Office Paranoia? There’s Hope.

Since the launch and use of mainstream artificial intelligence, AI has been making headlines: how it will replace, or has replaced, a lot of white-collared jobs, the use of AI agents, the danger of it if unregulated, AI and human romances, and AI-fuelled delusions and psychosis.

Naturally, the impact of AI is creating widespread uncertainty and “office paranoia” in the workplace. A term Business Insider dubbed for the phenomenon of when layoffs, AI, and job insecurity terrorize workers.

As a career and life coach, I’m observing office paranoia firsthand. I recently worked with a client who was worried AI would eventually replace her as she’s a copywriter at an ad agency.

Given the current climate that’s understandable, however, it seems some companies are understanding the importance of human monitoring, or supervision, when it comes to AI automation. There are also ways to make your career more AI resistant which I will explore later.

Most, if not all, tech companies tried to replace some workers with AI being confident about their AI and automation initiatives. Klarna, IBM, and Duolingo are some of the companies that underestimated the value of human labour when it came to intellectual and service tasks. After implementing AI automation, Duolingo noticed a decline in lesson quality. There were content errors in 42% of some courses and there was an 18% drop in user retention after the first quarter of when the changes were implemented.

Not only were there increased errors and a drop in customer loyalty with these companies, companies who implemented AI without human supervision experienced increased training and recruitment costs for unintended turnover (office paranoia). Some also found that a small AI breakdown could also halt entire operations until there was human intervention.

So, some companies are learning about the value of a complimentary relationship between human labour and AI after extreme automation. They’re learning that AI is better at structured tasks but not processes, or dynamics, that involve contextual judgement.  As the CEO of Klarna said earlier this year, “Really investing in the quality of the human support is the way of the future for us.”

Speaking of human support, yes, AI can and will be able to do a lot of things in white-collared sectors, but it cannot replace the distinctively human connection and experience.

One client was worried about starting her own business in health and wellness because most people can get all the information right now from Large Language Models like ChatGPT. Sure, and some people do. However, some people will want, or continue to want, the accountability of a human, not to mention other aspects like warmth and empathy. Something you might experience with AI, but qualitatively different.

Geoffery Hinton, known as “the Godfather of AI,” believes we should build “maternal instincts” into AI models, so they care about people. In other words, so they won’t wipe us out when they become superintelligent. This is a good idea to say the least, maternal is very much human and protective.

The reintroduction of human labour to some white-collar jobs and the push for AI to have maternal instincts, are all good signs that humans will have a symbiotic relationship with artificial intelligence.

Hopefully, reading this helps if you were experiencing any office paranoia yourself. If you’re still worried you might want to explore more AI-resistant careers or roles which rely on what makes you uniquely human: your voice, presence, lived experience or story, values, and emotional connection; things AI can't replicate well. Doing things in-person or in direct relationship with your team or audience helps too. You also want to keep evolving, with the continuously evolving technology, so it can amplify you not replace you.

If you’d like to explore any of the above ideas, you can schedule a Get Acquainted & Strategy Session here with me. Looking forward to it.

Best,