This is just one of my doomer posts, which may have a part of truth or may just be all fluff, so take all my assumptions with a pinch of salt.
With the rising development of AI in the past 2 years, I’m sure that more than one person has had the thought of “Will AI replace my job?” or “Is my job at risk because of AI?”
We’re already seeing big corps cutting down costs on areas where AI works best such as Customer Support, or Software Engineering roles and I believe it could get even worse.
AI feels like a slaughterhouse for vulnerable roles that could be replaced using AI chatbots, AI automations and AI agents; you know it’s coming and you’re yet queueing for your head to be chopped off… and that’s the worst part.
Some people don’t see it coming, but once you understand how AI works, the possibilities that can be done and how it can fit inside corporate processes and systems, then it’s normal that you might freak out for a bit. You will be replaceable, and everyone will be to a certain extent.
Putting it into my perspective, when I started my internship in Marketing Automation creating Marketo programs for webinar campaigns and email sends, it was almost all manual work. Yes, we cloned programs from already optimized templates, and had a few automations in place which made our lives easier (later on), but the bulk of the hours was all manual copy-paste and QA’ing for human errors.
These types of entry-level jobs are seriously endangered since these processes are usually rule-based, very repetitive and have clear deliverables… which surprise, it’s what AI can do best.
Now, nothing stops you from leveraging any low-code iPaas automation platform with access to AI nodes and start automating each step in the process, so you’d end up not needing 10 campaign managers to do the job, but only 2 campaign supervisors and 1 Marketo AI agent in charge of all the tickets. (that’s 80% of workforce reduction right there)
You see where I’m going? It’s scary… and it will get worse.
It is important to mention that at this stage it’s the WORST that AI will get, so it is expected for newer models capable of better reasoning and executing more complex tasks to be owned by more experienced workers from the company.
My honest advice? Detect if your role is in the “AI Slaughterhouse” queue and do something about it.
Make yourself as irreplaceable as possible:
- Level up your soft skills.
- Focus on strategy, psychology, and leadership.
- Understand how AI works, and how you can leverage it in your day-to-day tasks. (If you can’t beat the enemy, join them)
- Learn how to create AI based workflows.
I detected I was in-line for the slaughterhouse, and I’m doing something about it.
Will it work? Only time will tell.