ai just made you ordinary. can you still win?
most people who’ll lose their jobs to ai won’t lose because they were stupid, lazy, or incompetent, but purely because they kept sharpening their sword in a world that had already moved to rifles.
you see, for a long time, intelligence worked for us. if you were sharper than the people around you, if you knew more about things, if you could catch patterns easily, money followed. doors opened up. people listened to you.
ai didn’t kill the intelligence ceiling. it anal-fucked it.
intelligence is now everywhere. you’re one tap away from summoning an oracle that knows more than any single person ever could, can go into incredible depth on almost anything, and do it much faster.
you’d think “upskilling” could maybe give you an edge here. trying out new ai tools, frameworks, skills. everyone learning the same thing at the same time and calling it an edge.
i can do the funniest thing here. i can tell you that learning ai is the way forward. actually, wait, let me correct myself. the only way forward. i can show you your career’s death, then the aftermath, then sell you peace of mind today for a future you have no control over, in the form of an “ai upskilling course.”
many of you will buy that course. not because you’re dumb, but because fear loves anything that looks like a checklist. this is what insurance companies do. fear for hope works every time.
or i could tell you to find your safe camp.
safe camp 1: doctor, ca, lawyer, therapist. titles that require professional licenses to practice, and are somewhat protected by law, regulation, and institutions.
safe camp 2: plumbing, carpentry, hvac, welding. work that requires physical skill, where ai is too expensive to take over, yet.
both safe camps optimize for survival. but neither guarantees total protection from being replaced over a longer horizon, say two decades from now.
but a tiny minority still exists, and will continue to exist. the minority that will also have access to the same tools you do, but whose work will not feel interchangeable. these are the people who will win with ai, not against it.
do not mistake these people for being necessarily louder or smarter. they’re just choosing fewer things, making stranger combinations, and taking decisions that, to an observer, make no sense. yet somehow, they win.