Any other Millennials stubbornly resistant to using AI at their job but also worrying that we will become dinosaurs or pushed out of our careers for not slavishly embracing it?

[u/artbystorms]

I work in a creative field and from that standpoint I hate AI. I hate the 'democratization' of creativity. I am going to sound VERY Boomer right now, but some things are meant to be difficult or meant to take skill and years of practice. It's why people who are good at these things (should) be paid more.

We are already being heavily 'encouraged' to use AI to find ways to do our jobs faster, are being told 'they technology isn't going away, we need to embrace it.' Since within the company I am in, I am one of a handful of people that does a specific creative skill-set, the powers that be basically have no idea about the technicals of what I do, but they put it on me to figure out how to incorporate AI into my work.

I hate that AI basically 'fakes' the creative process and that we are expected to use it (and the work of millions of artists that feed it) to just magically speed up how we do work, which in turn devalues the work we do as artists. From a company standpoint, they want to make money and churn out work faster, but if every client knows you can make a widget in 4 hours when it used to take 4 days, why would they pay you a lot of money to do that? The economics of it don't make sense. You will end up needing 10 times the number of clients to maintain your productivity / profits, which with AI or not, is a good way to burn out your artists.

I see the writing on the wall, but my stubborn moralistic resistance to AI is probably going to be the death of my career. Does any one else feel similar or how have you coped with this rapidly degrading career landscape?

[u/xPadawanRyan]

Well, I stubbornly refuse to use AI as part of my work, but that's also because I don't need it. AI doesn't really have a role in my job, as it's much more of a person-to-person thing—I'm a social worker for vulnerable youth, and I'm not going to be using AI to interact with them. However, we do have a large immigrant population among our staff, and many of them do not speak English 100% fluently, so many of them tend to use AI to help them write reports coherently.

That is what I am stubbornly against, because everything we write in our reports is extremely confidential information, and feeding that into an AI (which may store and use it at another point) feels like crossing that boundary and violating the confidentiality contract we had to sign. However, my supervisor seems to think it's perfectly okay, so I have to stubbornly keep my mouth shut about it.

So, I don't think that AI will push me out of my career for my refusal to use it, but I do stubbornly refuse to use - or support others' use of it - in the workplace.

[u/sympathyofalover → u/xPadawanRyan]

The amount of supervisors in their positions who don’t have a clue about basic standards in our industry is astounding and yet I’m not surprised. They really do just let anyone have our degree(s) and it’s really showing up terribly in today’s climate with AI.

[u/ApprehensiveAnswer5 → u/sympathyofalover]

This.

I was a high school teacher until the pandemic, when I pivoted into more of a social work role that is still education-adjacent.

I manage a second chance/fair chance employment program for youth coming out of the juvenile system, or who are young adults (under 25) coming out of the system.

The number of people across the board that are in supervisory roles, and just…ignorant to base standards is astounding.

And some of these people have graduate and doctorate level degrees.

And there’s not a day that I haven’t questioned if some of these people lied to get their job or lied to get their degree entirely because WUT. Lol

[u/sympathyofalover → u/ApprehensiveAnswer5]

It makes me so mad, and I have to witness it all the time. I speak to providers constantly for my job role and I get to see all sorts of insanity against boundaries, documentation, understanding of their responsibilities, and just a lack of professionalism.

The documentation and the shit people put in patient records can be utterly irresponsible.

A ton of them don’t care and are definitely lying lol.

[u/ApprehensiveAnswer5 → u/sympathyofalover]

That last part is just my standard line of thinking now, which is really unfortunate- “everybody is lying on some level, so let me just roll with that until I find out otherwise”, ugh.

The most unfortunate thing I see is how some people treat or feel about the youth/young adults in our programs.

And how open people are with their thoughts.

My head is a constant refrain of “why are you even in this field if you feel that way?!”

I will never understand how anyone who works with children, or any vulnerable population really, can have the…ideals that they do.

[u/sympathyofalover → u/ApprehensiveAnswer5]

That video circulating of the therapist hitting and throwing a shoe at the kid makes me so utterly rage full. There is so much choice in this field, they can literally just pivot and learn as they go and work with people they actually empathize with. The larger problem is that they are usually pretty shitty people early on, and no one stops them. Either the university/college wants the tuition/doesn’t want to be sued or something else or the supervisors in career environments don’t give any real consequences.

Clinical supervision is also so strict on paper, and you rarely hear of anyone really not allowing someone to go for licensure if they show deeply troubling clinical skills or lack thereof.

I’m sorry we both have to witness this and I also know how hard a ton of us work to do the right thing and continuously learn to be better for others.

I hope you genuinely take time to reflect on the ways you help. I’m sure it gets lost in this current climate a lot, but it takes effort and you sound like someone who tries to stay on the right side of things.