It’s not AI that will replace you, it’s people who use AI. 

So, are you experiencing AI anxiety?

In the past few months, various of AI tools from Midjourney and ChatGPT have begun to enter the public’s view, with new applications appearing on the Internet every day. If you have joined some related discussion Facebook groups, you may feel overwhelmed by the new information that you cannot absorb. Every day, new “magic spells”, new AI tools, how AI tools are used together, and even when you have just learned a workflow, someone has already developed a little tool that can be done with just one click. The speed of tool innovation is far faster than our learning speed. 

At the same time as the blooming of AI tool information, there’s another voice has emerged. The majority of people immediately began to panic about the possibility of their jobs being replaced by AI. For example, telemarketers, customer services providers, simple office administrative work, financial-related input and calculation work may indeed face the crisis of reduced staffing, but in fact, with the current achievements of AI, there is still a long way to go before completely replacing humans. “Will AI replace your position” may still have a distance to go, but “people who use AI will replace those who don’t” is something that can be expected in the short term, and this may be happening at an accelerating rate.

Observing the current situation of many people using AI, most of them initially had the expectation that AI could instantly help them complete annoying tasks at hand. However, after trying it out, they discovered that the product generated by AI only has a general framework, and the details may even be nonsense or provide incorrect information. Although the generated images are beautiful, they are not what they had in mind, and they don’t know where to start if they want to make adjustments. For the tasks that require a lot of time and brainpower, they still have to rely on themselves. Therefore, there are several reactions to the matter of AI tools improving productivity:

Assuming that completing a task of a process is from 0 to 1:

1. People who expect to use AI to complete tasks from 0 to 1 often end up with concluding, “Oh, it’s just like that,” after several attempts and then return to their original work mode.
2. People who use AI to complete tasks from 0 to 0.3 have discovered methods to help them with the early stages of their work, such as using language AI models like ChatGPT as a creative tool for generating marketing slogans, article angles, and other creative ideas. They use it as an assistant to help collect and organize necessary information, saving time on reading and summarizing. They also use image generator to produce several different styles, allowing clients to quickly focus on the direction and saving energy on searching for reference examples or making graphics.
3. People who use AI to complete tasks from 0.7 to 1 have discovered some ways to complete the last mile of their work. For example, they use AI language generator to translate their completed emails from Chinese to English or rephrase their English emails into more conversational writing styles, without needing to ask colleagues with good English for help. They prepare for interviews by practicing with language models and interview questions. They also use AI lighting tools to adjust the light source for photos that were not taken well, saving the budget for finding photographers and models for reshooting. From the above examples, it can be seen that expecting AI to complete a task in one go may lead to disappointment because AI technology still has many limitations. However, using AI as a helper, creative tool, final check teacher, or other role can be a good way to save time and energy.

Interestingly however, even though we have discovered the convenience of using AI tools when we encounter problems, we still tend to revert to our old ways, opening Google and searching for answers using keywords on several websites. When preparing documents, we still open a blank Google document and type in the words one by one. When making graphics, we still use Photoshop and stock websites. It is like before these AI tools appeared, we only “knew” about them, and they did not really change our lives or help us progress. Helping to improve work efficiency by 20% in one go is not significant. However, when you develop the habit of improving efficiency by 20% in the long term, the progress you make can be substantial.