Will AI Take My Job?

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We’re in an exciting time where AI is revolutionizing and changing the world, for better or for worse.

A question I’ve seen circling online is “will AI take my job?”.

It’s a fair question, with the capabilities of AI it’s hard not to imagine the jobs it can potentially replace or automate.

Unfortunately, nobody can predict the future.

We can’t control how employers are going to treat employees in the future as AI advances, but we can control how we’re going to stay valuable in the workforce.

And you do that by learning new skills, enhancing what you already do, and providing value to the people around you.

That’s honestly the best you, me, and anyone can do.

Who knows how far AI will go and how it will change the world?

To prepare for what may come, it’s best to keep an open mind and continue excelling at your job.

This Paranoia Has Happened Before

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When Google first launched and all of a sudden people could search information they needed, I bet people panicked.

Everyone was scared that this search engine could provide answers to questions at an instant.

What was the use of textbooks or libraries, when you can teach yourself through your own computer?

And who needs employees anymore when you have Google to solve all your problems, right?

Clearly that thinking was wrong and that paranoia soon dissipated.

Employers still need a human to think and provide complex reasoning, analysis, and deduction to solve problems.

Just because employers can Google an answer doesn’t mean they can just replace their workforce. Google can’t replace human thought and handle complexity.

The reality is you still need a person in the driver seat.

AI is no different than Google first launching and empowering the world with an unprecedented level of productivity.

AI is another tool, it’s another hammer to nail into something.

If anything, we all should be learning how to use AI and get better at leveraging it.

It’s not going away soon and it’s taking over every industry by storm.

We might as well ride that wave and get better at our own jobs and get comfortable using it on a daily basis.

AI is just Google on steroids, at the time of this writing.

So I’m not worried how it’s going to take over my job. Instead, I’m going to master my understanding of AI so that I’m increasing my skill and providing value to my organization.

Harnessing AI for Career Growth: Boost Your Job Performance in Any Field

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I don’t have a structured way of learning how to use AI. All I can tell you is that I use it frequently and I’ve learned that if you phrase your questions in the right way, you’ll get better answers.

I code for a living as a Data Engineer so I already know what I want to do in my projects and sometimes I can’t remember the exact syntax of certain frameworks or packages.

What I do is I provide enough context for my question and most of the time the AI will get it right and provide me what I need.

Also, I use Microsoft’s Azure AI at our client’s office and their security team has configured it in a way where you can enter any sensitive information and it’s completely fine since it’s used within the VPN.

For example, let’s say I can’t quite remember how to filter a Pandas DataFrame using the loc method.

I’ll prompt a question like this:

In a Pandas DataFrame, I want to use the loc method to filter rows where a date column is greater than or equal to a date type value of 2025-11-04 and I want to only select 4 columns in a Pandas Dataframe, how to do this?

I get a response like this:

To filter rows in a Pandas DataFrame where a date column is greater than or equal to a specific date (like 2025-11-04), and only select specific columns, you can use the loc method as follows:

1. Make sure the date column is in datetime format.
2. Filter rows based on the condition that the date column is greater than or equal to the specified date.
3. Use the loc method to select specific columns.

Here’s how you can do it:

import pandas as pd

# Sample DataFrame
data = {
    'date_column': ['2025-11-03', '2025-11-04', '2025-11-05'],
    'col1': [1, 2, 3],
    'col2': [4, 5, 6],
    'col3': [7, 8, 9],
    'col4': [10, 11, 12],
}
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

# Ensure the 'date_column' is in datetime format
df['date_column'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date_column'])

# Define the date threshold
threshold_date = pd.to_datetime('2025-11-04')

# Filter rows where 'date_column' is greater than or equal to 'threshold_date' and select only specific columns
filtered_df = df.loc[df['date_column'] >= threshold_date, ['col1', 'col2', 'col3', 'col4']]

print(filtered_df)

Explanation:

1. df['date_column'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date_column']) ensures that the date column is in datetimeformat.
2. df.loc[df['date_column'] >= threshold_date] filters the rows where the date column is greater than or equal to 2025-11-04.
3. ['col1', 'col2', 'col3', 'col4'] selects only the desired columns after applying the filter.

