How to Be Irreplaceable In an AI World

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2:08Jason Feifer:Go to horizon3.ai slash problem solvers and request your free Node Zero demo. Again, horizon3.ai slash problem solvers. No commitment required. Results in hours, not weeks. The most exciting thing I think that's happened recently is the term AI slop. Because that was, to me, this cultural nomenclature of a rejection of a universal sameness that people were seeing. that doesn't mean AI bad, human good. It means AI is not anything inherently. It's not good or bad. It's not gonna lead to better or worse. It has no view on what it's gonna do. It's just this technology. So if you take something like content or creativity, it's both.

2:53It's very good in terms of how it liberates access to creative ability. Now, if everyone can do that, you can end up with an ocean of sameness. And what are humans gonna do? We're gonna reject that.

3:04Jason Feifer:running a business means solving problems i tell you how the smartest entrepreneurs do it hi i'm jason pfeiffer editor-in-chief of entrepreneur magazine and this is problem solvers

3:18Jason Feifer:i have this theory about what ai is i think that ai is a microwave oven what do i mean by that here it is. Okay. So a microwave oven is incredible technology and it is in everyone's homes. And it's mind-blowing, right? I mean, try to explain a microwave oven to someone from a hundred years ago. You can't. It's amazing. But we don't cook every meal in the microwave. You know why? It's because we've had decades to experiment with what belongs in the microwave and what doesn't. And we've learned that putting pizza in the microwave to reheat it, fantastic. Making a steak dinner in the microwave, not so good.

3:57Jason Feifer:We only know that because we stuck both of them in the microwave and we saw what it did and we learned. And the reason why I say AI is a microwave oven is because I think that that is the experience we will eventually have with AI too. At some point, we will know what this technology is really good for and what this technology actually turns out to not be that good for, but we don't know that right now because it's so new. So we're just sticking everything in the microwave, everything's going in the microwave, and we're trying it all out. And culturally, the mistake that we make is that we see somebody try something.

4:29Jason Feifer:They put it in the microwave. AI is now going to do this. Somebody launched a thing and AI is now going to do all HR or whatever it is. And then we say, oh my God, well, that's the end of HR. That's the end of this. Everything is going to change. And we don't understand that actually we're just looking at experiments and we haven't had it long enough to see what the actual experiments bear. So with that, boy, do people talk about this as a thing that is shaping entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is going to change radically because of AI. Entrepreneurship already has changed. Entrepreneurship is never going to be the same.

5:01Jason Feifer:Is that true? What is AI actually going to do to entrepreneurship? What is it going to do for you building a business? Well, I have someone who has as good a perspective on that as anyone can. His name is Anish Raman. He is the, and this is the coolest title I've ever heard, the Chief Economic Opportunity Officer at LinkedIn and the author of the book, Open to Work, How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI. Anish, you are able to draw on real-world, real-time insights from over 1.3 billion LinkedIn members and get a clear-eyed view of what's actually changing in the world of entrepreneurship. I am so excited for you to break that down for me on Problem Solvers.

5:42Jason Feifer:Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Okay, Anish, first, why write the book? Open to work, how AI is changing. One could say, well, it's because AI is changing everything. One could also say, it's so early, how could we possibly know? Yeah, I mean, going to your microwave example, I think what's powerful about LinkedIn is it's a bunch of people trying to figure this out together. I mean, the best way to understand LinkedIn is it's the largest network of professionals has ever assembled. And we have it in place as we go through what I think will be the greatest disruption to work in human history.

6:19And so what we were noticing on LinkedIn, both in terms of the conversations people were having, but also the skills people were adding, the tasks that were getting updated on job descriptions, was the beginnings of like figuring out like, okay, what is this? And what do we use it for? And what do we not use it for? And so we recognize that in the day-to-day of LinkedIn, there was this sort of learning process that was happening. But when you look outside and you look at the headlines and you look at the conversations happening about AI and work, it's all so charged. It's so emotional. It's fueling so much fear and anxiety.

