“AI will be the most profound shift of our lifetimes” Sundar Pichai; “The largest change to the global labour market in human history” Dario Amodei; “all workers are going to be ceos of AI agents” Jensen Huang;  “In a decade perhaps everyone on earth will be capable of accomplishing more than the most impactful person can today” Sam Altman.

“AI models can be manipulated to generate fabricated scientific arguments, which can be used by ill-intended actors to systematically jailbreak strong LLMs.” Cornell University Paper: LLMs are Vulnerable to Malicious Prompts Disguised as Scientific Language

In the ongoing sea of speculation and noise about AI, its benefits, its threats, its ability to write blogs (not this one), whether you will lose your job because of it, some data has emerged in an interesting analysis in The Economist in February. 

Firstly, and of course, AI improves entry level work, and will cut the number of people needed at this level.  The analysis has shown that tech improves output for people without experience, for example novice customer support workers can resolve problems more easily and people who aren’t great or confident writers see improvements when ChatGPT drafts material for them.  This itself has led to a levelling out for example in job applications as recruiters now get a sea of AI composed applications where it is even harder to pick the best candidates to interview.  

An empirical study by Jonathan Choi of the University of Southern California found that an AI tool improved the quality of legal work, such as drafting contracts, especially for the least talented law students.  

So AI certainly levels the playing fields for inexperienced or less talented workers in many sectors, and of course this will also be true in the marketing and advertising sector.  

However evidence also shows that the externality of this benefit will lead to job losses at that level because whilst AI might boost productivity at first in certain jobs, it will soon begin to commodotise entry level tasks and skills, and indeed automate them further.  And increased automation will mean that those tasks that you do at the start of your career, that lead to expertise and experience, will be subject to automation, and so will not exist. Some people are asking:  how then will you gain that valuable, if somewhat tedious at the time, experience?

Nearly every task that I was required to do in my first two years of media is now redundant due to technology. (Including manually running TV schedules and getting Christine Walker’s sandwich and custard tart at lunchtime.)  It makes me wonder whether missing out on those tasks would have hampered my career progression.  I actually don’t think so.

Secondly, for more experienced and talented people at work, using AI is in fact like having infinite EAs or interns to work for you, who never take holidays, coffee breaks or sleep.  The evidence here is that higher performers benefit far more than lower performers from this, because the skill you need is to sort the useful stuff that AI provides instantly and infinitely from the less useful or commoditised stuff.  

So elite scientists, with plenty of expertise, can identify great suggestions and eliminate distractions.  

Elite marketers and media people will do the same.  Where we have had to simplify and average out segments and tactics in the past to flatten the glorious, messy individualities of real life into something we can manage at scale, AI will do the heavy lifting for us.  The possibilities are thrilling.  As I mentioned in recent IAB FutureScape survey “There’s this future out there where you will only get served ads that are of interest to you, so you would actually have no need to avoid them. You might actually welcome advertising, but we are not there yet. Grouping people by age, demographic and even life stage is just not relevant anymore. I genuinely think that stereotypes are dead.”

AI alone won’t make everything better.  AI will flatten and democratise information and ideas, but will not yet find the brilliant insight or idea that can step change brand image and drive profit and sales without a skilled and experienced practitioner to sort the good idea from the infinite suggestions, or the signal from the noise. 

According to Forbes 37% of managers say they would rather hire an AI robot than a Gen Z graduate.  Why choose? To quote my colleague Sophie Newton, Brainlabs Chief of Staff: “When you hire smart people, they naturally look for the most efficient path to success. In the age of tech-savvy Gen Z, that means leveraging AI to its full potential—freeing up time for more meaningful, strategic work. Hiring Gen Z is a win-win: less time wasted on manual tasks, more time invested higher up the value chain.”

AI will change everything, it will be the smartest people using it who will benefit businesses the most.