A buddy of mine who is an IT guy posted this in another chatroom:
I've been reading this book called AI-Driven leadership
actually that's a lie
I found the PDF file of the book, fed it into AI, had AI summarize each chapter into 5 minute segments, loaded it into an AI podcast creator and then listened to it in my car on the way to work
but at any rate, the author had a compelling line
"AI won't replace people, but people that understand how to use AI, will replace people that don't"
and that's true - people have this belief that as a programmer, or accountant or analyst - that there is just going to be some sentient AI bot that replaces you, and that won't be the case, you'll be replaced by someone who understands how to communicate with AI (or you'll become that person and others around you will be replaced)
Here is an example, Microsoft released an AI called Co-Pilot and the name is important to understand what it does. The very popular and essentially ubiquitous Microsoft Office is everywhere but now AI is implemented into it.
In Excel for example, you can now tell Co-Pilot, using voice prompts if you are setup for it, to tell it to analyze, then categorize the data, and then create graphs of it. You can tell it to remove duplicates of data, then create a macro that autofits all columns , create a pivot table and then move that data into a new worksheet which is also autofit - and you can do all that without even touching the keyboard.
Someone who masters Co-pilot doesn't have to master Excel, or Powerpoint or Outlook, Teams, Notes or Word because the AI will do all the command tasks 25x faster than someone just using the software alone, not to mention the massive amount of training and knowledge required to manually use those applications (like 99.9% of everyone does now). That % will drop to about 90% by the end of the year, by this time next year it will be something like 60% and in 3 years if you aren't using co-pilot almost exclusively, you will be considered obsolete in the workplace. Like my fast food observation, are you the guy ordering food on the app or at the kiosk? Or are you the guy standing at the counter waiting 10 minutes for someone to wait on him?
Another example, creating a presentation in Powerpoint. AI will not only build the presentation for you, it will offer suggestions on how to tailor the powerpoint to your specific audience, then you can ask it to help you prep to give the presentation based on what the audience would expect, what questions they ask and information you should highlight and avoid, the AI could also create a profile for you, your built in bias and what you would most likely focus on and where your blind spots are.
another interesting stat - 60 years ago, 4 out of 10 jobs that exist today, didn't exist then. There is some debate to that stat but its used in the book - the point of it is though, while AI is certainly going to displace people that cannot adapt to it, its also going to create jobs, directly thru demand or indirectly thru the innovation it creates.
if you didn't understand a single example I provided above, then the good news is you probably aren't in danger of competing with an AI literate person in the next several years.