6:55And I think worst of all to Ryan, my co-author and I, it's fueling this fatalism. It's fueling the sense that everything is predetermined, that AI knows what's going to happen to us as individual workers of businesses that CEOs of the big businesses know, academics know, the latest prediction knows. But we have no agency. We have no control. We're just along for the ride. And if you remember those early days of AI and it still lingers was this idea that the ride is done. Humans, we had a good run. AI is going to beat us at everything, if not already soon. Like, let's call it. And we're like, no, that's not right.

7:29That's not how this works. That's not how it's ever worked. If you look going to do with these things as we invent them. If you look at the human brain, as we do in the book, which is far older than any of the industrial revolution inventions from the steam engine to AI, and I think the most complex and incredible object in the known universe, the human brain, it knows how to do cool stuff. It knows how to help us imagine, invent, to create civilizations, the monetary order, all this stuff that came before the steam engine. And so we really wrote this book to help people get that. And so the book is really meant to at least move whoever's feeling anxious to a place of agency.

8:11And then whoever's feeling agency is there to be had to a place of aspiration. Because our whole sort of thesis is that work is changing, not ending.

8:19Jason Feifer:You are speaking my language, man, for a number of reasons. Number one, I am absolutely obsessed. I'm a history nerd, and I am absolutely obsessed with how we have interacted with technology over time. And the recurring theme is that we have some kind of new technology and then we make absolutely hysterical predictions about how this new technology is going to radically change the fundamental humanness of us. And of course, then it never does that. Instead, it gets integrated as a new tool that we can use. And almost always, it never even replaces the old tool. It just comes and lives alongside it.

9:01Jason Feifer:So for example, cars didn't replace bicycles. We have both of them, but now we have them in different ways. The internet didn't replace the phone. We're just using them in different ways. And there's always this talk of the human brain cannot process this. The human brain is just an adaptability machine. And so everything that you're saying here is spot on. So, okay, let's talk about that. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, But Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

9:36Jason Feifer:Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. But the one thing I would say that was sort of the biggest revelation as we were reporting this book was everything you said is right, And yet I think we've had a false story as humans that we somehow left the industrial industrial age when we entered the knowledge economy, that all the work that we can look back now and think about factory work in the book, we talk about knocker uppers, people whose job it was to go with like literal pea shooting sticks and wake people up before alarm clock.

10:13It's like, oh, my God, all of that work, obviously, like not about human capability. That's machine like work. But then we came to this enlightened knowledge economy and we were all doing in white collar jobs, this thinking work, this imagining work. And really, as we looked at the data, so much of white collar work in the knowledge economy has been work about work. It has been factory work, assembly line work of a different form. We've all been just doing more, better, faster, more, better, faster. And so what we realized was really what the industrial age has done has been forcing us to build a story of work around the technology, not around human capability.

10:49And we've all become more machine-like as we've supported the new machines of our time to deliver more efficiency around the production of goods and services. And so that all was sort of like what made sense in that world of industrial work and the role of humans. And that's how you get the org chart and the career ladder and all the stuff. But what AI offers is this complete upending event because now machines are going to out-machine us. So what the work becomes for humans isn't machine-like work supporting machines. It's not being AI prompters as the sole rationale for existence. It really pulls at this cord of what is economic growth.

11:27Economic growth is partly efficiency of production, but also it's ease of innovation. How easy is it for economies and organizations and individuals to come up with new ideas in ways only humans can and go do something big with those ideas? Well, it used to be very few humans had big ideas. Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs. And we talk about in the book the lost sign signs, the degree to which your socioeconomic status set you up.

12:18...up or not to be one of those big idea inventors, but they would come up with a big idea and then a bunch of humans would come and just execute that idea. So even in the knowledge economy, you had startups emerge from garages and become multinational corporations, but only a few people had the ideas. It was large amounts of coders and managers just executing efficiency against those ideas in the production of goods and services. Now we're saying, well, no, like everyone's going to be entrepreneurial and come up with ideas and be innovative at every level. Some people less than others. Some people on their own as business builders, others within companies.

