No matter what industry you’re in, it’s clear that AI is reshaping the future of work. Just last year, LinkedIn’s 2024 Jobs On The Rise reported that the #2 fastest growing job in America is AI Consultant. The top one? AI Engineer.

People are now using AI to write articles, newsletters, social media posts and more. I assure you that what you’re currently reading was written by a human woman sitting outside of her human daughter’s dance class alongside other human parents clacking away on laptops as they try to squeeze in human-produced work alongside parenting. The human dad sitting next to me just announced he’s currently using AI to edit some marketing materials for his law firm. Is this a good idea, he asks me. I want to say no, tell him to hire someone to do that instead, but I also know deep down that AI will probably read the materials faster and do a decent job catching typos.

P.S. If you’re new here, I’m Amy, a corporate speaker, marketing consultant, journalist and USA TODAY bestselling author of The Setback Cycle. Want to work with me? Shoot me a note here.

Clearly everyone is anxious about what AI means for the future of their careers, with industries like marketing and writing prime for disruption. Two of the industries where I’ve built my own career! Oh, joy.

Here’s the thing I keep reminding myself - we’ve been so conditioned to believe we can hack our way through everything with data and systems, but our obsession with data has made us forget there’s a human element to everything we do.

Take this example of AI vs. human work. Many of my clients are talented and accomplished women leaders. I help them with thought leadership - coming up with strategies that enable them to clearly articulate their perspective in a way that sets them apart from other leaders in their industries. They take my strategies and use them to inform op-eds, LinkedIn posts and more. And yes, sometimes that means taking the words I use to describe their tone and voice within those strategies and using them as AI prompts to write their posts.

But sometimes I write pieces on their behalf. As I was ghostwriting a recent LinkedIn post for one of these clients, I decided to run my draft through ChatGPT. I instructed it to rewrite my post using a credible, informative tone similar to a New York Times opinion piece. I added some more details from the strategy I created for this client, inserting incredibly specific descriptions about how her particular tone and voice should come across.

Reader, the revisions came back and made my client - an accomplished, brilliant female finance executive - sound like a cheesy, supplement-wielding influencer. It spit back sports analogies like “you want to grow your business like an ace!” and “It makes the playing field uneven.” My client does not talk like that. At all. She would never use sports puns. ChatGPT made her sound not only dumb but wrote in the voice of a tech marketing bro whose 30-day course will guarantee you millions of dollars of passive income overnight.

This is why bias in AI programming is a huge problem. Clearly this software has been programmed by men who think keywords like “business growth” should be seen through a very specific, narrow lens and that lens includes sports puns.

Does ChatGPT have women contributing to its’ language programming? Let’s ask it!

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There’s a whole list that I’ll spare you but you get the idea. Then I asked ChatGPT how many women engineers work there. For comparison’s sake, when I type into a Google search, “Does Chat GPT have any women engineers?” I come up with nothing on page one of search results - just a few articles clearly written by AI and a link to Chat GPT Enterprise’s website. Here’s the vague non-answer ChatGPT fed me on this one:

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I can keep going down this rabbit hole but I want to get to the point of this newsletter which was supposed to be about how I actually use AI in my work.

​This Wall Street Journal article warns that when we turn to conversational AI, we “risk losing a chance to connect with other people.”

That’s frankly what I’m most afraid of in the long term.

But in the short term, this seems to be one industry that’s doing just fine in terms of “masculine energy.”

Which means my feminine energy and ability to write in non-bro language makes my role as a marketer focused on helping women leaders articulate their perspectives is safe — for now.

I assume the corporate speaking, speaker training and career coaching side of my business is safe for now too. I don’t know many companies that would hire a workshop facilitator or motivational speaker robot over a human - again, for now.

I don’t know that you want ChatGPT as your career coach either. Though it can definitely help you write firmer, more authoritative emails. Likely in a masculine tone if that’s what you’re doing for.

And no robot can train you for your next speaking gig.

So my roles as a corporate speaker, career coach and speaking coach are too human to replace - at least for now.

And that brings me to writing. This one might be the scariest. Can writers use ChatGPT or other AI tools to support their writing without bro-ifying it? Is it possible to use AI in writing without it qualifying as plagarism? I have some guidelines from my Forbes editors that basically just say “don’t use AI to write your articles or we will ban you from contributing ever again.” I’m not sure how they are enforcing that, but you better believe I will never use this software to actually write anything I attach my name to.

However, there are myriad ways AI tools can assist with writing. Despite this entire rant, I’m here to admit that ChatGPT has slowly evolved into my research assistant, search engine, editor and collaborator. Some of my most used writing prompts include:

• Give me a stronger hook to lead into this paragraph
• Describe this in a more succinct way
• Explain (insert concept) to me like I’m 8 years old
• Combine these three paragraphs into one
• What’s another way to phrase this?

I’m not here to preach along with the choir of voices that says the future is to learn how to use AI or become irrelevant. I’m not here to pretend I’m not afraid of people favoring quick generic AI posts and articles over well written, insightful think pieces.

I’m learning along with everyone else and right now I’ve found a nice balance - using AI to enhance my work with the confidence that my skills are not yet obsolete. While I’ll always rant against the bro language it spits out when I take our relationship a bit too far, I can appreciate the reminder that a human cannot be replaced by software.

We cannot hack our way through humanity.

But let’s check in again and see where this conversation goes in a few months or a year.

How are you feeling about AI lately? Are you embracing it or resisting it? Somewhere in the middle? What are your biggest fears around the future of work? How will AI impact your industry?

In the meantime, here’s what I’m:

​Sarah McNally of McNally Jackson Books, who has achieved all my (and I’m guessing every other author’s) life goals, creating spaces throughout New York City where people can congregate, bond over their enjoyment for books and… read.

​This incredible essay by a Gen Z job seeker who perfectly articulates in beautiful, fiery hostility what an AI job search feels like. I really appreciate solid, insightful writing that makes you feel the frustration of the person taking you along on her journey. AI can't do that - yet.

​Charlie Warzel wrote a piece in The Atlantic about our collective experience of obtaining information about the LA wildfires through our small screens. Speaking of the influence of technology and how it can all go so wrong. This piece is everything I wish I could write: it’s relatable and poignant and the perfect analysis of how we live our lives but with a perspective tilted just enough that we see ourselves in a whole new light. Has there been a better description of our early January scrolling than the below?

“The country is burning; your friends are going on vacation; next week Donald Trump will be president; the government is setting the fires to stage a ‘land grab’; a new cannabis-infused drink will help you ‘crush’ Dry January.”

The way my mind was blown when I found out that bestselling author Frieda McFadden, of The Housemaid and other can’t-put-it-down thriller fame, who has sold more than 17 million books worldwide, is actually a doctor in a hospital whose real NAME IS NOT Frieda McFadden at all!

Is she real? Or as some conspiracy theorists wonder, is she actually AI?

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