A Robot Lost Last Week. It Won't Lose Again.

by Jeff Caliguire

Someone suggested last week that when AI takes our jobs, we should start eliminating people. Cull the herd. I was floored.

And then I realized: there are people thinking exactly this way right now. Powerful people. Supposedly rational people.

But what if this moment calls for something entirely different?

In Scripture, Joel writes about a time when "your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions" (Joel 2:28). Not decline. Future possibility. Courage. Imagination for what could be.

You may have seen the video that went viral last week. Figure AI staged a live-streamed "Man vs. Machine" challenge: a human intern named Aime against a humanoid robot called Bob the Bot. Detect a barcode, pick up a package, place it on a conveyor belt. Repeat. For ten straight hours.

The intern, Aime, won. Barely.

He sorted 12,924 packages to the robot's 12,732. A margin of 192.

And it cost him…. Definitely won’t do it again the next day! His fingers were blistered. His left forearm, by his own account, felt basically broken. He needed California's mandated meal and rest breaks just to survive the shift.

Meanwhile, around hour five, when Aime stepped away for a bathroom break, the robot quietly took the lead. Aime clawed it back. But the robot? It just kept going. It logged over 116 hours of continuous operation after the contest ended. No fatigue. No swelling. No weekend recovery or a round of brews at the pub.  

Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock posted the results on X and added a memorable prediction that became the headline: "This is the last time a human will ever win."

He's probably right.

I made a short YouTube video about the story. The engagement surprised me. But there was one comment I can't stop thinking about. I woke up at 3:00 AM that night/morning with it on my mind. A commenter named Michael wrote:

"As soon as 'they' can replace you with cheap robots. The culling will begin. They're culling the herd."

Culling the herd?!

After sitting with that phrase for days. I felt compelled to write what you're reading now.

The Signals Are Everywhere These Days

My hunting friends and family know exactly what this means. The language of "culling" borrows from wildlife management, where hunters receive licenses to thin herds that would otherwise starve or destroy their own ecosystem. Too many animals and not enough food mean you can take down a bunch.

Now transpose that logic onto a world where machines handle most of what humans used to do. Where agentic AI (AI that works autonomously, learns as it goes, and improves without your input) can run your marketing, manage your financials, handle customer service, conduct research, draft communications, and yes, perform some of your coaching.  : 0

Not all of it. But some. : )

The numbers back the anxiety. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 projects 92 million roles displaced by 2030.

Goldman Sachs estimates that 300 million full-time jobs globally face exposure to AI automation. The International Monetary Fund puts meaningful AI exposure at 40% of all jobs worldwide, rising to 60% in advanced economies. And 41% of employers globally plan to reduce their workforce where AI can automate tasks within the next five years.

These projections don’t come from science fiction writers.

They’re from credible economic research institutions. And the timeline keeps compressing.

There really are people talking about this moment as a defining crossroads for humanity.  It’s being called the biggest change ever!

"This is going to be the largest of industrial revolutions we've ever seen." Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO)

"In the next three to ten years, there's going to be more change in humanity than we've seen in all of our lifetimes. But the next 36 months is the most." (Tony Robbins)

Graduation Speech Surprises

Just this week, graduation ceremonies across America became the unexpected stage for this tension. At the University of Central Florida, a speaker called AI "the next industrial revolution" and got immediately drowned out by boos from arts and humanities graduates. If you missed that one, the same thing took place at Middle Tennessee State University.  Scott Borchetta (the music executive who discovered Taylor Swift) told graduates, "AI is rewriting production as we sit here." The crowd erupted. His response? "Deal with it."

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt drew repeated boos at the University of Arizona when he praised "the architects of AI." And at Glendale Community College, the administration used an AI system to read students' names during the ceremony. It skipped entire batches of graduates. The boos were deafening.

We've just witnessed the opening notes of a much louder rebellion.

Meanwhile, in other news, “teen takeover" incidents swept through Washington D.C., Rochester, Tampa, Chicago, Long Branch, and Orlando this spring.

