MIT Technology Review pulled the charts worth seeing from Stanford's 2026 AI Index, and the one I keep coming back to is about expectations. Asked whether AI will have a positive effect on jobs over the next twenty years, 73% of AI experts said yes. Among US adults, 23% did. On medical care the gap is similar: 84% of experts optimistic, 44% of the public.
The same report says 88% of organizations now use AI somewhere, 59% of people see more benefits than drawbacks, and 52% say they are nervous about it. And one chart lands directly on my profession: employment for software developers aged 22 to 25 is down nearly 20% since 2022.
I think the expert and public numbers describe two groups of people who both sit on an engineering team. Some engineers are in the 73%. Some of them, especially the ones early in their careers who have watched the entry-level market shrink, are in the 23%, and they are not wrong to be.
What I take from this as a manager is that the conversation about AI on a team cannot be a single message. Enthusiasm reads as dismissal to the people who are worried. Caution reads as denial to the people who are excited. I think the only honest version names both, says what the team is actually going to do, and leaves room for the answer to change.
When your team talks about AI and jobs, which of the two groups does the room sound like?
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