Most Human wins

I was reading a bunch of panic on Twitter last night about some key safety people leaving Anthropic recently. Combined with the latest advancements in the LLMs, people are yet again freakin’ out about AI taking over.

I get it. It’s a bit scary when you live your whole life perfecting a craft such as engineering, accounting, legal, etc. all for a computer to effectively take over your job. Like cab drivers when Uber came out, lots of people are worried for their future.

Perhaps they have a right to be. AI will undoubtedly eliminate jobs and be able to do many of our every day to day functions. However, the one thing that AI will never be is human. And that’s a key component that people are overlooking. Humans (generally) want human connection, not a connection to AI.

One of the most glaring examples here is the wealth management industry. For years, there were talks about wealth managers and financial advisors effectively disappearing with technology automating everything from investing to financial advice. However, while self-service advice and planning is on the rise, the wealth manager still exists for a reason, and that reason is human connection. When you can afford it, most people want humans managing their wealth and wellbeing.

In most industries, there will always need to be a human there at minimum to reassure the human customer. The entry level jobs of the past that I endured such as populating forms and checking them will mostly disappear. Instead you’ll have an entry level person learning the trade from the AI while the AI does the hard work.

The person that is able to take advantage and learn the craft from the AI will succeed. That person will be able to have a human level conversation with their human customer and build appropriate trust. Compare that to the person that just reads what the AI has given them, and you’ll see who will be disrupted and who will succeed in their careers.