Why We're Not Afraid of AI at Work

AI (PROBABLY) ISN’T COMING FOR YOUR JOB

One of the first things that we typically do when we start working with a new client is interview everyone involved to get to know what they do, how they work, and any roadblocks that are in their way. In the hundreds of interviews I’ve hosted, not once have I run into someone who reported that they have too much time and not enough stuff to fill their calendar.

Despite years of technology adoption (or maybe because of it) our days are filled with apps, spreadsheets, forms, folders, and Zoom calls. Now here comes AI.

When you talk to people today, there is a general nervousness that the robots may be coming for their jobs. That the AI tools are going to get so good that their employers will be able to reduce headcount, minimizing cost and maximizing output. My observations, and recent data, suggest that in most cases that’s just not happening. Instead, AI tools are freeing up people’s time to do more of the human work, be more creative, and generally deliver more value.

Here are two very telling numbers to back up that idea from Linkedin’s recent “Future of Work” report:

• 44% of US executives also agree that using Generative AI will help unlock more growth and revenue opportunities in the next year
• 4% of those same executives plan to reassess headcount as a result of the impact of AI

What I’ve observed directly is how simple AI tools can make it possible for people to publish more content, create more accurate reports, and summarize information much more efficiently. Tasks like that reduce a lot of the annoying, mindless work that tends to clog up our days.

Will there be jobs that get destroyed as a direct result of AI’s impact? Of course. Like any other technological innovation, some work will just be better performed by the machine – for example: law firms that employ dozens of people to summarize documents, or junior programmers who spend their days writing basic functional code.

I like the analogy of Microsoft Excel disrupting the accounting industry. At the time there was a certainty that the new technology would eliminate thousands of roles where people’s primary task was manually recording transactions into ledger books. And that certainly happened for some jobs, but the net effect, according to this episode of Planet Money, was that the number of employed accountants actually went up. Why? Because we all learned to ask more of accountants. Their job evolved from basic data entry to what it is today: business intelligence.

New roles are now starting to pop up every day. Linkedin’s report showed a 260% growth in the number of roles that included “Head of AI,” meanwhile our anecdotal search of Indeed found over 100 companies hiring for the role of AI Prompt Engineer, with salaries that are often over $100k.

This AI wave could be the most compelling reminder that I’ve seen to stay curious and keep learning. Technology advancements are not going to slow down, and if we can look at them as improvements in the tools that we use, rather than threats to the way that we like to do things, we just may end up benefiting from those changes.

If you’d like to head down the AI rabbit hole, here are a few places I recommend starting:

• Linkedin’s Future of Work Report (link to download PDF)
• Age of AI — a primer from TechCrunch including who the players are and what jargon you need to know
• AI 101: A beginner’s guide to the basics of artificial intelligence — Dataconomy
• Build a Winning AI Strategy for Your Business — Harvard Business Review
• AI 2041: Ten Visions for our Future — a book by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan that blends data and fiction to tell stories about AI’s impact on business, society, and our personal lives
• Hard Fork Podcast — a weekly show about tech that covers developments and stories in AI very closely

REPURPOSE YOUR CONTENT

CREATE ONCE, POST TWICE (OR MORE)

For anyone whose job involves content marketing, the pressure to constantly create fresh new stuff can feel never ending. A recent piece from Later asks the question: Why not just re-post that thing you created last month (or year)?

They make a good point, too. You put a lot of thought and creativity into your content, and whether we’re taking about social, blog, email, or any other form of content, a huge percentage of your audience probably never saw what you created the first time you published it, so why not surface it again?

And that’s before you get clever about it. You had a great idea for that original piece, so why not riff on it? Here are a few suggestions:

• Update that blog post with new information
• Clip quotes from long-form content to be shared in your social channels
• Expand on the original idea in a short-form video
• Offer more examples in a carousel or Reel
• Screenshot your best tweets or Linkedin posts to become IG stories
• Write about specific examples of a controversial/inspiring idea that you previously posted

The article has lots more specific examples and thought-starters — give it a read here.

ADAPTING TO THE ERA OF “LO-FI CONTENT”

YOU’RE DOING TOO MUCH

Sprout Social just published an article about adapting content for “social media entertainment” which, despite the fact that we’ve all read some form of this blog post 100+ times, contains several surprisingly useful insights.

Amidst the obligatory buzzwords about “humanizing your brand” and “being authentic,” it identifies a shift in expectations that has been fuelled by the two years we all spent at home, plus the emergence of TikTok and TikTok-style content. It points out that time spent on social is higher than ever right now, and the types of posts people are sharing are significantly less polished and less edited for aesthetics. Instead, we’ve all become entertainers, posting content that wows, makes people laugh, or teaches something new.

That could explain why a beautifully crafted that photo you spent a week re-touching flopped, while the clip of your team goofing off went through the roof.

Give the article a read, not because it will provide you with a paint-by-numbers solution to your content challenges, but because it just may spark a fresh new way of thinking about why you’re creating content in the first place.

Read: 3 ways to adapt content for the era of social media entertainment

TIKTOK’S CREATIVE JUMPSTART

IT’S JUST GOOD ADVICE

As if on cue, here’s TikTok with highly specific advice for content creators about making stuff people will love.

TikTok’s strategy of supporting brands by removing as many barriers as possible to start posting videos is a genius one, and the result is that they have been consistently putting out really high quality resources. This one is built for TikTok, but it can be used by anyone who is looking to get creative with their content, and embrace the ways that people are engaging with social channels today.

If you were inspired by the article above to adapt to the era of lo-fi content, then this is the playbook that you need to put it into practice.

Get TikTok’s ‘Creative Jumpstart Guide’ here

A FEW MORE STORIES WORTH A CLICK

STUFF THAT WILL MAKE YOU JUST A BIT SMARTER THIS WEEK

• Meta’s got even more ad automation tools to save you time and get more of your media budget deliver better ads
• Meta also published an infographic that promises to make you a better advertiser
• SubStack (the email marketing platform) is trying to become a social network by adding the ability to find and follow friends
• Threads, the Meta-owned Twitter-clone, has finally launched its web app

Written by Conner Galway, Junction Consulting