12:53But like the core job of the human at work is going to be to imagine, to invent, to push, to prod, to, as we have in the book, a definition from Paul Cheek at MIT, to do more than is reasonable with the resources you have. So it's not to execute the existing playbook and the way things have always been. it's to try something new and try a way that's never been before. The industrial age, which is only 300 years old, has dramatically shrunken who we think we are and what we're capable of against the human brain, which is in its ability for the complex thought that we have today, go to sapiens to read about it, is at least 40 to 70 ,000 years old.

13:29And I would say the one class of human that has preserved their humanity against the machineries of the industrial age is the entrepreneur. And I think that's why like your audience and everything that you're about is so instructive, not just in terms of the enormous upside for people to start businesses right now. It's never been less costly, easier, and more competitively differentiated for someone to do. But what you can inspire all workers across all stages of career in every sector so that they can think more like you all think and be more entrepreneurial in the ways of work.

14:02Jason Feifer:Man, that is inspiring. So let's take that down to a practical, actionable level. You're being heard right now. The Problem Solvers listenership is an entrepreneur listenership. These are people who aspire to build businesses or they are building businesses right now. And I am sure that they are trying to figure out how to integrate AI into their work. They are maybe worried if AI is going to radically change the way in which they're doing their work. How should they be thinking differently and maybe even recognizing new opportunities right now? Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is, what is AI doing? What do I need to do with AI?

14:39What do I not know that I need to know? Like, what's amazing about this moment, and we anchor on this in the book, is that you want to start with the strengths you have as a human, as an individual, and then start to realize the things you don't need to do anymore, because old work is going away. AI is going to completely take away old work, the drudgery work, the efficiency work, but it's also going to upend the systems of old work in a really democratizing way. So what does that mean for you? If you were starting a business right now, you know what? You don't need access to a huge amount of capital anymore.

15:06You don't need to build a huge team and have six months to test an idea because now you can like research a market, build a prototype, launch a landing page in a weekend. Like you could just do it. It's really about is my idea worthy of it? How do I test and try it? What do I build around it? So the cost of starting has collapsed like dramatically. Do you start from a place of like, OK, that's liberating, but also, oh, my God, anyone can start a business now. So you're really inching towards a battle of ideas and execution in a different way. Before, which was very limiting, it was a battle of credentials and capital.

15:42Like, could you get the resources to back your even testing of an idea? That's all getting upended. Now it's a battle of ideas and execution that anyone can be part of. You look at the creator economy, you look at Gen Z with multiple income streams, You look at more and more people coming up with side hustles that become their like full time job. Like the arena of business building is already starting to get really permeable. So you have to recognize what you don't have to do anymore. But what you do need to do is have a really good idea. Like you're not going to get away with an OK idea, but you get the capital through the credentials to be out there before others.

16:15So that's where the tools help to like pressure test your idea, push on something that's unique. In the book, we really we have a chapter called Nobody Beats You at Being You. And I think that's always been true for entrepreneurialism and entrepreneurs. But more than ever before, like the idea for the business you want to build, it can't just be like a problem you've identified the market has because other people could identify that problem and everyone now has the ability to go after it. It's the problem you've identified and something unique about your lived or learned experience or just about who you are that will drive you to go at that problem in a way no one else will, because that'll motivate you, but it'll also become part of your competitive edge when you talk about it.

16:59So I think that's the most important actionable thing is if you're an entrepreneur more than anyone else, every day you should be doing something new. Doing something new with AI, that means task it with something new, try a new tool than the ones you've been using, but also doing something new around your human capability, which you have going as an entrepreneur. But in the book, we talk about these five C's, curiosity, compassion, creativity, courage, communication. We talk about these habits, adaptability, resilience. You've got to be pushing yourself in all of those. You've got to be more uncomfortable about courage one day, more uncomfortable about how you're communicating one day.

