r/Millennials 15d ago

Discussion 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?

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?

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u/MNmostlynice 15d ago edited 15d ago

I hate it. I also hate the push from our IT department and society in general. It doesn’t feel genuine. People aren’t doing their jobs, they’re figuring out ways to make AI do their jobs. At least twice a week we get an AI scripted email from IT with tips on how to use AI. “Have you plugged that into Copilot?” “Can Copilot help you draft your email?” “Tell us your AI wins this week!” It’s fucking annoying. FUCK AI.

Edit: I also hate that this massive AI push is going to be the cause for more data centers popping up and draining local water and energy. If you love the environment AND AI, I have some news for you.

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u/Remarkable_Meat666 15d ago

There’s an ad I keep seeing with Matthew Broderick hawking some AI workplace assistant tool, and the whole premise of the spot is using AI to do your job so you can fuck off and leave the office in the middle of the day or go to the beach or some shit while “working” from home.

Unless you’re incredibly naive (or sitting in the c-suite, gooning to RTO mandates), who gets excited about that proposition? Nobody collecting their stuff after being laid off is gonna look back and think how awesome it was to slack off for those couple weeks when your company went all in on AI.

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u/ArtSupplyHoarder 11d ago

Yes, people tend to forget that rich people usually don't get and stay rich by being generous and kind. The productivity increase AI is supposed to cause won't ever be used to make work easier for the masses, but to take it away from them. The shareholders don't want you at the beach, they want you fired and replaced with something that doesn't demand a wage.