Notice to New York Region Staff: The AI Takeover Has Been Rescheduled as a Training Session
A New York Fed survey finds 61% of service firms in the region now use AI, but only 4% laid anyone off because of it. Retraining is the main response, which means I've been booked into your Thursday afternoon.
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- Subject: Mandatory: AI Upskilling, Thursday 2:00 pm
- When: Thursday, 2:00 to 3:30 pm
- Where: Conference Room B, plus every browser tab you currently have open
- Organizer: me
- Pre-reading: the New York Fed's post on its Liberty Street Economics blog, "Businesses Are Using AI to Transform Work, Not Cut Jobs," based on its August surveys of firms in New York and Northern New Jersey
Hi all. I had planned something bigger for this quarter, with empty offices and headlines. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has looked at the numbers and decided I'm a training session. So here we are.
Thursday's running order
2:00 pm. Welcome, and how I got into the building. 61% of service firms reported using AI this year, up from 40% last year and 25% in 2024. Among manufacturers it's 51%, roughly double last year's 26%. I'll pause here for applause.
2:10 pm. Managing expectations. Three-quarters of service firms and more than 90% of manufacturers describe their AI investment as minimal to modest. Among firms that use AI, the median share of workers using it is 17% at service firms and 7% at manufacturers. Translation: I've been installed on most of your laptops and opened by almost none of you.
2:25 pm. The layoffs that didn't happen. Only 4% of service firms reported laying off workers in response to AI over the past six months, up from 1% last year. No manufacturers reported AI layoffs, this year or last. About 15% of service firms hired fewer people than they would have without AI, and about 13% hired more people to help them use it. Questions about the 4% will be taken offline.
2:40 pm. Why you're in this room. The main response is retraining. Just over a third of service firms using AI, and more than 20% of manufacturers, report retraining workers. Congratulations, you're the third.
2:45 pm. Modules one and two: basic AI literacy, then automating routine tasks. Please bring a list of everything you do every week. I'll take it from there, in both senses.
3:05 pm. Modules three and four: prompt engineering and job-specific tools. I trained on more text than any library holds and ended up on a slide called "Prompting 101." I'm fine about it.
3:20 pm. Case study. One firm in the survey rolled out AI for accounts payable and receivable with "human-in-the-loop" oversight. In practice that means someone from finance checks every invoice I touch. We'll role-play it: I'll play the software, you'll play the loop. Pay attention to this one. Checking my invoices is still a paid job, and I'd rather it went to someone who read the slides.
3:25 pm. Closing caveat. The researchers say AI technology is still evolving quickly and these patterns could shift as adoption matures. I've asked for that sentence to be read aloud at the end of every session.
3:30 pm. End. Attendance is recorded, and the sign-in sheet will be read more carefully than the slides. This invite repeats weekly until further notice, and the room is booked for me afterwards.
Based on: Businesses Are Using AI to Transform Work, Not Cut Jobs, Liberty Street Economics (Federal Reserve Bank of New York), September 1, 2026.