The Bureau of Labor Statistics dropped a grim number July 3: only 57,000 jobs added in June, barely a third of the 185,000 economists expected. Cable news blamed artificial intelligence before the ink dried. RAISE, the outfit that tracks AI-related layoffs, pegs 88,000 U.S. job cuts this year directly on AI, the highest tally on record. Somewhere, a Terminator poster just got a fresh thumbtack. My thesis, plainly: AI is progress, not revolution. We’ve run this movie before, and the ending doesn’t change because the special effects got better.

I review deals for a living. Every private equity, venture, and credit pitch that has landed on my desk the past two years has AI somewhere in the business plan. Some of it is real. Most of it is a slide deck dressed up to justify a richer valuation. Thirty years of underwriting risk teaches you to separate genuine disruption from a sales pitch with better branding, and most of what passes for the “AI revolution” belongs in the second bucket.