Three Counter-Tips to Survive the AI Apocalypse Coming For Our Careers
The AI apocalypse is here. The jobs are gone, work is optional, goods are abundant, and we're all on some form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) to supplement our life of doom-scrolling leisure.
My Tesla Optimus robot is fixing me another Old Fashioned at 2:00pm on a Tuesday and I just purchased the massage skill subscription to elevate my doom-scroll session to peak nirvana.
Life is good!
Avoid becoming a techno-nihilist where you stop caring, "quiet quit", or ride the slow train to nowhere in your career. That mindset is rampant. Certainly the way employers have treated their employees has led to that sentiment becoming a popular position but you've worked too hard to go out like that.
Come be a techno-optimist.
Let's take a different approach and hedge our bets. That means the game right now is to stay alive in your job. And by stay alive I mean if you're going to spend the supposedly little time we have left working (before the UBI hits), make it worthwhile. We've got nothing to lose at this point. We either win with our superior plan (they go left, we go right), or we win the future with our fully spec'd Tesla robots waiting on our beck and call.
Easier written than done, but there are some tips I'll offer to help you execute to plan. These aren't comprehensive, nor does every item need to be marked complete in order for this to work. I've started some of this in my own career and have seen the benefits compound over time. Start with just one of these and see where you wind up, and move to the next one when you feel ready.
First Tip: Proximity to AI Matters
Get as close to AI as possible in your job. If you're a knowledge worker, and you're not working on anything that has to do with AI you need to pivot ASAP. Find a way to weave AI solutions into your work, or find your way to a role that puts you in a position to help deploy, scale, or leverage AI across your organizations.
We see AI automating jobs every day. What you don't see as visibly are the humans behind those efforts orchestrating the change, setting up the solution, managing the implementations, iterating the plan, describing the use case, calculating the value, and ultimately managing the AI. These aren't tasks for your IT department to handle alone. Your business acumen (along with the other tips I give in this piece) is in high demand. As impactful as AI has been for businesses, there is still so much left to tackle. You need to be in that mix of humans who know how to deploy AI across organizations.
Even if you do believe AI is the enemy because it's inevitably coming for your job, well, there are real benefits to knowing your enemy.
First, your close proximity to this type of work becomes highly transferable. If you implement AI in one area you can move to another. The AI actually makes this easier as well, you don't need to be the Subject Matter Expert (SME) to be impactful with AI. As you become more familiar with AI you'll learn how to leverage it in different situations.
In addition, having AI skills on your resume will increase your relevancy for recruiters and hiring managers; more eyeballs on your resume = more potential opportunities. There are still plenty of roles hiring for AI skills and new ones coming up everyday. Don't miss this opportunity.
And lastly, this type of work is fun. Why wouldn't you want to help usher in one of the most transformative technologies introduced to mankind? This is the stuff professional lore is built upon! Have you ever heard someone from the 90s talk about what they had to do for Y2K? This is our generation's nerdy Super Bowl. I enjoy doing this work, it's challenging, scary, and fast paced. The energy behind AI is rightly palpable. Come join the fun!
The Flip Side
Notice my tip is framed as "Proximity to AI matters". This is intentional. There is another side to being as close to AI as possible, and that's to be as far away from AI as possible.
These roles feel very limited for knowledge workers, hence my first suggestion that if you're going to stay, you might as well get as close as possible to extend your longevity. Though this isn't your only option in your career pivot.
There are plenty of careers where AI adoption will be slower. I think about this often, and challenge other knowledge workers to consider what human centric jobs they'd consider doing if they no longer worked in professional roles? Skilled-trades, nursing, teaching, politics, entertainer, TikTok influencer - a pivot to one of these roles can be both refreshing and rewarding for someone who's been through the doldrums of corporate America.
Second Tip: Posture Toward High Agency
If you're at work and you wait for instruction, stay in your lane, outsource ownership to other areas, depend on the goodness of others to get your assignments done, and don't challenge the status quo - I have to be honest, "you're not gunna make it".
