Whether you’re embracing it, dreading it, or cautiously poking at it with a long stick, artificial intelligence (AI) is continuing to infiltrate every aspect of modern life. We’re not just reading about AI in the news, much of that news we're reading is being generated by AI! Whether that’s a good thing or an ominous sign of things to come depends on who you choose to believe. Industry experts have voiced opinions from up and down the spectrum – from predictions of a bright future of technological, medical, and creative miracles to dire warnings that, if we’re not careful, AI might end us all. As with most new or emerging technologies, the truth likely resides in some blurry gray area.

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If you’re a business owner or in C-level management, it’s hard not to fantasize about the potential cost savings from faster turnaround times or the ability to do more with fewer people. But what if you’re a cube dweller still working your way up the corporate ladder? A programmer or designer still trying to prove yourself? Or a content creator competing to get your article published? Faster turnaround times might sound great, but you’re certainly not fantasizing about staff reductions.

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There’s little doubt that AI will have a positive impact on business and will help many rank and file professionals level up their productivity and quality of work by tapping into a vast knowledge base of crowdsourced ideas and information. Because, after all, that’s what AI really is. It’s a staggering and ever-growing collection of human experiences and wisdom that can be distilled into usable, customized information with a few magic words and phrases (or, you know, prompts). So instead of a writer bouncing ideas off a person in a neighboring cube, they can instead access the equivalent of thousands of writers and tens of thousands of years of writing experience to craft their next article. So, yeah, it enables people to work faster, improve their quality of work, and do more with less. But what about that person in the neighboring cube? Are they still mission critical?

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It’s one of the great debates surrounding this new tech. Many pundits downplay the impact AI will have on jobs, touting it as simply a tool that will help people to be more productive, creative, and accurate. Others, however, draw parallels to how automation and robotics affected the manufacturing workforce in the early to mid 1900s. Again, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

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To suggest that AI won’t have a significant impact on employment is straight up burying your head in the sand. There will be job loss. That’s not to say that we should impede progress to save those jobs. We’ve never done that as a country or as a people. Whether it was the cotton gin, the steam engine, the automobile, the computer… We’ve always moved forward into the brave new world of emerging technologies, overwriting the resulting job losses with new employment opportunities that supported our shiny new way of life. 

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But somehow AI feels different. It's hard to picture what jobs it will create to offset the jobs it will eliminate. Up until now, so many of our advancements have been in the way of tangible machines or devices that required manufacturing, maintenance, sales, parts, software, and other skilled and professional functions to support their existence. Even immigration, which for decades has been unfairly blamed for oversaturating the workforce, has created other opportunities due to the increased need for housing, more strain on infrastructure, and higher demand for goods and services. AI will never need an apartment, drive to work, or eat at a restaurant. It’s like a self-sustained, constantly multiplying, perpetual motion machine.

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If it sounds like we're leaning more towards the glass being half empty, we're not. AI will save companies money. It will increase productivity. And, it will free up resources that can be allocated in other areas. But, perhaps where it will most mirror our past advancements, is that it will force us to get creative and find different paths to success and alternate routes to achieve our goals. Those detours can lead to innovations and discoveries that we might not have uncovered otherwise.

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AI will no doubt cause some heartaches as it takes businesses to new heights but, since it’s not going anywhere, the best thing companies can do is embrace it, learn from it, and take full advantage of the freedoms – welcomed or not – that it will provide us.

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And, if you're a creative professional looking at AI with a dubious eye, take the advice of the Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu: "Know thy enemy."