AI Isn’t Taking Your Job…. Yet. Here’s How To Stay Ahead.

Published by Dan on

Lately, artificial antelligence (AI) seems to be everywhere you turn, and not always in a positive light. The AI word soup is almost as ubiquitous as the air we breathe. It’s all ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, LLMs, AGI, hallucinations, code injections, and on and on.

It feels like AI is on everyone’s lips lately. More importantly, though, the impact it is likely to have on the working lives of people between college and retirement is beginning to come into focus.

In the World Economic Forum’s recent Future of Jobs Report 2025, 86% of employers surveyed identified AI and information processing technologies as likely to drive business transformation. About four of every 10 employers surveyed expect to reduce staff due to AI because people’s skills will be obsolete or can be eliminated.

This isn’t something which might take place in 10 or 15 years. It’s happening right now.

Salesforce plans to hire not one single coder in 2025. And Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has said a job which used to take multiple people weeks to complete can now be done in minutes.

AI may not be coming for your job yet, but it will likely impact it very soon. The time to get ready is now.

How Am I Using AI Today?

You don’t need to make sense of everything happening in AI. Trying to keep up with the latest developments and chase statements by Sam Altman and others is almost a fool’s errand.

Instead, I’m taking a deliberate, heads up approach. It’s not revolutionary, but it is effective.

I use AI every day. It is a constant companion both at work and in my personal life. There’s nothing I do which can’t be improved and enriched by using AI.

Question: Am I using AI to write this blog post?

Answer: No. My writing is always my own. The way I combine words and paint phrases is unique to me.

I did, however, brainstorm with AI when thinking about what to write today. Because AI is a generative technology and has been trained on gobs and gobs of human data, it is capable of creating words and concepts I either don’t have time to do or are unknown to me directly.

Leaning on AI as an ever present creative partner is one key way you can use it.

Don’t know how to start responding to an email? Can’t think of a way to approach a nettlesome project? Have a conversation with AI and you’ll be on your way to a solution.

Question: Can I use AI to do all my work for me?

Answer: No, not today, and likely not for some time. There are, however, components of work you do which are likely rote or mundane and which could be done more quickly with AI. Here’s one example.

In a recent Business Insider article, Nimisha Sharath described how she uses AI. After each of her four to five meetings every day, she relies on AI to prepare notes and action items. It save her up to 100 minutes each day, time she uses to improve her skill sets, build relationships, and manage stakeholders.

Straightforward? Yes.

Effective? Extremely, and it’s one way I use AI at work.

AI doesn’t have to be super complex or complicated. It’s a tool to use to free time to deliver more value to your organization or to improve yourself even further.

Where To Begin

Question: How do I get started with AI?

Answer: Begin.

Here are three things you can do right now:

  1. Download any one of the following AI apps to your smartphone: ChatGPT (iOS, Android), Gemini (iOS, already built into ther Google app on Android), or Claude (iOS, Android). I recommend starting with either ChatGPT or Gemini because Claude can’t access the internet directly.
  2. Create a free account on the app.
  3. Have one conversation with AI today. And another tomorrow. And so on.

Don’t know where to begin? Perhaps ask it to explain a complicated topic – maybe quantum computing or why people care if a groundhog saw its shadow this morning – like you’re a sixth grader.

If that feels weird, ask it to give you a recipe for one of your favorite dishes. It will probably be different from how you would make it. Ask the AI why it chose certain ingredients or spices or cooking techniques. 

I did this.

I asked ChatGPT to give me a recipe for smoky split pea and ham soup and did not tell it I have a crockpot bubbling away in the kitchen with that exact dish. AI gave me a different recipe than the one I used, so I nudged it. I told it I use a ham shank but – and here’s the unexpected benefit I stumbled on – I always have to cook it for eight hours because the ham never seems to fully cook if I set the crockpot to high for four hours. I never understood why, so I asked it to explain.

It’s response:

The connective tissues and collagen in a ham shank take a long time to break down and become tender. The low, slow cooking over 8 hours allows this process to happen thoroughly, resulting in more tender meat. On high for 4 hours, the heat might not have enough time to fully break down those tough fibers.

I could have searched for that information, but when I started the chat, I didn’t know I was going there. The chat, the conversation, took me there naturally and, in a few minutes, I learned something I didn’t even know I was curious about.

The key is to begin. Now. Right now. Because AI will have an impact on jobs for many very soon. It’s still early days, but not for much longer.

Download an app. Have a conversation. And let me know how it went.

Together, we can prepare for the next AI development while building new skills and becoming more relative, and irreplaceable, tomorrow than we are today.

Categories: AI

1 Comment

May I Ask You A Question? – My Journey · February 9, 2025 at 10:54

[…] Start here.  […]

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