How to hedge against AI stealing your job

Will artificial intelligence take my job? This question is really starting to preoccupy me and millions of other white-collar workers. There’s even a word for it — FOBO, or fear of becoming obsolete — and, regrettably, our apprehension isn’t entirely unfounded. While I’m not counseling panic, I do think "knowledge workers" — a catch-all term for people such as administrators, financial analysts, software developers, legal professionals and those in the creative industries whose jobs are most likely to be transformed by AI — should prepare for massive upheaval.

This means embracing AI to become more productive, while having a backup plan in case your efforts to resist the march of the machines fail. Until recently, I was tempted to dismiss chatbots as gimmicky, error-prone stochastic parrots; the latest versions, however, can reason and solve complex problems and their answers are often indistinguishable from a human’s. Their capabilities keep getting better while the costs of using AI continue to fall.



.