As the field of artificial intelligence continues to expand on its possibilities, it is only a matter of time before such systems outdo humans on even a set of tasks that comprise professional job descriptions. Concerns about AI taking over jobs are growing day by day, especially with language models like ChatGPT and Google Bard performing drastically well on a broad scope of cognitive activities, and even other generative image and speech models producing state-of-the-art avatars that can be new centers of attention in customer service or entertainment. While these are valid concerns regarding a certain technology that evolves faster than mankind can possibly adapt to, it is also a fact that as mankind moves towards progression, jobs will inevitably evolve, and we have to embrace it.

I agree that AI is moving at a very rapid pace that maybe my entire undergraduate degree would be useless just a year after I obtain it. But this wasn’t anything new to me; when I first took Computer Science, I knew for a fact that the field evolves so quickly that everything I learn at school might not be as useful in the next five years or so. As such, I’ve conditioned my mind throughout my undergraduate studies into thinking that I have to constantly adapt — to learn new things and upskill, so I can keep up with the pace of groundbreaking discoveries and disruptive technologies. Perhaps it’s why I am not as alarmed at the arguably imminent extinction of my target jobs. For others, however, whose careers have remained relatively stable over the last couple of years, I understand the current tides of AI can be unsettling. 

But it’s important to remember that although AI is making big waves at the moment, it has always been around us for quite a long time. Some of the industries raising concerns about AI are the creative industries, and a particular source of disappointment I’ve heard a lot from those working in the field is about Adobe’s integration of large language models in their products, making it easier to edit images and even videos with just a few words and prompts. Many are worried that this undermines the work of professional editors, who are already underpaid for their work. I acknowledge that there are problems with how people in the creative sectors are valued, but AI is not to blame for that. Adobe products even back then operated with AI; for instance, when we tried to remove a certain object from an image by enclosing it in dotted lines, it was detected and removed accordingly by underlying neural networks, which are fundamental blocks of machine learning and AI. Only now, the interface is improved such that we can verbalize our intent, rather than manually setting the target object’s location. 

I hear a similar sentiment from traditionalists who prefer manual cars instead of the recent automatic transmissions. They argue it diminishes the “skills” it takes to operate manual cars. And yet the manual design is nothing but an interface to control the car as a whole, and engineers simply arrived at easier, more UI-friendly approaches to controlling it through the current automatic solutions. Since we are in a constant pursuit towards innovation, the skills required from us will change over time for the greater benefit of society, so it makes no sense to attach ourselves to them. So it is likewise ironic to say that AI trivializes professional editing when the “editing skills” being referred to are merely a result of design options chosen by the same developers and engineers who are now trying to improve them. I’m pretty sure even before, there were more cumbersome ways of editing images, and the advent of Photoshop overshadowed relevant skills in those traditional ways. If anything, AI is simply creating a new shift in required skills that would make tasks more accessible even for non-technical users.

I see AI not as a competition that will steal our jobs, but rather a tool that can push our productivity levels even further — a fresh degree of freedom to our creativity in performing our jobs. The skills that AI trivializes will allow mankind to focus on greater pursuits, and hopefully give birth to a new set of skills that will drive our value professionally. As such, we should channel our efforts not only towards upskilling for the imminent breakthroughs that this disruptive technology will bring, but also redesigning systemic institutions so that it is robustly adaptable to ever-changing requirements in competencies.