A Different Perspective on AI Fear
I’m a generally optimistic person, which isn’t always easy in today’s world and is made more difficult if you allow yourself to descend too far into the world of social media and mainstream news. Fortunately, my social media exposure is incredibly limited and as far as possible I keep my consumption of news confined to a relatively curated list of sources.
So, what has any of this got to do with AI doomerism?
Media Takes On The AI ‘Job Apocalypse’
Scroll news outlets for a relatively short amount of time and you’ll no doubt find an article, new research paper or story generated off the back of some hyperbolic comment about how AI is coming to take everyone’s jobs.
What if the AI ‘job apocalypse’ you keep hearing about isn’t impending doom but rather an invitation and opportunity to supercharge your skills and talents?
Try as I may to avoid coming across these articles every so often related content will find its way to me through friend conversations, WhatsApp groups or other informal routes. Recently, a podcast was shared with an unnecessarily doomer like, clickbait title on AI already taking everyone’s jobs and another post listing jobs with their ‘AI applicability’ scores. I do wonder if the people sharing this content spend half as much time working with AI tools and trying to advance their skills as they do sharing clickbait articles…cue Morpheus facial expression of ‘you think that’s air you’re breathing?’
None of us know the future so my gripe isn’t necessarily against people wanting to make their own forecasts on what the ultimate outcome of our increased adoption and exploration into AI will be. Finding a hop, skip and jump reference to Skynet, Terminator or a roundabout way of stating that scenario though hardly seems helpful unless you’re directly engaged in ethical and safe AI governance.
For most people they hear AI, make quick mental associations, get concerned on the impending job loss they’re being informed about then…check what’s on Netflix this evening. Am I being too harsh here…maybe. Is there a grain of truth in the fact that people consume the conjecture but do little or at least not enough to start learning and educating themselves on their future replacements…I think there’s just a bit more than a grain.
A Better and More Optimistic Way To Think About AI
Listening to Dharmesh Shah (Co-Founder of HubSpot) on the My First Million podcast recently, he summed up perfectly what my current view and approach is to AI. I paraphrase slightly and I’ll link to the episode at the bottom as I think it’s a worthwhile listen but in short ‘It’s not you vs AI, it’s you to the power of AI. It’s an amplifier of your capability’ I agree with him here 100% that this is the mental model you should take towards AI.
I’ve seen people who use AI in a very crude manner asking basic questions and getting limited productivity enhancements as a result and I’ve seen others (including myself) interact with AI tools in a much more comprehensive and in-depth way to gain huge boosts in not just productivity but what they’re able to create.
How I’m Incorporating AI Into My Own Life
I always wanted to learn to code, however struggled to carve out sufficient time alongside work and other higher priorities. With the introduction of ChatGPT followed by other LLM’s I realised that learning coding in depth was no longer a productive use of my time. Instead, now when I have an idea I can work on creating an MVP leveraging LLM’s alongside specific coding tools such as Replit or Cursor.
Now, I’m no longer stuck in the ideation phase for a new idea unable to progress it without sourcing and funding the required skillset and developers. Instead, I have all the tools in front of me to at least build and test the base idea before determining if it’s worth pursuing further. As a consequence, I’ve also picked up the basics of coding, effective approaches to debugging and other development related lessons.
The basic workflow I follow at the moment is using Claude to set up a new project, supporting with some of the coding. GPT for content creation and debugging or QA of code alongside Gemini for interacting with as I work through development activities.
This isn’t intended as prescriptive approach for LLM adoption, more to highlight that through a relatively small outlay of around £60-100 a month I have access to the equivalent of a small project and development team.
All of this is only possible because I’ve been working with various LLM’s for a couple of years now and continually get more efficient and effective with them. I’ve got friends and colleagues who will create a short, basic prompt and get an ‘acceptable’ output after which I’ll show them a more in depth and context rich prompt I’ll use to be more prescriptive on the required outcome, supercharging the progress and vastly improving the result.
AI as a Catalyst For Productivity
These capabilities exist for everyone with access to the internet already. If you can pay for the pro/paid subscriptions, then excellent but it’s not mandatory for you to get started. The best suggestion I can make which worked for me and also resonated from a comment Dharmesh shared in the same podcast referenced above is that before you think about taking on a new task give AI a go first. For me it’s not a replacement for what I’m capable of doing but a time saver that allows me to generate output and reach outcomes faster. As a result, I’m able to work on other priorities sooner.
Another excellent podcast which (again, linked below) is Dwarkesh’s podcast interviewing Satya Nadella where Satya said ‘I think with AI, and I work with my colleagues’ referring to his new workflow since the introduction of AI tools.
Again, for me this resonates a lot. It’s easier for me to collect my thoughts alone, then structure them in the right way to ensure I go into any professional discussions with the right level of understanding and structure to my mental models. AI now allows me to bounce ideas around and reach that clarity faster and more effectively, which as a result makes for much richer engagements with clients and colleagues.
Shifting Focus from Fear To Growth
My musings on the topic won’t stop AI doomerism coming across your feed nor across mine, however I would encourage everyone to spend less time thinking about how AI is going to replace their jobs and more time focusing on how AI is going to increase their productivity and potential. It’s more about ‘how can I use AI to become more effective at what I do’ which as a consequence will make you less likely to be displaced from your role, especially more so than the person who fails or chooses not to adopt AI for efficiency gains.
There are options abound for those ready to embrace change and opportunity. I hope you either are already or can find ways to leverage AI to unlock your full potential and amplify your abilities.
As a takeaway consider one activity or task you have on your to do list today or in the upcoming work week and before getting started try out ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity or Grok instead to see how you get on!