Hundreds of teens flooding streets, swarming businesses, breaking things. Experts point to poverty, mental health struggles, and the lack of meaningful activity as contributing factors.

I won't pretend these incidents trace directly to AI displacement.

But I will ask the uncomfortable question: What happens in a society where meaningful productivity, belonging, and purpose become increasingly scarce for the young? Where entry-level positions that once served as on-ramps to adulthood simply vanish?

Uber Drivers Too

Literally, this week, while riding in a Tesla Uber, I thought, "Well, at least people can still drive for a living." Then my driver explained that it won't be long before Tesla activates full autonomy and he can sit in the back on his laptop while the car handles everything. "I probably won't have this job in a year," he said. “I’m looking elsewhere right now.”

The fight over AI won't stay confined to graduation stages and YouTube comment sections. It will spill into schools, statehouses, boardrooms, and churches that find themselves asking,

"What does meaningful work look like now? Where's the opportunity we were promised?"

The Wrong Answer

This is where the "culling" logic gains traction. Not from the fringe, but from seemingly smart people who meet in “think tanks” in places like Davos where they apply cold math and evolutionary mindsets to a complex human problem.

Limit births. Expand euthanasia. Abort the "unwanted." Let disease thin "the weak." Frame this as evolutionary pragmatism. Dress it up as mercy. You can already hear the arguments forming: "We can't feed everyone. We can't employ everyone. We can't sustain this.

Something must give.

This logic already feels reasonable to certain powerful people in certain boardrooms. And it leads exactly where you think it leads.

But there's another option. And history and science overwhelmingly support it.

Stress Produces the Best Fruit

If you visit Paso Robles, California, one of the fastest growing premium wine regions on the planet, you'll learn something counterintuitive about how their best grapes grow. The soil there runs thick with limestone and gravel. It’s challenging environment forces vine roots to drive deeper and work harder to reach water.

The roots grow thick and resilient. They transport nutrients more efficiently. The result? Grape clusters dramatically increase their intense flavor. And as any great winemaker knows, the secret to extraordinary wine starts with extraordinary fruit.

Stress produces the best fruit. Interesting.

My wife Mindy, a fiercely creative entrepreneur, repeats two mantras I've heard her say many, many times: "The best things in life come from limitations." And, "We do hard things."

She's right. (As on a lot of things!) And history agrees.

The Great Depression of the 1930s, the worst economic catastrophe in American memory demonstrated that.

Unemployment hit 25%. Families lost everything. And yet, during those same years, human ingenuity produced astonishing innovation. The electric razor (1931). Scotch tape (1930). FM radio (1933). Nylon (1935). The electric guitar. Chocolate chip cookies. The board game Monopoly. By 1937, DuPont's Depression-era inventions (including nylon, Lucite, Freon, and neoprene) accounted for 40% of the company's total revenue.

None of those products existed before 1929.

Necessity doesn’t kill creativity. Necessity supercharges it.

Peter Drucker, called the father of modern management, observed that every few hundred years, Western civilization undergoes a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades, society rearranges itself: its worldview, its basic values, its social and political structures, its key institutions. Those living through the transformation, he said, can't even imagine the world their grandchildren will inhabit.

We're certainly living inside one of those transformations right now.

And Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz, wrote in Man's Search for Meaning,

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

The question isn't whether AI, robotics, and automation will reshape civilization. That's already underway. The question is whether real leaders will respond with the cold logic of culling or the create courage of innovation… dream new dreams. See visions.

The Issachar Option

In the Bible, folded into a passage most people skip over, we find one of the most remarkable descriptions of leadership ever recorded. In 1 Chronicles 12:32, among the warriors rallying to David's cause, a small group of leaders stands out. They came from the tribe of Issachar, and they were described as "men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do."

Two things made them remarkable.

First, they understood the times. They read the moment accurately.

Second, they knew what to do about it. Insight without action produces commentary. Action without insight produces chaos. Issachar brought both.

In Proverbs 25:2, Solomon wrote something that may speak to us right now.  "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter."

