Will AI steal your job? How focus can help

Guest post by Chris Griffiths and Caragh Medlicott are the authors of The Focus Fix: Finding clarity, creativity and resilience in an overwhelming world out now, Kogan Page.

Why creativity will be your career superpower in the age of AI

Job security is something almost all of us will have had concerns about at one point or other. After all, it’s hard to focus on doing a good job when you’re worried that your role might be at risk. In our modern age, this is a concern that has become relevant to an increasing number of people.

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In the last few years, we have seen the prevalence of AI grow more and more significant. As its abilities scale and its ubiquity increases, it’s only natural that many individuals have begun to wonder if there’s anything AI can’t do – and what that might mean for their job, and even their industry as a whole.

Undoubtedly, this is a reasonable concern. Reports have abounded that AI may replace the equivalent of 300 million jobs in the future, which is certainly a number not to be sniffed at. Yet, such predictions come alongside projections for job transformation – with much to suggest AI may actually create more occupations than it eradicates as time goes by.

Job transformation has often been the outcome of technological advancements historically. Whether that be during the boon of the industrial revolution or entrance into the computer-powered age of the latter twentieth century. Still, the power and speed with which AI is disrupting the workplace can be unnerving, but it’s important to keep in mind the key advantage we as human beings still have over AI.

So, what is this magical human skill you ask? Well, the answer may initially trigger scepticism – because I’m here to tell you that creativity is the career superpower which gives us an edge over machine learning. Of course, there are a few reasons why you may be doubtful – at least initially.

This is because – while AI cannot be creative in a true sense – it does have the ability to display creative behaviours. It can produce imitative pieces of artwork or fiction much quicker than a human. Given such machine-learning tools can, for example, produce a piece of art in the style of Van Gogh in a matter of moments, this may give the false impression that it matches the creative ability of the artist – but that’s not so.

This is because AI would not be able to produce such work without the humans who first trailblazed the new impressionist style which brought us artists such as Van Gogh in the first place. Put another way, AI is only as creative and capable as the data it’s trained on – information that (crucially) comes from human output. Without this information AI would not be helpful, and if all artists were to cease innovating from this point onwards, we would never advance into new epochs of artistic style and revelation.

Instead, the strength of AI lies in its ability to juggle, arrange and make useful large amounts of data (something it can store at a level unfathomable to humans). In the future, this may indeed outstrip the ability of humans in certain ways. For example, an AI tool may be able to run through a list of potential ailments of illnesses quicker than a human doctor. However, that still wouldn’t give it the ability to think more abstractly about how a rare disease had combined with another to produce an unconventional set of symptoms or present in an uncommon way. And it certainly couldn’t offer the empathy, reassurance and quality of connection that a human doctor is capable of.

Ultimately, this is the case because AI has no subjective understanding of the world. It might be able to replicate an artist style or help with a medical diagnosis, but it has no personal experience of being moved by a work of art or being stuck down by illness. Our own conscious perspective is one of the crucial things which gives us our creative ability. Our lives are foregrounded in a personal emotional climate, by the memory which feeds our sense of self, and of course by connection with others. All of this combines in our subconscious to offer rich colours which our imagination can then paint with.

While this may seem a lofty bit of philosophy, we actually apply this broad type of creativity in all kinds of brilliant and mundane ways in our everyday life – whether that be strategically planning a project or problem-solving at work. Creativity is sometimes mistakenly thought of as a bit of airy-fairy frippery that’s only relevant to bohemian types, but this is certainly an attitude we will have to shake as AI begins to encroach on the job market.

Indeed, thinking about job transformation, it is the mundane and repetitive parts of our jobs which are most likely to be ceded to AI tools. Imagine how much more free time you would have if you had a personal assistant, and if every niggly mindless time-consuming task on your to-do list was done for you, and you’ll get close to glimpsing the future of work with AI. In this new world, the creative, thinking aspects of existing roles will be emphasised over the ability to burn through a large number of tasks.

Humans will be able to best offer advantage and skills through their discernment and their ability to provide creative prompts to AI to get it working in the first place. We should not wrongly think of this as a man VS machine situation. Instead, our most productive and creative future is one in which human intelligence and artificial intelligence can combine to produce something great.

Still, in order to get there we need to put forward the best version of ourselves – which means embracing our own inherent creative ability, and learning not to fear the change which naturally comes with technological shifts of this kind. In the future of work, the most successful version of ourselves is also the most creative version.

Chris Griffiths and Caragh Medlicott are the authors of The Focus Fix: Finding clarity, creativity and resilience in an overwhelming world (out 3 July 2024, Kogan Page).

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