Seriously. AI is not taking your job today.
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Anyone who is an older millennial or young Baby Boomer (and all of Gen X) can remember the rush of excitement about the World Wide Web. It was amazing to turn on a computer, wait for the satisfying hiss of the dial-up connection, and surf the web. You could buy a book on this new dot-com called Amazon, download music from Napster, and check AOL for mail. For anyone who was a teenager or young adult, it just seemed magical, as if the world was changing overnight.
Well, it did and it didn’t.
AI will continue to evolve and impact our jobs. But probably not as fast as you think.
It was clear that music would eventually be something you downloaded instead of bought in a store. But Napster was plagued by legal problems from the beginning and quickly fell apart. Email did become a real thing (and a whole era-appropriate Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks rom-com), but the post offices didn’t close. In fact, because of Amazon…well, you know what happened. But at the time, most companies were slow to fully adopt any of the new technology. Snail mail remained the official way to communicate and send documents. The “IT guy” was just that: a dude in a T-shirt and jeans who unstuck the paper jam or restarted your computer. It would be more than a decade before “chief technical officer” stopped sounding like a Star Wars character.
The point is that the evolution of the internet showed us its early promise, but there was also a natural resistance to a lot of change at once. Some of that is just primal instinct. As humans, we have very good reason to take the road we already know. We go to our favorite restaurant because we know it won’t disappoint. We listen to the songs we already like. We shop at the stores with things we know we can afford. There is comfort in the familiar.
When it comes to AI, business leaders are unlikely to upend the workforce.
The resistance to change is no less true in business, and maybe even more so. While there are some very concerning impacts in the arts (as articulated by the actors’ and writers’ unions in the summer of 2023), the general corporate world is unlikely to quickly replace huge sectors of the workforce. AI is mostly reliable at rote tasks or compiling large amounts of data. So, it’s true that certain types of repetitive work are becoming increasingly powered by AI. But the pressure on those kinds of jobs has always been there.
For example, I recently went through an airport and bought a bottle of water and a magazine at a kiosk without any human interaction. So, yes, I won’t say that no cashier job has been lost to AI. But to be fair, you can also buy snacks and soda from a vending machine. That was someone’s job once, too. Jobs are always changing. Over time, companies ask humans to do more things that require judgment and empathy. The demand for people to do simple transactional exchanges or repetitive tasks has been replaced by automation of some kind, again and again.
Just because the tech is available doesn’t mean the adoption will be swift.
The incremental pace at which humans adopt technology—or any change—helps temper the excitement (or fear) around the opportunity for change. It’s good to remember that even if you are an early adopter and embrace change. Recognize the value of the human instinct to resist too much change at once. History would say that AI’s evolution will be in stops and starts, just as it was stopped (or at least slowed) by the strikes in Hollywood—or the dissolution of Napster in 2001. Whether you are in a leadership position making decisions about how AI will impact business or in an entry-level role worrying if it will impact you, it’s worth keeping perspective. This is healthy human moderation of artificial intelligence.
That’s not to say you should be unwilling to recognize that AI is here, and growing. Learn new skills, including how to do your current skills with the assistance of AI. In fact, working with AI might help you feel less threatened by it. According to one survey, 72 percent of workers who used AI found it made them more productive. The challenge is that of those who use it, 60 percent worry it will overtake their jobs, according to the same survey. But will it really take over their jobs, or just change the jobs they do? People spend a lot less time making photocopies than they used to. Similarly, travel agencies have been largely replaced by travel sites…that are run by humans.
Your job is not being replaced by AI right away. You will adapt to a new one before it does.
To suggest that AI will fully replace people feels like saying a calculator replaced accountants. Be excited about the future, but also let reality be your guide. You won’t wake up one day to find that life is altogether different. Change happens more quickly than ever before, and yet not as fast as it seems. And in the space between back then and very soon is now. There is time to learn new skills, including AI ones, and pivot to new versions of our former jobs. We can adapt. Because we are human intelligence.
