Are We Being Replaced by AI

Is AI replacing us? Jobs. So the way I see it, if I have a job, I don't want to ask AI to do it for me directly for small things, sure. But for bigger things like anything that is client related, if I can find somebody who knows how to leverage AI better than I do and they can do it for cheaper than it takes me, you know, time to do, then I would just ask them to do it. They they know how to prompt to create the most aesthetically beautiful images. And I could get there, right? I know that I could try and I could like prompt a hund times. But my point is instead of doing all of that, I just ask the human to leverage the AI to get me the work that I want. Uh and I pay the human. AI is definitely yes taking away some jobs but it's creating some new jobs for people who are I would say have an like in this case have an eye for aesthetics and design and understand it in a deep and fundamental level so that they can deliver and it doesn't matter to me how they deliver all it matters is what they deliver with what quality they deliver how fast they deliver it and how much it costs me if it cost me less to do it myself with AI. I will do it myself with AI. But I bet in most cases and I this is not theory. This is actually what I do. Like I had 50 images to edit. I've edited hundreds thousands of images and you know I've been doing photography like I used to do it like for over a decade, right? I could do it, but I like instead of spending one whole day working on that, I paid somebody else to do it and I didn't care if they use AI or not. What matters is the job is done. Uh instead of taking like my whole day to work on that, I worked on something else and um they got to work on that. So I think AI is just an at least for now, it's another tool that people can learn and leverage. I definitely care if they're using AI because if someone's going to especially if they're charging per hour, you know, someone's if someone's going to take three hours to do something they could do in three seconds um with AI, but they're, you know, beholden to the Photoshop, whatever, then I I'm probably not going to use that person. You know, if I'm interviewing, I'm I always ask, "How do you use AI for your work?" Because if I'm pay again, if I'm paying by the hour, I want them to be as efficient as possible to use the latest tools and whatever to enhance their work as possible. You know, I expect them to know a lot about where AI helps them. So, if someone's going to turn around to me and tell me they're a video editor and they they use AI to edit the videos, then I'm going to be like, "Well, actually, I know the state of AI video editing and it is not great. So, tell me more about that." Or if someone's going to say they develop an app with me, uh if if they're a developer and they completely use AI, I'm going to now, you know, because I do it myself, I'm going to try and understand to what extent. Like if they're a vibe coder, then no thank you. But if they're someone who uses it to do the the boring stuff that they don't want to do, or if they set off an AI to do one thing whilst they're coding another thing, then then you've bent my ear a little bit. I 100% agree with what you said where I said I don't care if they use AI is like I do care I want them to use AI as long as the quality is what I want I don't care if you know how which AI they use how arrive at it I I give them a timeline I give them the task and they better use AI and we spoke about this before the call when we say when we say like AI is taking jobs we're not saying that an industry has been taken away. It's all about the pool of developers, designers, whatever it is that you do. It's now no longer because someone can do so much. You don't need to hire a team of developers to work on a product anymore. You can just hire one developer who knows how to leverage AI. You don't need to hire a team of designers. You just need to hire a designer that has um you know can utilize AI to do their job faster, do their job better. they're not doing their job better then then they're not they're not worth hiring. This just means instead of hiring a few people I could just hire one person and this is going to be for everyone. If I'm hiring at all because I'm a I hire I'm a boss. I will not hire I will not hire someone because I'll choose to use AI. I've done that several times because I'm like well I can just use AI to to do this. So why would I hire? don't need to hire someone to make this icon or make this logo or you know do this development work. I don't need to hire a developer to do this. People have lost work from me where I would have hired for it. People have lost work from people I know because they've just thought this is simple enough for chatbt to sort out for me. So you've already lost jobs and that's what we mean by losing jobs. It doesn't mean that you're never going to get hired. It doesn't mean an industry has been removed. It just means there is less need for so many. There are less jobs that require a specialist person because AI can do it like that. I set myself up in a banana costume. I don't know. I don't need to hire a designer to do that for me now. I don't need to spend half an hour, 15 minutes in Photoshop to do that. I can just say boom, three seconds, done. I'm now wearing a banana costume. Yeah, but this is like the low scale. I think this this would not apply to bigger scale and for more complex things. I stopped giving my developer simple tasks because now AI does it. What I do, he's not like he didn't lose his job. He's just getting more complex tasks. And yes, people are being left out and left behind. People who refuse to go the ladder to go up in the ladder of complexity and abstraction. people who just stay in you know their old as you said like the example with the Photoshop version if they are not using AI to you know to do the things they will be left out but for bigger scale like more complex things AI is simply not there to do like the complex development tool the development uh work I mean ultimately like what what are we actually trying to say here personally I think that Um the it's misconstrued that when we say someone's lost their job or jobs are going away uh one they've already gone two we don't say an industry's gone like and three I think we'll be surprised at how happy people I think you said it earlier didn't you I know who it was it was the founder of web studio more people than you imagine will be happy with mediocre results because at the end of the day it's a race to to get things out there and you things don't need to be perfect. You need to realize that and that's what I've realized as a business owner. Things do not need to be perfect. Yes. But yes and no. Like if you if you look at our webs all websites the average design is pretty bad. Like the average design would be what you would call below average, right? And yes, so by that it means like most people would be happy with an average design, right? But again, if you want to stand out, you have to develop deliver above average. And that average my like I want to bring it all to this point that I believe this average is constantly moving up like the average is getting better constantly like look at the quality of website like the designs has gotten much much better uh compared to like 20 years ago, right? M so yes uh with AI people are getting a lot of a lot more people are getting average and a lot of them are happy with it but there will be always the need for higher output higher quality better output more output. When you're a worker you're determined that you're going to do the absolute best like you you feel like everything needs to be premium and amazing and it does in time. What I've learned as a company owner is that good enough will do. Like, okay, sure, if you want to take a lot of time to do this, that's fine, but we we don't need that, right? You you need to balance you it's how much um weight you're willing to put into this task. if you need to recognize the commercial ability of this particular task. And if it's something where you know, let's say security and uh like a migration of a database, something that rests heavily on needing to be really faking meticulous about the work that you do, that's where you put your energy. But if you can recognize when you the the effort needed is a little bit, take your foot off the gas a little bit because good is good enough. You'd be surprised at how much you can actually get away with. and from launching a product and succeeding as a business, you don't need to go 100% on every single thing that you do, you know, just recognizing where to put your foot on and off the gas is is really crucial. And that's kind of what I've learned as a business. It's like you can you can get away with not being 100% all of the time. This is part of a larger conversation on my show, Command AI, which we stream live every single week. We discuss the news and all things related to AI in the world of design and web. Catch us next week and join in the banter.