"What bits of the value I'm creating right now can be made cheaper, faster and better by AI?"
If that value is closely tied to one role, one job and one identity, you're more exposed. You can't compete with AI on speed or scale. But you can do something AI can't - be a human who creates value in multiple ways, for multiple people, on your own terms.
The answer isn't to grip tighter to the "safe" job. It's to diversify.
When I quit my full-time role in 2021, I did it with high confidence - not because I was brave, but because I wasn't depending on one way of creating value. At the time, I was freelancing, teaching, coaching, speaking and shooting photography. Losing any one of them wouldn't have had a major impact on me.
If you're currently heads-down in your "safe" job, diversifying probably feels like a lot of work. It is. And when you look at it all at once, it can feel impossible.
If you’ve been driving on a freeway of the traditional corporate ladder, regardless of how safe it feels, maybe it’s time to take more frequent detours or maybe even stop by a forest trail, before the freeway gets permanently shut. That trail might lead to a summit you didn’t even know existed.
Finding a hidden forest trail in Nepal with my favourite hiking companion - my wife
But something to keep in mind when you’re at the beginning of that trail - if we look at the top of a mountain from the base, it's going to look very high. Don't worry about the top. Let the mountain come to you. The peak will slowly move towards you if you focus on the next step and only the next step. Not the summit. The little forest trail in front of you. The creek you have to jump. The boulder in your way.
What's your metaphorical forest trail right now?
What's the creek you have to jump?
What's the boulder in your way?
Earlier this week I ran a workshop for women in India and Nepal on turning who you are into how you help. We explored four questions:
What’s your ideal summit you want to be on? (your ideal future self)
What would your child-self do to get there?
What would your deathbed self say matters most?
And who do you actually want to help and how?
I deliberately picked these questions to help folks find their forest trail in real time.
That brings me to something I've been sitting with.
I was watching Vinod Khosla’s interview titled the End of Work, where he talks about AI replacing many jobs, people receiving universal basic income and having more free time for meaningful activities. He's saying our basic needs will be met, which to me means the bottom half of Maslow's hierarchy taken care of.
I agree people will have probably more free time. I don't agree they'll easily fill that empty space with meaning. Because many people don't know what gives them meaning beyond their work. And when work gets snatched away - the very thing that gave you identity, structure, purpose - what's left?
This has made me notice a new category hiding in plain sight, possibly a little forest trail: Meaning-Tech.
You've heard of health-tech, ed-tech, travel-tech. Meaning-Tech is any technology whose primary purpose is to help humans find and reconnect with what gives them meaning. What if AI - the same thing we're afraid of - could also help us know ourselves better? If our primary needs are met, what's left is the need for meaning and self-actualisation. Most technology so far has helped us do things faster, be healthier, connect with anyone in the world. It hasn't made us more fulfilled.
I don't know what Meaning-Tech looks like yet. It probably comes with risks we can name and unknown unknowns we can't. Will we over-rely on AI to tell us how to live? Will we outsource the very search for meaning that makes us human?
These are the questions worth sitting with.
But here's where I land:
Instead of asking "Will I be replaced by AI?", ask yourself: "Who can I help, with what and how?"
That's your forest trail.
Until next time,
Nirish