This will give you the filtered DataFrame with the selected columns.

This looks great! And exactly what I was looking for.

Now, this is the most important step after each time you prompt your AI and my motto is trust, but verify.

Always test what the AI gives you and do a sanity check for yourself.

What’s nice is it gave me dummy data and the ability to copy and paste this code into my environment without me having to change anything.

It works! That gives me the confidence this is the right way to use the loc method.

Notice how specific I was in my question. I provided it three key pieces of information:

• The name of the framework or package I was inquiring about (i.e., Pandas).
• The specific method I wanted to learn the syntax of.
• The criteria I wanted to implement (i.e., filtering on both rows and columns).

You can apply this concept in any other field. You have to provide enough context and form your question in a specific way and you’ll more than likely get the right answer or get close to the right answer.

Doctors can input detailed patient notes, lab results, or radiology reports to get concise summaries for quick reference. This helps them spend more time interacting with patients and less time sifting through long documents.

Students and educators can use AI to summarize detailed lecture notes into key takeaways, making it easier to study or prepare for exams.

The possibilities are endless.

However, just be wary that AI’s are still not perfect and they can confidently give you the wrong answer.

If you follow my motto from earlier, you’ll be fine.

Always, always, always double and triple check the proposed solution from the AI. I can’t emphasize that enough!

Even if you don’t have access to a corporate paid AI like Microsoft’s Azure AI, you can use free LLMs like the infamous ChatGPT.

You don’t even need to sign up to use it. Which means it won’t remember any of your conversations.

Just be careful not to send any sensitive information and practice away!

Keep Excelling At Your Job

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It’s important to focus on the elements you’re able to control, yourself.

You can learn new skills, new tools, and improve what you already do at work.

Whether you’re a programmer, a doctor, a lawyer, etc., everyone has the ability to be better at their job.

Mastery of one’s craft and expertise is what’s going to keep those individuals in the job market.

Even if AI reaches a point where it can replace our jobs, there would be discussions of how a person’s time will be better spent doing other work that is more productive.

I know this because as a Data Engineer, my job is to help automate the work that a person would have to manually do.

For example, let’s say a sales team wants to review Amazon data, but they have to manually pull that report every morning.

My job is to automate that part of their work to pipe the data they need into our data lake, transform the data into a gold state, and I feed that data to a Power BI dashboard so they can focus on what they’re great at: analyzing data.

I’m not taking away their job, I’m automating the manual parts of their job that take up too much time. They are now freed up to do more important tasks for the business.

AI can be seen in the same way. It’s a tool to automate the redundant parts of a job that were not fit for a human to manually work on. People can focus on more important tasks in their projects.

Conclusion

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While it’s scary and exciting how powerful AI is, we should look at it as another tool to add to our toolbox.

Regardless of which profession you’re in, you can leverage AI to help with your everyday challenges or problems and leverage it like a super powered Google search engine.

And since nobody can predict the future of AI, you can only control how you’re going to react to the situation.

The best chess move you can make is to learn more about it, use it frequently, and get familiar with taking advantage of what it has to offer.

I have actually been learning a thing or two thanks to AI as a Data Engineer.

At times, I find myself stuck on a problem for an absurd amount of time, trying to find a solution through Google, Stack Overflow, Reddit, and other sources. When I can’t find the answer, the AI often gets me closer to a solution or even provides the answer I’ve been searching for all along.

This is a game changer!

Just make sure you always verify what it’s telling you, because it can confidently feed you misinformation.

And make sure you understand the solution it gives you. You’re more likely to retain the solution to a problem when you implement and test it yourself. Don’t just copy and paste what the AI is spoon feeding you.

I highly recommend you get started if you haven’t dabbled with AI yet, start with ChatGPT and go crazy. Try all the LLMs.

What are your thoughts on AI and how has it changed your work environment?