How to Make the Career Cut in an Artificial Intelligence World

How do you prepare for the coming upheaval that is generative artificial intelligence?

We’ve seen the forecasts for extreme job impacts, but no one really knows how it will play out, whether you make your living in tax accounting, law, or government affairs. What we do know is there is an army of consultants from the likes of IBM, PwC, Accenture, and McKinsey selling enterprises on the idea that AI is going to make them more competitive. Take it seriously.

This is my third workplace tech revolution—after those wrought by the personal computer and the internet—and I’ve learned a few things from those who did and didn’t make the cut.

I first got paid for using a computer in 1986, as a data-entry dork for a now-defunct company called GE Capital. The temp agency said I was qualified because I’d taken an intro to computer science course and was a skilled typist.

The woman who hired me figured I’d need a week to transfer her customers’ mailing addresses from paper records to a new program called Lotus 1-2-3. She still thought of the computer as a fancy typewriter, for which every mailer was a blank slate. I showed her that by templating, saving, and sorting with the computer we could do the job vastly faster. To my surprise, she was threatened by this news, and insisted we do it as she’d said, taking the full week. Never one to heed good advice, I did it my way, finishing the assignment on day one. She wasn’t pleased and my temp job was over. I consoled myself with the satisfaction that I’d helped to boost US economic productivity.

I joined another now-defunct enterprise, the great International Herald Tribune, in 1999—smack in the middle of the internet revolution. On the copydesk, I was surrounded by the grizzled veterans of innumerable foreign assignments, recipients of the highest prizes in journalism. But they were schooled in the era when cigarette smoke hung heavy in the newsroom, copy clerks raced back and forth delivering marked up paper between editors, and printing was done with lines of type cast from molten lead.

A journalist at work in the old International Herald Tribune newsroom, Paris, 2003.

Photographer: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

The Herald Tribune dealt in news from around the world, and places like Serbia, Bangladesh, Congo, and Peru had a lot of people and place names that had to be fact-checked every time, in every article. One day, before one of my ancient colleagues could creak to his feet in search of the CIA World Factbook or Columbia Gazetteer, I gave him the answer for which he was searching.

“How do you know that,” he asked. In fact, I’d been working remotely for the previous two years and had become familiar with a powerful tool called Yahoo! On that historic day, I demonstrated the magic of internet search. Rather than clap me on the back and thank me for saving him a walk to the reference shelf, his response was one of deep suspicion. “How can we know if this is trustworthy?” he asked (in his defense, we’re still asking that today).

The woman who’d hired me for that first temp job was fresh out of college, and she easily went on to join the revolution. No surprise there.

The man in the second instance, a legendary journalist named Ray Anderson, also made the transition, despite having started his career when computers were essentially unknown to newsrooms and while many others—sometimes much-younger journalists—failed to do so. I can’t know what was going on inside their heads, but I think the difference in outcomes results from both attitude and adaptability.

Suspicion of new technology is not new. It probably dates to the introduction of fire. If we’re going to adapt, though, we had better at least grapple with it.

That Ray Anderson survived doesn’t mean he became expert in programming languages for the web. It meant that he learned the key skills needed to do his job more efficiently: internet communications and search.

By the same token, getting along in the generative AI era is going to mean, for most people, being comfortable with prompt engineering—that is, knowing how to ask questions of large language models—to obtain a desired document summary, search result, or creation.

So how do you make the cut and stay relevant as technology changes the world around you?

Don’t Fight It

I know a smart journalist who says he “hates” AI. I don’t think that attitude is a winner because getting emotional distracts from good decision-making. Better to take a clear-eyed look at how and where AI might pose a threat to your job description and try to get ahead of it.

Invest in Yourself

When the PC revolution first hit, my father, a chemical engineer in his 50s, didn’t rush out to buy a TRS-80 or an Apple II. But the minute IBM introduced its PC, he went all-in, essentially reinventing himself. He did that the only way possible: by studying hard to understand the new hardware and learning the software. He wasn’t alone, obviously, as millions of people around the world did exactly the same thing; that’s why it was a revolution.

Be Crafty

Getting ahead on the technology may open up unexpected opportunities. In every organization, someone has to understand and manage the new systems, and too many people wait around for someone else to take the lead or for the leaders to bring in outside expertise. Those who seize the chance may find that as AI takes root they rise quickly along with it, filling essential roles that didn’t even exist in the old organization.

Don’t Sell Yourself Short

Just because you’re well along in your career doesn’t mean you can’t change with the times.

Finally, Take a Deep Breath

We Americans go on regular benders where we absolutely lose our minds about the Next New Thing. It’s what we do. There’s no doubt that generative AI has been hyped to the skies, but for at least the next few years, the pace of adoption will probably be fairly measured. That means with a focused attitude and willingness to grapple with the technology, we should have time to adapt and prepare so that we’re ready for the next new thing.

Real Talk on AI is an occasional column exploring artificial intelligence and the changing workplace. If you have a column idea email djolly@bloombergindustry.com, subject line: real talk.