Working in the Age of AI

A big shift is about to take place.

Historically, any big advancement in technology is followed by a change in the landscape of the jobs market.

Think about the time when personal computing was getting invented. There were very few tech jobs at that time. But now, tech is one of the most booming industries in the world. It was very hard for people at that time to predict what future jobs would look like, let alone make efforts into upskilling in the correct direction to ensure their jobs are not taken away.

We are again at such a crossroads. With the development of generative AI, every industry on the planet is looking into how it can be leveraged for their use case. This will have a big impact on the job market. And in times like this, we need to prepare for the worst.

Is my job safe?

Think about it like this, the problem you solve for the user will still exist in one way or another. It's just that the way that problem is solved will evolve.

That being said, I think it's important to consider how you contribute to solving the problem in your current job. You can use the following framework to brainstorm this:

Any problem is solved in the following process:

  • Identification of the problem.

  • Ideation on how that problem could be solved.

  • Viability analysis of the solutions.

  • Implementation of the solution.

Most jobs in the market are involved in multiple of the above areas. Let's understand this with an example. Suppose you consider the profession of a software developer in a company like Uber.

You need to understand the following 2 things:

  1. Which part of the process is your job involved in?

    As a software developer, you will be mostly involved in viability analysis as well as the implementation of the solution.

  2. How will different parts of the process be affected by AI in your industry?

    Now think about how generative AI will affect the viability analysis and implementation parts in your industry.

    The product managers at Uber will probably try to come up with potential solutions which leverage generative AI.

    So, to test the viability of these solutions, they would probably require people who also understand the capabilities and limitations of generative AI. Probably Data scientists or software engineers who have worked in that field before.

    For the implementation part of it, Uber would still need software developers who can integrate these generative AI services into their applications.

    So, if you're a software engineer in this space, it's probably not a bad idea to start learning about the capabilities and limitations of this technology so that you can contribute to the viability analysis of the potential solutions. Who knows, it might become a job requirement in the future.

Lookout for new tools popping up

A lot of new tools will come into the market. If you're an employee, your company might even subscribe to these tools.

Make sure you try these when they come out, even if you're not biased toward using tech. You need to start integrating them into your workflow.

I know this sounds obvious and simple enough but we take these things for granted a lot of times. Think about it, ChatGPT came out a couple of months back. Did you try to use it in your day-to-day workflow?