17:35You've got to be finding ways to build resiliency, adaptability. And then ultimately, you're trying to build a business case now that is as much about you as it is your product. Because whatever is the question you're trying to answer, the problem you're trying to solve, You need to start really articulating why are you individually uniquely positioned to go after it, which is about your motivation and your curiosity and sort of your know-how, not just because of my pedigree signals, I'm able to get the capital needed to be able to actually hire the team that'll build the prototype that'll test it.

18:05That model is done.

18:07Jason Feifer:You know, it's funny. I posted this thing that I'm going to tell you about on LinkedIn, so it feels very appropriate, yesterday, not even thinking about how relevant this could be to our conversation today. But I want to share it with you because I want to hear you react to and maybe unpack the conclusion that I came to from it. So this started because I got a pitch. You know, people run a magazine, you get pitches 30 ,000 times a day. And this one, the headline or the headline, the subject line of the email was not written in chat. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new.

18:50Jason Feifer:It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. At GPT. And then the pitch, which was ultimately, you know, about would I write about this person, began like this. Hi, Jason. Thought you might want to read an actual email without any help from AI, all grammatically incorrect with errors and all.

19:24Jason Feifer:And, you know, I thought, well, this is pretty interesting. I actually have seen a lot of email in my inbox that is like that, very specifically calling out that they didn't use AI to write it. And what it got me thinking was that we're on a kind of interesting, distinct moment where I'm not using AI, at least in some form, in some form of communication, is by itself some kind of differentiator. I'm thinking about, for example, how many ads show up online now that are intentionally incredibly ugly. And I think the reason for that is because they stand out in contrast to very pretty things that AI can produce.

20:02Jason Feifer:And what I wrote was, I said, you know, the I'm not using AI flex won't last forever. But for now, AI has allowed human connection to feel like a competitive advantage. And that's because it's worth remembering every action prompts a counter reaction. every moving crowd leaves white space behind. It's got a really strong reaction, 227 ,000 impressions as we speak. And that is not a screed against AI, but it is me pointing out that there is a distinct value in finding the most human part of the thing that you do or the way that you relate to people and leaning in on that as a competitive advantage.

20:43Jason Feifer:And what you were saying before really reminded me of that, where you're telling people essentially, look, these tools are amazing. You should use them. But also what they're going to do right now is they're going to rely upon and succeed because of your distinct humanness. So I'd love to hear you talk about how people should think about humanness as a competitive advantage and how to use it inside of an AI world. Yeah, I mean, your microwave example is so good, because I think if you sort of start from a place that we are very early in an entirely new era for work and for the economy, I think it's an era that will produce a new theory of work, a new theory of human capability.

21:23Like we're at the start of something really big in the course of human history, but we're just at the start. And understandably, because we're coming out of the industrial age, everything is about the new technology of the day. And everything is about how do we just do stuff with it to do more of what it can do better? Because that's how it worked with the steam engine. It's how it worked with electricity. It's how it worked with the Internet. But we're really early. We're in like the dial up days of Internet. So for us to go so far so fast, you're going to miss the plot. And the thing that I think we've missed the plot on over the past few years is that humans matter.

21:57Like humans are awesome. Humans matter. I'm radically pro-human. And so what that means is like, we're going to react to all this as it plays out. Like the diffusion of AI is contingent upon human societies, figuring out what they feel and what they want to do about it. It isn't simply about the capability of the technology. And as it gets better, it diffuses more. So like you just said, the most exciting thing I think that's happened recently is the term AI slop, because that was to me this cultural nomenclature of a rejection of a universal sameness that people were seeing where AI made it possible for everyone to now create and to provide content and to write.

22:37Now, that doesn't mean AI bad, human good. It means AI is not anything inherently. It's not good or bad. It's not going to lead to better or worse. It has no view on what it's going to do. It's just this technology. So if you take something like content or creativity, it's both. It's very good in terms of how it liberates access to creative ability. Now, if everyone can do that, you can end up with a notion of sameness. And what are humans going to do? We're going to reject that with a term like AI slop. So now the floor goes up like anyone can now be creative, but so does the ceiling because like what we want to be true creative that'll break through has to be authentic.