How do you prepare for the upcoming revolution brought about by generative artificial intelligence?
We’ve seen the predictions that there will be a massive impact on jobs, but whether you make a living in tax accounting, law, or government, no one knows how it will actually play out. What we do know is that there are a ton of consultants from IBM, PwC, Accenture, McKinsey, etc. selling companies on the idea that AI will give them a competitive edge. Take them seriously.
This is my third technological revolution in the workplace, following the revolution brought about by the personal computer and the Internet, and I’ve learned a few things from those who made it and those who didn’t.
The first time I got paid to use a computer was in 1986, when I worked as a data entry clerk for a now-defunct company called GE Capital. The temp agency said I’d taken an introductory computer science course and was a good typist, so I’d be a good fit.
The woman who hired me estimated that it would take a week to transfer her customers’ mailing addresses from their paper records into a new program called Lotus 1-2-3. She still thought of computers as fancy typewriters, and all her mailings were blank. I showed her that she could do the work much faster by templating, storing, and sorting on the computer. To my surprise, she was intimidated by this story and insisted that I do as she said and give her a week to do it. Never one to listen to good advice, I did it my way and finished the job on the first day. She was unhappy, and my temp job was over. I consoled myself with the satisfaction of having contributed to America’s economic productivity.
I joined the great International Herald Tribune, another now-defunct company, in 1999, at the height of the Internet revolution. At the manuscript table, I was surrounded by grizzled veterans with countless overseas stints and winners of journalism’s highest awards. But they had been educated in an era when cigarette smoke wafted through newsrooms, when copyists scurried between editors passing sheets of paper, and when printing was done with type cast from molten lead.
The Herald Tribune covers news from all over the world, and countries like Serbia, Bangladesh, Congo, and Peru have plenty of people and place names that need to be fact-checked after every article. One day, before one of my old colleagues creaked for a CIA World Factbook or a Columbia Gazetteer, I gave him the answer he was looking for.
“How do you know that?” he asked. Indeed, I had been working remotely for the past two years and was familiar with a powerful tool called Yahoo!. On that historic day, I demonstrated the magic of Internet search. Instead of complimenting me and thanking me for saving him the trouble of a walk to the reference shelf, he responded with deep skepticism. “How do you know that this is trustworthy?” he asked (in his defense, we’re still asking the same question today).
The woman who hired me for my first temp job had just graduated from college, but she quickly joined the revolution. Not surprisingly.
The second man in the example was a legendary journalist named Ray Anderson who also began his career when computers were virtually unknown in newsrooms and made the transition while many other journalists, sometimes much younger, failed to make the transition. I don’t know what was going on in their heads, but I think the difference in outcome came from both their attitude and their ability to adapt.
Doubt about new technology is not new—it probably dates back to the introduction of fire—but if we are going to adapt, we might as well at least wrestle with it.
Just because Ray Anderson survived doesn’t mean he became an expert on web programming languages, but because he survived he mastered the critical skills he needed to do his job more efficiently: internet communication and search.
Similarly, adapting successfully to the generative AI era means, for most of us, being comfortable with prompt engineering – knowing how to ask questions of large language models – to get the document summary, search results, or creation we need.
So how do we survive and adapt to the times as technology changes the world around us?
Don’t fight
I know smart journalists who say they “hate” AI. I don’t think that kind of attitude will lead to success because being emotional will prevent you from making good decisions. It’s better to think about what threats AI may pose to your job description and try to get ahead of those threats.
Invest in yourself
When the PC revolution first happened, my father, a chemical engineer in his 50s, didn’t rush out to buy a TRS-80 or an Apple II. But the moment IBM introduced the PC, my dad went all in and essentially reinvented himself. He did it the only way he knew how: by studying hard to understand the new hardware and then learning the software. Of course, he wasn’t alone; millions of people around the world did the exact same thing. That’s why it was a revolution.
Be creative
Getting ahead in technology may open up unexpected opportunities. In every organization, someone needs to understand and manage new systems, and too many people are waiting for someone else to take the lead or for leaders to bring in outside expertise. Those who seize the opportunity may find themselves rapidly promoted along with AI as it takes hold, filling key roles that didn’t even exist in their old organizations.
Don’t underestimate yourself
Just because your career is going well doesn’t mean you can’t change with the times.
Finally, take a deep breath
We Americans are always obsessed and obsessed about the next new thing that’s coming. That’s just how we are. There’s no doubt that generative AI is getting a lot of hype, but the pace of adoption will probably be fairly modest for at least the next few years. That means that if you have a focused attitude and a willingness to put in the work on the technology, you should have time to adapt and prepare for the next new thing.
Real Talk on AI is an occasional column exploring artificial intelligence and the changing world of work. If you have a column idea, email it to djolly@bloombergindustry.com with the subject line “real talk.”