TIME100 AI Panelists Discuss AI’s Potential Impacts, for Better or Worse, on the Economy

Artificial intelligence could flatten your company hierarchy, improve global agriculture, and give you the perfect vacation.

It could also leave you permanently jobless, destroy your region’s economy, and cause mass social upset.

Those high-stakes defined the mood as panelists at the third annual TIME100 AI Impact Dinner grappled with the dilemmas of machine intelligence in San Francisco on Monday night.

Chief among them: whether AI will cause mass job loss, a new jobs boom, or both at once.

“At the beginning of the century, our company,” said Glen Fogel, chief executive of travel conglomerate Booking Holdings, which sponsored the event, “had human translators, thousands of them. … How many human translators do you think we have today? I don’t know what they’re doing right now, but I feel bad.

Their job is just no longer needed.” He also outlined his company’s vision for AI travel agents that can organize your vacation to suit your preferences and reorganize it on the fly if weather or delays throw a spanner in the works.

Fogel was among the executives, innovators, storytellers, and activists gathered at the city’s Asian Art Museum to celebrate those honored in the 2026 TIME100 AI list, which highlights the year’s most influential people in AI.

In an on-stage discussion before the dinner, TIME editor in chief Sam Jacobs asked panelists what trends they saw in the labor market — and how worried new graduates should be about their future.

“[AI] needs to be pivoted in the right direction,” said Ravi Kumar S, CEO of the outsourcing giant Cognizant, which also sponsored the event.

Whereas previous tech disruptions have shifted power upward in the corporate structure, he argued, AI could shift it downward: giving more power, capability, and control to everyday employees.

“This is a technology which will flatten the pyramid if you can drift the capability to the front lines,” he said.

But, he added, “companies all over the world are still not doing that.” He advocated new taxes on companies that use AI to replace human workers, as a “temporary bridge” to a more stable future economy.

Fogel warned of social unrest if governments don’t act now to limit the impact on people who cannot realistically retrain into AI-based careers.

“I’m concerned about how fast this change is happening.