The 3 Human Jobs at AI First Companies
Calling all Detectives, People Persons, and Tastemakers
AI is Already Better at Your Job…
And if it’s not, it will be soon.
There are three lasting human jobs in the AI first era:
Detective, people person, tastemaker.
Detectives
Detectives find useful information that isn’t known by AI models. Information from detectives correct deficiencies in company AI models, creating better outputs. That makes detectives seekers of important corporate truths.
Anything AI models don’t already know must be hard to find. Detectives talk to customers, suppliers, competitors, and other company employees to useful information.
Good detectives are naturally curious people, although detective is the role that requires the least innate talent. Hard work. Persistence, A touch of creativity.
Detectives are the blue collar employees in an AI first company. They won’t get paid as much as others, nor will they get much glory, but meaningful improvments to corporate AI won’t happen without them.
People Persons
People persons are the human interface for an AI first company’s customers.
Sales people, customer service, community managers. People persons are people that other people like. They’re nice. They’re friendly. They bring people together.
We know a people person when we meet one because they make us feel good. Even more obviously, we know when someone isn’t a people person, especially when they’re in a service role.
Misplaced people persons cannot happen in the AI age. The cost to the company is too great. Human touch points determine whether customers keep coming back even more in the AI era than now since every company will have good product.
Parents often wonder what their kids should study in college. People persons will have reliable jobs and get paid a lot for what seems like easy work. My partner Gene playfully says college kids should study partying and hanging out. He’s right.
Tastemakers
Wheras people persons are the customer interface for a company’s AI, tastemakers differentiate how the company’s AI works vs all other companies.
Kant says, “The judgment of taste is not a judgment of cognition, and is consequently not logical but aesthetical.”
AI’s superpower is logical cognition, not understanding the intangible. That’s a human job.
Tastemaking is the tactful application of contrarian views at the right time. It doesn’t take good taste to agree with conventional wisdom, and AI is conventional wisdom since it is built on all the things we know.
Tastemakers are the athletes, artists, and entrepreneurs in the AI era. Innate talent and hard work are the ingredients for a tastemaker to break out. Those who don’t have it never make it.
Tastemakers have always ruled the world, and they’ll rule in the AI era too.
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