic 10% efficiency gain (I believe it’s much bigger) and demand doesn’t grow at the same pace, we will see a lot more unemployed people.
With these things, it’s always good to look at history every now and then. In the 1950s, economists predicted that middle management would disappear by the 1980s because of computers. That’s not quite how it played out that time, and middle management has ballooned significantly. Will that happen with AI? Grab some 
and let’s watch and see.
Youth employment is a more serious topic. I have found some solace from talking with the most forward-thinking tech executives in my own circle about their hiring criteria in the age of AI. All of them emphasize processing power over hard drive size—when information is increasingly accessible to everyone, the role of creative thinking becomes even more prominent. This should lead to “fluid intelligence” being emphasized in the job market, which in turn plays more into the hands of those just starting their careers than dinosaurs like myself. And these aforementioned tech executives often act accordingly: they want to hire future talent in addition to seasoned veterans.
But hey Hude, here’s a real challenge or question that would be nice to get some perspective on. Witted’s daily trading volume yesterday was about… €0. How do we improve this metric, which is quite relevant to us owners?
Unfortunately, you are 100% right with your statistic.
I can’t offer any magic tricks for this, but we have identified three root causes:
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The appeal of small-cap companies in the eyes of investors
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The appeal of IT service companies in the eyes of investors
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Witted’s ability to stand out among IT service companies
Regarding the first, it’s hard for us as a company to do anything. Trading volume across the small-cap field is unfortunately low for far too many good companies.
For the second and third, our most important task on our part is to prove that we can deliver recurring and credible earnings growth. That alone won’t address the market’s broader concern about AI’s disruptive impact on the industry, but we must be able to demonstrate, quarter after quarter, that AI creates demand for us rather than eroding it.
Investor relations, investor meetings, and the like are ways to communicate the above, but first the numbers need to be convincing enough to the audience over a sufficiently long period of time.