Artificial intelligence will create more jobs than it destroys. So stop freaking out about it and figure out how to upskill, re-skill and generally support your workers in taking advantage of one of the greatest technological revolutions since the introduction of electricity to manufacturing 100 years ago. That was the message from several of the senior supply chain analysts presenting at the annual Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo in Orlando, Florida, May 4-6, which attracted nearly 3,200 attendees.

“We need to change the mood around this. We need to change the conversation away from, ‘How many jobs can you cut?’” said Simon Bailey, VP Analyst at Gartner, the international research and advisory firm that tracks supply chain issues among other business concerns. 

The fear is real, for sure. Bailey’s colleague Thomas O’Connor, Practice VP at Gartner, put up a slide during his presentation that was populated with chilling news headlines about corporations such as Amazon cutting tens of thousands of jobs recently. Some large companies, including Meta and Oracle, have said mass layoffs are necessary to make way for enormous investments in AI. But the big concern is simply that entire swathes of human work are on the verge of extinction, as transmitted by this banner from Fortune Magazine: “Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI.”  

Gartner’s research shows that, in the second half of 2025, which is when the Great AI Layoff was supposed to be well underway, only 9% of worker reduction globally was attributable to AI. Not great for the other 91%, for sure, but more of a warning to supply chain operations (among others) to be wary of staffing up too fast during spikes in demand (such as during the pandemic). “Maybe you made a mistake in the past and over-hired,” said O’Connor. Layoffs are a reality and they are tough, he acknowledged. But if you misinterpret the likely impact of AI, and overstate how it will reduce your workforce, you potentially put your operations at risk of having insufficient people, or too few with the right skill sets to move your business forward. However many workers you might lose, “you have to ensure the rest of your workforce is AI-ready,” he advised during the session “Beyond the Headlines: Does Your Supply Chain Need an AI Layoff Strategy?” (The answer is: Mostly no. But get thinking about how to manage your workforce to be more AI-ready.)

“This is what it feels like to be at the beginning of a new era,” said Lindsay Azim, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner during May 4’s Keynote Session. She compared current times with the late 1990s, when the dotcom bubble burst and China joined the WTO, as e-commerce started to eat the shopping malls. “We adapted. We moved forward. We emerged on the other side,” she said. “How we do business now, with your coffee in one hand and your little computer in the other, would have terrified us back then.”

Besides, Azim argued, something much bigger is happening. AI presents the opportunity of “Leading Supply Chain Into the Autonomous Era” —  the title of her presentation. Gartner predicts an autonomous supply chain will be the reality by 2030. And it’s not all going to be about robots and agentic AI, to the exclusion of humans, she assured the packed hall of supply chain execs at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort. “People and machines will gain greater autonomy to make decisions,” she said. “It’s going to be a change in who does what. All organizations will struggle to adapt to this new era.”

What Gartner envisions is a future where, with the help of AI, humans and machines interact with other humans and machines, depending on the scenario. “You will be buying from machine customers. You will be negotiating with machine buyers,” she said. And then, in some cases, machines will just interact with each other. By 2031, Gartner predicts, 60% of supply chain disruptions will be resolved without human intervention. But, Azim argued, human oversight will still be needed. “People are still at the heart of autonomous supply chains,” she said.

How to proceed, then? O’Connor said there are things to avoid. Don’t use AI as an excuse to cut labor overheads – it should be boosting productivity, not improving margins. On the other hand, avoid lobbying for zero layoffs. They’re a reality of business; AI or no. Additionally, don’t argue that there’s insufficient value in AI to justify enthusiastic adoption —  that’s clearly absurd. The point is that there is indeed value in AI, but it is rarely achieved via a reduction in the workforce. “If you need to reduce short-term costs, explore other levers,” advised O’Connor.

Meanwhile, acknowledge that the people who work in your organization will not be equally impacted when adopting AI. O’Connor particularly focused on the role of what he calls “protégés” within operations —  typically college graduates with less experience than “maestro” managers, but on the track to management roles. These are, indeed, the white-collar workers walking around with targets on their backs right now, if you listen to fear-mongers. Yes, with the aid of AI, much of the work of protégés could be done by maestros but, critically, eliminating that stage of professional development means you risk missing an entire layer of the next managers. In fact, Gartner research indicates that, by 2030, 75% of supply chain organizations that paused hiring for entry-level roles in 2026 will pay premiums upward of 15% for early-career professionals.

Organizations must develop an AI talent strategy that ensures the retention of maestros, and accelerates the development of proteges so they can relieve the work burden of the maestros, O’Connor said.

“In the end, yes jobs will be lost. But new roles are being created,” said Azim. “There’s always this fear that what’s coming will take something away.” After all, at the beginning of the last century, 40% of American workers were agricultural laborers; today, that figure stands at 1.2%. The causes of mass unemployment, for example in U.S. manufacturing in the late 20^th century, have arguably tended to spring from geopolitical and economic factors, rather than purely technological ones.

Azim pointed to the recent Artemis II space mission, in which four astronauts navigated a spaceship further from earth than any human had ventured before. Why bother with all the expense and time required to make the craft safe and suitable for people rather than unmanned? Because a uniquely human perspective still matters when it comes to the future, the unknown. It matters with the known, too. With alarming frequency, AI large language models give flat-out wrong information with disturbing confidence. This correspondent's attempt to check via Google Gemini the arrival time of a flight booked to Manchester, U.K., evinced an answer that the flight simply doesn't exist.

AI may feel right now like the dark side of the moon. Get used to it, and start strategizing to make sure your workers accept, embrace and make the most of it, was the overall message from the Gartner symposium. “This is the moment to shape the future of your workforce,” Azim said.