AI Isn’t Replacing Your Job

AI can only replace you if you’re not good at your job. Great, thanks for the read. That’s the end of the article. 

In all jest and as strongly as I feel about this sentiment, it’ll require a little more than a declaration to support my claim. Plus, for the group of people who feel “rage-baited,” it’s more fun to expand on this.

What is confirmed is the near-immediate dependence we’ve developed on these tools. As a marketer in the industry for over 15 years, my research led me specifically to how AI is impacting the marketing fields. 

In the span of 1 year, the regular usage of AI has nearly doubled for marketers. A tool that didn’t exist* pre-COVID19, now dominates not just our industry but the way humans are operating. For comparison, the rate at which we’ve integrated AI into our lives is akin to that of Google search or the iPhone (smartphones). In many ways, it feels thrilling to be apart of something so new and almost lawless like the internet first felt. “How much can it do for me? What are the boundaries with it…do they even exist?” 

*For clarity, I realize data companies like Spotify have been using AI for significantly longer than the mainstream public has. Companies like them were able to leverage its power to provide better services to their subscribers in a way that still felt deeply personal. I mean, what’s more meaningful than taking you down memory lane each year with a recap of your life through music?

Once platforms like ChatGPT and Open AI were broadly accepted by the everyday person, the excitement of the future came coupled with major concerns surrounding data accuracy, privacy, and workmanship substitutability. All valid and the idea of questioning something new is important. But the fear of job replacement indicates, to me, you’re not good enough at your job to recognize you control how this tool can elevate and streamline your workload.

AI challenges our way of thinking which is important for the future. But where it lacks, humans excel. Spotify employees weren’t laid off so AI could run the company. It expanded its capacity by leveraging humans to articulate what it needed to produce. It needed the personal human connection to understand how music can be meaningful to someone by using their own data. 

As a millennial, I think what feels fearful is that we come from a generation of grind culture. So, to understand there could be a platform out there that maximizes our efficiency almost feels like cheating. I get that. But the timing of AI adoption post-pandemic when the world is ravenous for grind culture again (as long as we don’t call it that) is a significant opportunity for us to elevate production without the burnout. 

Your resources are only as good as your understanding and use of them are. My recommendation is to find the holes in your workflow where your time is being devoured and leverage AI as a tool that bridges the gap so you can reallocate your brain space to places AI can’t reach…yet.