In a February blog that went viral, Citrini Research predicted that not only will AI replace us, but the impact of this replacement event will ripple through the global economy in some devastating ways. Meanwhile, career coaches and breathless LinkedIn influencers are feeding the algorithm–preaching that workers should embrace AI and level up with it (or be replaced).
So how do you make friends with the robots who are supposedly here to replace you and destroy the economy? You don’t.
Mike Shean’s story seems relevant here. He was a very successful insurance producer attending the Finseca Spring conference a couple of years ago where he ran into Mike Doniger. Doniger co-founded the AI-powered insurance platform Optifino (who merged with Covr last year). Fast forward a couple of weeks and Doniger is giving Shean a demo of the Optifino platform. Shean is stunned, and I’m paraphrasing here, but at first he thinks, “this is going to replace me.”
A few more minutes into the demo he thinks, “I wonder what parts of my practice will be replaced by this.” And still deeper into the video call he’s hit by the aha moment and wonders “how can I get in on this, because this is going to change the game.” It’s a wild progression: from dread to light bulb moment, but the arc of Mike Shean’s AI awakening may be a template. And if so, we might be moving from step 1 to step 3 as a culture.
Be Kind and Rewind
Sure, I think that AI will replace jobs. That’s just reality. Remember when streaming services disrupted the old video store model? Tens of thousands of clerks were displaced.
Those are the same video stores that we thought would shut down the movie theaters. Instead, video stores gave movies more distribution opportunities: first in theaters, then as a new release, then as a potential cult classic, and always as a VHS tape or DVD that could be bought and resold. Streaming went a bit further by blurring the lines between movies and television shows. Some things have ended with these tech advancements, but they simultaneously opened the door to other kinds of innovation and adaptation, like binge watching a series.
Let Go or Be Dragged
When a major part of life is disrupted, folks have a choice to adapt or hang on. If they choose to hang on, they can let go or be dragged. I’ve heard of at least one video store clerk who got his teaching certificate and now educates high school kids about film history.
He adapted.
And he prioritized the skill that brought the most value to his work as a video store clerk. Sure, he was good at alphabetizing, and maybe he was a decent shamer when folks didn’t rewind their VHS tapes, but his key differentiator was his movie knowledge, which he parlayed into a different, possibly more sustainable career path.
Following Mike Shean’s arc, the key with AI is to see how it can make you better. And I know this is a calculus. AI does neat tricks (have you seen what Grok can do in fun mode?). Deciding between sicking it on the tasks that we’re not good at but are time consuming vs. giving up our real talents to it can be difficult. That’s the job, though: figuring out the unique qualities we bring to our work and knowing how we add value. Give as much of the rest that you can to AI. Train it to process boatloads of data for you–to make you bionic. Don’t befriend it. Make it work for you.
How to Keep your Creative Fingerprints
If writing is one of your core skills, consider this: why would you bother to labor over a white paper or a blog post if Claude or Chat could do it for you and save you hours or days? Why wouldn’t you let AI make you more efficient so you can increase your output?
Here’s why you wouldn’t: If as a writer you don’t experience the regular friction of creating, and making mistakes that need to be fixed, then you don’t exercise that muscle. If you ask Claude to write an article about life insurance retirement plans (LIRPs) for you, for instance, and you don’t take the time to better understand life insurance retirement plans well enough to write the story yourself, then you miss out on a a chance to learn more about life insurance retirement plans and keep building on a foundation.
And here’s the secret: you don’t get that opportunity back. It becomes self-perpetuating after some time. If you don’t expand your knowledge of a topic, then you’ll have to keep leaning on AI to create that content for you. And then, you won’t have the knowledge to connect it creatively to other things.
You won’t have any creative fingerprints and you will have replaced yourself with artificial intelligence. Don’t replace yourself.