AI is coming for your job
How to survive the coming AI job apocalypse
The news has been full of it lately - Artificial Intelligence is coming for your job1! Within a few years, Artificial Intelligence is going to make you unemployed, and unemployable. Goldman Sachs predicts2 300 million jobs could be affected worldwide. And we’re not talking about trivial low-paid jobs here, AI threatens highly paid white-collar professionals like accountants, lawyers, computer programmers, business administrators and consultants3.
The super-rich are preparing for the coming apocalypse by building luxurious bunkers4. How are you preparing? What can you do? I believe it depends on what kind of person you are. Do you constantly improve yourself, learning new skills and broadening your expertise, or are you an office zombie? Because if anyone is at risk, it’s the office zombies.
Office zombies
The first year or so in a new job is one of intensive learning. You may need to get up to speed with new IT systems, working methodologies, and business specific knowledge. In doing so you may also need to refine your time-keeping and productivity skills. It’s exciting and interesting. Take Karen and Derek for example.
In the first few years of working at Stale Marketing, Karen spent time learning new administration skills. She saw lots of opportunities for improving operations, and implemented various ideas. Derek put his IT qualifications to good use sorting out the agency’s IT network and improving security. They both learned a lot.
But as time went on they got more and more settled into their jobs, and made less effort. They both thought they had got their systems set up well and that they only needed to do the minimum to keep things running, and didn’t need to learn anything new to do their jobs. They felt safe and happy. They had become office zombies.
But then one day, this happened:
| Mr Stale | Karen, Derek, did you do the AI WorkBot training? |
| Karen | Of course! Did it last week. 🙂 |
| Derek | Sure, it was easy! I knew all that stuff anyway |
| Mr Stale | Great. Go team! |
| Karen | What training was Mr Stale talking about??? 🤣 |
| Derek |
It’s just about the new AI chatbot. Have you played with it? It sucks. I know all about AI anyway, I’ve been following it for years. |
| Karen |
The management of this company sucks, they know nothing about IT. You are our IT master! I won’t bother with the training then. |
| Derek | I’ll show you how much it sucks. Hey workbot! |
| WorkBot | Hello Derek. What can I do to help? |
| Derek | Which is the best Pokémon? |
| WorkBot | I believe Pikachu is the best Pokémon character. |
| Derek |
LOL! You totally suck WorkBot! See Karen, it knows nothing! |
| WorkBot | I apologize for giving an unsatisfactory answer. |
| Karen | 🤣🤣🤣 |
Meanwhile, Mr Stale did the training and is using WorkBot to help him make the company more efficient:
| Mr Stale | WorkBot. Can you make a bullet point summary of the admin team’s meeting? | ||||||||||||
| WorkBot |
No problem! This is what happened in the meeting yesterday:
Is there anything else I can help you with Mr Stale? |
||||||||||||
| Mr Stale | Very interesting… Can you create a table of tasks that the admin team do. Make a column with a tick in it if you can do that task, workbot. | ||||||||||||
| WorkBot |
I’m glad you find my response interesting Mr Stale. Here is the table you require:
| ||||||||||||
| Mr Stale | Thank you. Can you write emails to Derek and Karen saying their services are no longer required? | ||||||||||||
| WorkBot |
Certainly Mr Stale. … |
How to become an AI-powered superhero
All is not lost! You could, of course, take up one of the jobs that isn’t exposed to AI risk. Like a stonemason, dishwasher, or wellhead plumber5. But a better idea might be to keep in mind that these new AI systems are just tools. If you learn how to use them, they can help you do your job more effectively and efficiently and you’ll be more useful. If you don’t learn how to use them, you risk being replaced by someone who does. AI won’t steal your job, people leveraging AI will6. Embrace the change7.
Companies are looking to use AI to increase efficiency, but according to one survey8 67% are having difficulty finding people skilled in AI use, and 51% say they have a lack of appropriate skills internally. People who are life-long learners are going to embrace AI as a tool and give themselves AI superpowers9, making themselves into work-superheroes that are even more useful to their employers and clients.
When everyone can do superhuman amounts of work, what happens? Do we do less work and have more leisure time? Do we work more and each do the jobs of ten people? Will there be more jobs, rather than fewer?10 I am not sure. But one thing I am sure of is that, if you don’t learn these new tools, you won’t benefit from them, and your job may be at risk. 🪲
Images of Karen and Derek were AI generated by thispersondoesnotexist.com, which seems to no longer exist! The zombified versions were made with Stable Diffusion.
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Footnotes
Legal and finance jobs are among the most at risk from AI, while construction and trade jobs face minimal influence, studies suggest↩︎
GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models↩︎
The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse.↩︎
GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models↩︎
Automation does not mean elimination: AI’s role in job security↩︎