If you want to make it to the start of the UBI rainbow, you need to start posturing towards high agency in your work. Discard the idea that you have a narrow scope of role and only deliver to what your job's description states. Job descriptions were the AI slop before we had actual AI slop - intentionally vague and not a true representation of reality. They never made perfect sense, and they certainly won't make sense for the AI world we’re heading toward. The changes are coming too quickly, there's no value in fretting trivial details like job descriptions.
Instead, think of yourself as a problem solver with access to an army of knowledge via AI. There are plenty of problems to solve for knowledge workers and AI levels the playing fields. If you pigeon hole yourself to a narrow scope of work, you limit the opportunities available for you to add value. And if you're working a job where the value of your role disappears, you'll be in double jeopardy. You need to be a multi-dimensional player in the AI world.
If you're dead set on having a job title for now, let's call it "AI Orchestrator". You are the ultimate human-in-the-loop for AI prompts, agents, and systems; and your high agency characteristics sets you apart from others.
I've worked in three of the largest enterprises in the world. I'd estimate that 1 in 20 workers demonstrate high agency. They are the players you can depend on. You can give them an ambiguous problem, tell them to go, and they just go. Even better, they'll often find the problems themselves before others even notice. They don't take no for answer, they don't let artificial constraints stop them from moving forward, they prioritize progress over perfection, and they aren't afraid to drive outside of their proverbial lanes. It's an incredible leadership mindset and they stand-out amongst the crowd.
It's a good hedge to stand-out amongst the crowd. Imagine this is your business that you own. You want this type of player on your team and you wouldn't want to lose them. You'll always find a role for them - they have high agency. Give them a problem, give them AI, and just let them go. You prefer having this person working on your behalf. They are bringing a skillset that can't be commoditized through other humans or AI (yet). This is a safe place for them to operate from if they care about longevity.
You don't have to be the best performer on your team to demonstrate high agency. I'd argue it's even more important to demonstrate high agency when you're not the top performer on the team. It's your saving grace so to speak.
The next time something comes up at work that feels outside of your scope, lean in, own the problem, and run with it to completion. Your co-workers may think you're crazy but that's good (they go left, we go right), they won't make it to the UBI pay day. It's worth the risk.
Third Tip: Level-Up Your Writing (Deep Thinking) Skills
I'm biased, but developing your writing skills is very important.
Why is writing important when AI can do it for me? Well, when you write, you think. And you have to think deeply to convey your idea for your audience so that they can understand it.
This same principle has been applied to effective messaging and presentations for years. Think back to a time you had to give a presentation at school or work. If you went straight to the tool (PowerPoint) to build your visual aids you'd wind up muddling your message. You must first think (write down) how you hook your audience, what's in it for them, the points you need to make, the evidence behind those points, and how to handle questions to follow. Do those steps first and you'll see that building your visual aids becomes easier, your message becomes cleaner, and your presentation is more successful.
Writing will ultimately guide you to consider and address the alternatives, counterpoints, or loose ends in your idea. When complete, you'll have a well rounded premise. Your audience will appreciate that.
Even this article you're reading now; I wrote it all with no help from AI. I'm practicing organizing my thoughts and sharing it with others (apologies if it's unclear but let me know if you're still with me)!
In writing, practice is important. You're exercising parts of your brain to keep them in shape. If you're relying only on AI (the tool) to do your writing, you risk suffering muscle atrophy. Most people's career will suffer from that muscle atrophy. You won't, because writing will keep your brain strong!
And lastly, how do you interact with AI today? I'd bet it's often through writing your prompt (until the voice models improve). The better you articulate your desired outcome and nuances, the better results you receive from AI.
There are countless other benefits to improving your writing, but I'll save that for a follow-up piece.
Start here on your journey to the AI apocalypse and let's see where you wind up.
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