AI will not replace us. (I hope.)
Is your job safe? I *thought* mine was . . .
In his recent book, The Singularity is Nearer, Ray Kurzweil lays out his vision for how humans will merge with the cloud, increasing our intelligence by marrying the best computers with our brains. In his vision — achievable by 2029 (that’s five years, folx!) — we will have nanobots in our bloodstream, rectifying illness and aging so that we can live forever. We may not even need our bodies.
Kurzweil exists in a different mindset than most of us. But we all know the world, with its driverless cars, is changing fast. It’s totally exciting and terrifying in equal measure.
The potential for AI improving our lives is as vast as its potential for destruction. Recently in an online group, a voiceover artist lamented that AI was taking over her job. While the university which hired her to record texts for disabled people saves time and money by employing AI, she is looking for new work, afraid she will have to find a new career altogether. Clearly, she is not alone. This too, is our future.
I grieved for her and what seems a cruel fate, and also for the listeners. AI readings won’t include an inspired pause, a pause that the reader didn’t even know she would take before starting, a pause that could infuse the text with deeper meaning. It can’t — as of yet — capture the feelings and intentions she puts into those words. AI won’t reveal a slight hoarseness, evidence of the fun she’d had the night before.
At least my job as a leadership coach is safe, I thought, rather smugly. How could AI be programmed to listen to the layers of what a client is saying? How could AI replicate the accountability coaches provide, resulting in clients feeling partnered and less alone? And how could AI form a relationship that, over years, proves to be its own special collaborative bond — one in which clients have reported “feeling my hand on their backs” when they’re taking a risk?
And then, when reading another leadership Substack, I saw this:
Busted.
While AI continues to aid and challenge many of us, the HI Stack will be a place to explore and remind each other of the intelligence that makes us uniquely human. I define HI as the mastery of simple and profound relational abilities: seeing and hearing each other, managing conflict, cultivating intuition, and leading with influence towards a better, more sustainable world. It’s more than emotional intelligence: it is, in a nutshell, loving well.
In my 55 years, after more than 30 years of my own personal growth and mentoring others, the greatest pleasure I’ve encountered is in the experience of knowing another and in turn, being known, in a deep and intimate way. Sometimes I fear this experience is endangered: we know our phones better than ourselves. The HI stack is part of my mission to reverse that.
The HI Stack offers digestible, non-platitudinous wisdom (usually under 800 words) intended to strengthen your HI. Sign up to build your leadership at work or home, and learn how to gain (real) influence, manage conflict, and feel more confident in the business of being human.
Hey Blair, great to see you here! Yes. AI. OY VEY. I need a happy medium. There's so we benefit from via AI...but just like the voiceover artist, many of us are going to be challenged by whether we are replaceable or not. When I started my stack, my Substack coach, Sarah Fay strongly suggested we make sure to record our own writing as a voiceover every time we posted a new piece. I ordered the mic, and found a great recording studio/provider, and I got to work. I love telling stories. I was spurred on not only by Sarah Fay but by my mother, who one said to me, "I'm so excited, I listened to your story this week! You sounded great. How did you do that?" I hadn't done a thing. She was listening to the default bot supplied by Substack on the app. I had no idea that was happening. I'm not a listener I'm a reader, but I pulled up the story, pressed play and listened pronounce "resumé" as "rezoooom." And in that moment I knew that the job I would take away from that bot, was mine fair and square. So glad you're here. It's the best community ever. xoxo
I was an early victim of computer automation. Ten years ago I saw the writing on the wall and left a successful 25-year career as a translator for something completely different. The new workflow was to “post-edit” machine-translated text, a deeply dissatisfying process that does not in fact require less human expertise & finesse, but earns far less respect and $$ from the corporate system. We’re not just losing jobs - we’re erasing from view whole fields of human artistry. Brava on this new endeavor, I look forward to reading more!