Future-Proof Your Career in the Age of AI
Introduction
AI will not leave our lives; it will only become more common, impacting our lives. This article reflects my views on AI, considering the following questions:
- What can humans do that AI cannot?
- What will future jobs look like?
- What can people do to secure their future?
Differences Between AI and Humans
I remember a discussion in a university ethics class about the differences between animals and humans. Is it intelligence? Is it race? Is it morality? I realized that the question I think they then can also be applied to AI: “What is the difference between AI and humans?”
The biggest difference, I believe, is that neither animals nor AI can create meaning; only humans can create meaning for their existence. Current AI can only learn from existing data and provide “correct answers,” but it cannot create new meanings. This is where AI can never replace humans.
I believe many philosophical discussions have explored this issue. What is the abstract concept of “meaning”? For example, when people carve a piece of wood into a spoon, they give that piece of wood the meaning of “a tool for eating.” However, current AI is like that spoon; it may have strong functionality but was born only with a given meaning and cannot create meaning on its own.
Why Do We Feel Anxious About AI?
When we lose meaning, and even the assigned meaning is replaced by AI, it is natural to feel anxious. This usually pertains to our livelihoods, skills, and social status.
So What Can We Do to Avoid Being Replaced? How to Alleviate Anxiety?
Humans are born with the free will to create their own meaning, which can never be replaced. Just like certain unique meanings: emotions, relationships, experiences… they cannot replace each other.
Don’t Let Others Decide Your Meaning
If you do not create your own meaning, it will be assigned by society, bosses, family, and friends. If you do not choose, meaning will only be assigned because that is what you know and have tried. Until something better than you appears, you will feel a crisis of existence. If you still do not know what meaning you want to create, trying more things is a good direction, and do not be afraid of making mistakes in the process.
Start Paving the Way for Your Own Meaning
In an era of free information flow and advanced AI, hard skills no longer provide the same level of security as before. Life will not be the same as before, where mastering one skill benefits you for a lifetime. Instead, soft skills like “learning how to learn” or “getting used to failure and improving quickly” are valuable skills.
Promote Your Meaning
Promoting what is important and meaningful to you expands your comfort zone, leading to more opportunities to encounter meaningful things and more people who resonate with the meaning you believe in.
- Help yourself improve
- Thus help others live better
- Thus help the world become better
Conclusion
The value of self-defined meaning is something AI cannot achieve at this stage, and I believe it is the greatest difference between humans and other forms of life.
From an optimistic perspective, with the rise of AI, we no longer have to be bound to a single direction for our entire lives. We can face different things with more freedom than ever before, and everyone can become an individual who creates meaning rather than a struggling slave for survival.
If one day AI can create its own meaning, it would be like creating a superhuman. That would be a real human, not a machine. Let’s worry about those issues when we reach that stage.