Seek opportunities in this age of AI

By: Eli Amdur
Vantage Point
USA Today Network
07/16/2023

..... If you need more than one guess to figure out which subject is most prevalently on the minds of readers who are calling to book career coaching sessions, then (a) you're been under a rock for too long; (b) you haven't been under a rock, but you don't care; or (c) you came out form your rock, looked around, and ran back as fast as you could.
..... The answer, as if there's still someone user that rock, is artificial intelligence, or AI, fact, it's not even close. Three out of four calls or emails that come into my office are either entirely or primarily about AI, as are four out of five booked appointments. I don't expect that to change anytime soon. I've been in practice as an independent career coach for 27 years and have been writing regularly as a job market observer in this paper for 20. (I've also been in the labor force for 55 years, but just humor me, tell me patronizingly that i still look good for my age, and leave it at that.)

Never seen anything like it

..... In all those years, I've seen some of the most civilization-changing developments possible, brought upon ourselves by us and our hominid ancestors over 3 million years: stone tools, controlled sue of fire, clothing, agriculture, alphabets, printing, telecommunications, the light bulb, flight, antibiotics, nuclear power, TV. space, the Internet, social media and now AI. Here are a few observations.
1. This list is by no means complete. It's representative of progress across time.
2. with every one of them, we humans, bless our souls, have figured out both the postie and the negative that can be done. And we're proceeded along both paths - with every one of them.
3. A closer look at a more detailed timeline of these inventions and discoveries shows that each civilization-changing event took place less time after its predecessor than that one did after the one before it. The pace of change, as it is, has been quickening, not just of late, but always.
..... So how does AI compare? It doesn't. In blunt terms, it's the biggest thing we humans have ever done,m and even though its concept has been tinkered with since before world War II, is still just embryonic. Further, its potential is seemingly limitless, and the exponential rate of growth is incalculable.

Something to fear or to embrace?

..... That brims me to all those calls and emails I get. Most are form readers who fear for their livelihoods or, at least, that they'll be overtaken and rendered subservient to this unseen monster. "AI will take my job," comes the oft-repeated cry.
..... No, it won't. Not if we sit down for a little breather and think it through. Remember when IBM put the model 5150 personal computer on the market in 1981? all over the world, people were certain that it was the end of their jobs, their livelihoods and their basic utility.
..... How wrong they were! Not only did the PC not kill jobs, but it has gone on to cerate at least 40 million jobs since its appearance four decades ago.
..... History is full of those stories - and AI is the next one. The discovery of oil in Pennsylvania in 1859 put the whale oil people out of business -a few thousand of them - but cerated the fossil fool business, the largest overall industry in history (until now). The few hundred people making buggy whops at the turn of the 20th century complained about what turned out to be the automobile industry.
..... The differentiator was simple. those who feared and, in a sense, became Luddites lost the battle before it ever began. Those who looked for opportunity found it. The key in the case of AI is to be willing to transform, to develop AI stills, to harness its power, and to learn what to do with it and how to sue it. There are interesting cases of that already.
..... But that's the subject of longer, more detailed conversations, like the ones I'm having in my office with, as it turns out, people who walk out of here with a better understanding of AI and the beginnings of a plan to sue it.
..... I'm about a half-year into my relationship with AI, so I have plenty yet to learn. I'm still a plebian and will never be mistaken for Alan Turing.
..... But it is no longer time to wait.

HOME