AI Won’t Steal Your Value
Will AI steal my job?
Perhaps that’s a question you’ve wrestled with. I’ll admit, if one was to believe the buzz and headlines, there’d be plenty of reason to fear losing your career to agentic AI. It seems like at every turn I hear someone talking about the capabilities that the newest version of fill in the blank with your AI tool of choice has and how that’s going to revolutionize the industry of choice within a short amount of time.
To be certain, AI has come a long way and it certainly does feel like it becomes more capable daily, but I don’t think we’ve reached the stage of robots taking over for humans broadly. What has happened is the advent of specific tasks now being fair game to delegate to agentic AI, such as writing certain types of code or scheduling calendar invites (among many other examples).
That does not mean that you’re about to lose your job, unless you’re a personal assistant whose only value add to their company is scheduling calendar invites.
And that is the crux of the issue. We fear AI taking over our jobs, but perhaps that means you haven’t given enough thought to what value you truly bring in your position. Software engineers, for instance, don’t just add value because they can write code. They add value because they understand systems thinking and are engineering solutions to very real problems companies face.
Do you see the difference?
Sales people don’t just add value because they place orders (sales) for customers. No, they add value because they provide a human connection and listen for pain points then offer solutions to solve them for their clients. AI may be able to close a deal, but the human connection won’t happen.
So, whatever industry and position you are in, consider what value you truly add beyond the immediate tasks you perform. What is the reality beneath the surface layer? If you can answer this, you not only have your reason to not fear an AI takeover, but you also have a much stronger link to a sense of purpose in your work.