Here is a scenario that did not exist two years ago. You learn — through a Slack channel you were not meant to see, a manager who talked too freely, a planning document left open — that your coworker's role is being automated. They do not know. Do you tell them?

The conditions making this question real are accelerating. Elon Musk's xAI is building "human emulators" — AI systems designed to replicate white-collar workers so faithfully that colleagues cannot tell the difference. [1] Roughly 55,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2026 so far, with approximately 20 percent of those cuts linked to AI and automation. [2] Harvard Business Review found that 60 percent of companies have already cut jobs in anticipation of AI — not because the AI works, but because executives believe it will. [3]

The ethics are tangled. Telling your coworker gives them time to update a resume, start networking, prepare financially. But it may violate a confidence, jeopardize your own position, or accelerate a termination that might have been delayed.

The counterargument is simpler: you would want to know. The golden rule has not been automated yet.

The real discomfort is that the question forces you to acknowledge the same calculus may already apply to your own role — and nobody is telling you, either.

-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York