God hides things. Cures. Solutions. Technologies. Business models. Forms of human connection and community that don't exist yet. AND He gives us the honor of uncovering them. That's not a footnote. That's a mandate.

If the Issachar leaders lived today, I can't imagine them shrugging and saying, "Cull the herd." Or “I hope those in Davos figure it out.” They'd roll up their sleeves and start building. They’d learn the latest on AI and technology, not just for themselves, but to lead the future, not be overtaken by it.

What the Builders Will Do

Innovation, by definition, means finding new ways to do new things that create a better tomorrow. If 40% of current jobs face meaningful AI exposure, then who gets to create the new enterprises, new roles, and new industries that replace them? Who will build the jobs that turn out to be more engaging, more flexible, more financially rewarding, and more fulfilling than what they replaced, because they meaningfully improve the world?

Harvard Business Review published landmark research confirming that the most novel solutions to complex problems emerge when diverse pools of knowledge converge. Not when experts stay siloed in their own disciplines, but when people from different fields, industries, and perspectives come together and allow new ideas to emerge from the collision.

The breakthroughs we need won't come from any single company, country, or church. They'll come from the intersections.

So what will these Issachar leaders actually do?

They’ll innovate! They'll grow companies that equip and hire new roles. They’ll start nonprofits, and social enterprises that deploy technology for human flourishing, not just economic survival. They'll build things that don't exist yet using tools that barely exist now.

They’ll retool education no longer attached to the industrial revolution. They'll redesign how we prepare people for a post-information-age economy. They'll train the human skills (discernment, relational intelligence, creative problem-solving, moral courage) that machines cannot replicate and that every organization desperately needs.

They’ll care for the inner life of leaders. In an environment changing at lightning speed, they'll recognize that the leaders shaping our institutions need space to think a new thought, dream a new dream, and gather with others who share the conviction that this moment calls for our best. Places to breathe. Connect. Hear wisdom from God.

They’ll invest. Some will come out of retirement because they realize they come alive when they help others come alive. Others, already successful in their fields, will deploy capital, mentoring, and expertise to help younger leaders find callings, launch enterprises, and build nonprofits that spread health through AI in ways we couldn't have imagined three years ago.

They’ll road-test ideas. They'll experiment with new technologies in their own companies, communities, and congregations before prescribing solutions for others. They won't just theorize. They'll build, fail, learn, and build again.

They’ll call upon God for wisdom to know how to uncover things. Not as a religious formality, but as people who genuinely believe that the Creator who conceals matters also equips those who search them out.

They’ll seek the good of all over their own good. Some even at personal cost.

As Tim Tebow recently reminded leaders gathered a few weeks ago, “Too many people treat this world like a playground. I see us living on a battleground.”

These won't be naive optimists who say "everything will just work out" and assume this transition will unfold like the Industrial Revolution, where people simply left farms and found factories. That's lazy thinking. This shift operates on a completely different timeline of days and months, not years or decades.

One AI researcher recently noted that AI changed more in the last 100 days than in the entire preceding period. The pace itself demands a different kind of leader.

And these leaders won't urge the next generation to "boo and hiss technology." They won't tell young people to depend on a government check, then kill time hanging out or on the golf course, gaming or on scrolling social media. They'll say: Find new ways. Build new things. You carry something the machines never will.

For Such a Time as This

All of humanity stands in deep need of leaders who will intentionally step away from the noise, climb the mountain, and think. Who will share ideas across disciplines and industries?  Who will unleash creative potential and pursue solutions more consequential than the Manhattan Project and more creative than a masterwork painting?

Not out of fear. Not out of guilt. Not out of pride.

But because a few faithful leaders looked around, looked to God and said what Esther said three thousand years ago: "I have been placed here for such a time as this."

OK. I'm in. How about you?

Jeff

PS. To take on assessment on your own AI Readiness and to apply to be part of a "Next Mountain Circle" (cohorts of leaders meeting to lead the future, not be overwhelmed by it) LINK to www.TheNextMountain.AI