Who Are You If AI Can Do What You Do?

Most people think the anxiety around AI is about losing work… I think it’s about losing something much more fundamental (for many people… myself included).

This week’s episode of Thinking With Mitch Joel is my conversation with Steve Brown (author of The AI Ultimatum and someone who worked at both DeepMind and Intel on the future of work). Steve suggested that what people really fear isn’t the technology… it’s what happens when the thing they’ve built their identity around suddenly becomes less valuable. This touched a nerve because my work is, without question, a big part of my identity. That’s something I find myself reckoning with almost daily… and I wonder if it sits at the heart of what AI is actually doing to our brains… maybe yours too?

That feels much closer to what’s actually happening.

We’ve been talking about jobs as though they’re simply collections of tasks. Finish the work… deliver the project… hit the target… collect the paycheque and go home (don’t take it personally). But work has always carried much more weight than that. It gives people a sense of competence. It becomes how they’re introduced at family gatherings. It’s the answer to the question, “So… who are you and what do you do?” We attach status to it… purpose… confidence… even our raison d’etre. In many cases (and maybe I’m projecting here), we quietly attach our self-worth to it too.

Is that why this moment feels different?

Every major technological shift has changed how we work. For me, it was the stream of computers entering our homes… modems and early internet connection… the web… mobile devices… and beyond. AI feels more “intimate” because it’s not just automating other kinds of administrative work. It reaches into work many of us believed was uniquely ours. In my case, strategy and writing. You can add in coding, designing, research, analysis and much more. That work… the kind that carried status from universities to boardrooms… often made us feel valuable in the first place.

It’s interesting how personal and emotional these conversations about AI become so quickly.

People say they’re worried about being replaced… or about AI becoming competent enough to do much of what they do. Maybe what they really mean is something more difficult to admit. They’re worried about becoming less special. Less necessary… less certain about where their value comes from. So that’s not a technology problem… that’s an identity crisis. And no software update or slowing down is going to solve it.

Instead of asking whether AI can do our jobs, maybe we should be asking what our jobs were actually giving us in the first place?

If your identity rests entirely on executing a task that can eventually be automated (for me, that’s writing this article), that’s an uncomfortable realization… but it may also be an invitation. An invitation to move beyond the task itself and toward the judgment, relationships, creativity and trust that surrounded it all along. But I think the bigger challenge for many of us (and for leadership) is what comes next. I’m starting to believe that the organizations that navigate this transition well won’t simply teach people how to use AI… they’ll help people understand where their personal value migrates as AI becomes more capable. We’re spending a lot of time teaching people how to use AI… and almost no time helping them understand where their value moves because of it. And combined, that’s a very different challenge than rolling out new tech. It requires leaders to acknowledge that change isn’t just operational… it’s deeply personal. People don’t resist transformation because they’re irrational. They resist it because transformation often asks them to let go of a version of themselves that took years (decades) to build…because they’ve spent years (decades) becoming that person.

Is that why this moment feels unlike every other technology wave we’ve been through?

So here’s the bigger idea… the real disruption isn’t happening inside the machines. It’s happening inside the minds of the people trying to figure out who they become if these machines learn how to do the work that made them feel valuable in the first place. And if that’s true… this may be the hardest leadership challenge of the AI era. Not teaching people how to use the technology…

Helping them rediscover who they are when the work that once defined them no longer does.

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