Stop Asking 'Am I Cooked?': The Real AI Danger Is The 40% Wage Cliff

By Del.GG Research Team | February 23, 2026 | 6 min read

Stop asking "Am I Cooked?" It’s the wrong question. The real danger isn't that you leave the building; it's that your salary does.

You are fixated on a binary disaster. While Goldman Sachs grabbed headlines in 2023 warning that 300 million full-time jobs were exposed to automation, the immediate threat isn't mass unemployment. It’s mass devaluation.

We are watching the premium on average cognitive labor evaporate.

When Large Language Models (LLMs) flood the market with "good enough" technical skills, the barrier to entry for your role collapses. Suddenly, a junior staffer using Claude or ChatGPT outputs the same quality as a senior strategist, but for half the cost.

Wharton professor Ethan Mollick calls this the "Jagged Frontier." Tasks that used to justify your six-figure paycheck—writing briefs, debugging code, synthesizing market data—have become trivial. If an algorithm can replicate 60% of your output, you don't necessarily get fired.

You just get paid like an intern.

Your job isn't vanishing, but your negotiating power is. Here is the audit to calculate your personal exposure score before the market corrects your paycheck for you.

The 40% Wage Compression Cliff

Forget the termination letter. The immediate threat isn't vanishing jobs—it's vanishing premiums. Most professionals missed the economic subtext of that Goldman report: exposure equals commoditization.

Here is the brutal math: LLMs drastically lower the cost of thinking. When a junior analyst equipped with AI can produce 80% of a senior associate's output for 20% of the price, the market logic shifts. We aren't facing a mass unemployment crisis; we are facing a wage compression crisis.

This is the "Mediocrity Trap." AI raises the floor for novices but lowers the ceiling for experts. If your daily routine consists primarily of summarizing meetings, drafting standard emails, or synthesizing existing data, you are effectively shorting your own stock.

Daron Acemoglu, the MIT economist known for his skepticism of tech hype, warns that while the productivity boom might be overstated, the pressure on labor value is real. You likely won't be replaced by a robot. You'll be replaced by a cheaper human using one.

The "Am I Cooked?" Audit: Calculate Your Leverage Ratio

The old tools, like the legacy "Will Robots Take My Job?" calculators, are obsolete. They measure binary risk based on job titles. But Sam Altman has correctly noted that AI replaces "tasks, not jobs."

To see if you are cooked, you need to audit your workflow, not your title. You must calculate your Leverage Ratio—the percentage of your day spent on high-value human judgment versus low-value processing.

Step 1: The "Jagged Frontier" Test

Break your role into atomic units. Do you "write code" or do you "architect systems"? Do you "write copy" or "engineer brand voice"?

GitHub Copilot has already turned software engineering on its head. The coding—the actual typing of syntax—is now cheap. The value has shifted entirely to reviewing the AI's logic. If you are still billing for the typing, you are in trouble.

Step 2: Apply Moravec’s Paradox

This is your reality check. Moravec’s Paradox states that high-level reasoning requires very little computation, while low-level sensorimotor skills require massive resources.

Translation: It is easier for AI to pass the Bar Exam than to fix a leaky toilet. If your job involves moving atoms (plumbing, nursing, construction), you are safe. If your job involves moving bits (law, accounting, coding), you are in the blast zone.

Step 3: The Score

Look at your last 40 hours of work. Categorize every hour as either High Exposure (Synthesis/Process) or High Leverage (Strategy/Connection).

• Synthesis (Cooked): Summarizing data, drafting standard emails, basic coding, translation.
• Strategy (Safe): Negotiating with humans, deciding which problem to solve, managing client anxiety, physical world interaction.

If your High Exposure score is over 50%, expect a salary correction. The market will not pay you premium rates for commodity work forever.

The Vendor vs. Employee Shift

The World Economic Forum (WEF) forecasted significant labor market churn back in 2023. That number now looks conservative. The shift isn't just about tools; it's about employment structures.

Companies are realizing they don't need to hire full-time heads; they can rent intelligence. We are moving toward a "Vendor Economy." Why pay a marketing manager $120,000 a year + benefits when an AI-augmented agency can deliver the same output for a $4,000 monthly retainer?

This is the "Uber-ization" of white-collar work. The job remains, but the scarcity value of the skill evaporates. You keep your seat, but the market re-prices your salary because the synthesis work you do is no longer rare.

The Future: Reskilling or UBI?

If the "cooked" percentage of the workforce hits critical mass, the conversation shifts from career advice to policy. Concepts like Universal Basic Income (UBI) are moving from fringe theory to serious debate as a necessary cushion for the displacement of cognitive labor.

But you cannot wait for the government to save you. The Reskilling Revolution is your only immediate exit ramp. The goal is to move up the value chain faster than the AI can climb it.

In the end, LLMs are prediction engines, not truth engines. They can guess the next word, but they cannot take responsibility for it. That is your remaining moat: Accountability.

You are cooked only if you insist on being a processor. Become the architect, and you might just survive the fire.