‘We all knew’: is your job safe from the AI you are helping to train?

For Malaysian tech worker Sam, there were three short steps to being replaced by robots at a global social media company’s Kuala Lumpur office.

First came weeks spent training the company’s artificial intelligence systems. Then came the ominous warnings of “restructuring”. Finally, the inevitable: redundancy.

“One day, out of nowhere, we had to attend a town hall,” said the 29-year-old, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect his job prospects.

“They never explicitly said it was due to AI, but we all knew the direction they were heading.”

Across Southeast Asia, millions face a similar threat as AI reshapes companies’ business models, erases old roles and creates new ones in what experts warn could be an upheaval without modern parallel.