AI is absolutely replacing jobs though. I personally know multiple people whose companies have downsized departments or eliminated departments completely, offloading the work to fewer people using AI tools.
Here AI is more like a magic solution to stretch the employees you have. I don't know a single person who has been replaced by AI, but plenty of companies and government office hopes to be able to get more work done fast with AI. I doubt it will work.
No the OP is right, we had a whole department vanish: translators. Half laid off and half absorbed to other roles. I am waiting for this to backfire eventually, but even if it does, it will still be cheaper to handle the backfire than employing all those people.
At a big hospital system, nurses call patients with complex medical issues and help organize appointments and tests and whatnot. Previously, they had about 20 people who would transcribe recordings of the calls and then write up documentation for the medical records. Now AI transcribes and writes the report and sends it to the nurse to sign off / make edits.
I think for these tools that still less than a full Drop-in Office Worker Replacement, it takes some time within organizations to figure out how they can be used to reduce human labor needs.
So what might start out as an additive tool for existing workers, over time, managers start to see ways to reorganize the work between AI and humans and find efficiencies that can lead to headcount changes.
I've been seeing AI-based call center software replacing jobs in droves. This has affected my company negatively as well, since a good chunk of our own users are call center employees.
