How to Respond to AI Doing Your Job Better Than You

I belong to a certain generation and I work in tech, so it’s only natural that I interrogate my dad’s AI habits, especially in light of the fact that Dad-writing-a-sermon-every-week has been a reality that my family has known for 14 years. So when I asked him about it, he said Artificial Intelligence has indeed been a topic of discussion among his pastor friends. These pastors, particularly millennials, have been embracing AI in their sermon writing as an editor—a first-pass to clean things up, tighten the argument, fact-check and research. When I asked for his personal opinion, he said that he doesn’t understand all of it, but feels like optimizing all of the errors out of a sermon defeats the purpose of letting the Holy Spirit work through a broken, finite human. Admittedly, he said that his most impactful sermons tend to come when he is least prepared.

L.M. Sacasas has written eloquently about the implications of AI and work, and he concludes that humans ought to continue to do certain things even if an AI can do them faster, better or cheaper. Said another way, just because AI can (or eventually could) write better than you doesn’t mean you should stop writing. Same goes for preaching, painting, making music, or whatever you are called to do.

What I take from Sacasas’ idea is that there is more to our actions than what gets produced; there is a deeper meaning inherently found in the act of doing something. The things we do shape us into certain people, and outsourcing the process in exchange for a faster, better, or cheaper output also outsources the deeper process of becoming something.

Presently, I’m less interested a conversation about a particular job or industry being automated; I’m more interested in the personal and communal implications for humans and their work. The former conversations are important, but in a different way, and they can go in circles because of how little we know, how fast things are moving, and how quickly incentives can change. What I do know, however, is my own experience pursuing meaningful work in technology, with technology, and as part of job that technology will soon displace.

I don’t think I can identify as a “content creator” due to a complete lack of following, but I do create content as part of my job. Internyl Consulting is a custom software agency, and I create educational YouTube videos that require ideation, research, scripting, recording, and editing. The words “software” and “consulting” mean that I am often thinking in terms of optimization—using AI in my day-to-day responsibilities is less of a choice and more of a requirement. For me, the question has become, “When do I not use AI?” and the answer usually comes after an experience that feels like de-formation.

The work of scripting YouTube videos is laborious and time-consuming. I have found that constantly outsourcing this work to AI under the guise of “a curator that exercises good taste,” leaves a void somewhere inside of me. After dozens of half-focused, back-and-forth, utterly failed conversations with AI, I feel empty. This experience feels like a black hole with a strong gravitational pull, sucking me toward what feels like despair. Perhaps this is simply because my methods are not very effective, but perhaps it’s because articulation is part of what it means to be human. Articulation, in a transcendent way, is less about actual words and more about a unique response to our Creator.

The Creator beckons diverse and multifarious modes of response, which can be described by a wide array of rich descriptive terms including awe, gratitude, wonder, silence, obedience, service, delight, and praise.1

It’s inevitable that the literal articulation required for scripting my YouTube videos can and will be outsourced to a better, faster, and cheaper alternative. Furthermore, the entire process of ideation-research-script-record-edit will soon be better, faster, and cheaper than what I can do on my own. This week it occurred to me that my current role of content creator may someday be replaced with highly-personalized AI-generated educator.

But we have moved beyond literal articulation in search of meaning that is deeper than words. We are asking if there is something more to the work than how efficiently it gets done, if there is a process deeper than the content, deeper than the medium, deeper than the size of our following or shape of our success.

Sacasas would venture to say that “our flourishing is conditioned not so much on the accomplishment of certain feats or tasks, many of which, in any case, exclude the youngest and oldest and most vulnerable among us. Rather, it is conditioned on our capacity to respond to the call of God on us as unique individuals made in his image and thus made to resonate with his presence as it is manifest to us throughout creation.”

This transcendent articulation is part of what it means to be human. It’s almost natural to reach for words of praise when we experience “God’s presence as it is manifest to use throughout creation,” I am flooded with ideas of nature, beauty, relationships, art, and music; at the same time, we can also respond in the face of drudgery, confusion, and disappointment. The opportunity to respond to God in all circumstances, over and above what we do and what gets done to us, is one of the most profound realities of our humanity.

When we look at the future of work, we are looking through a kaleidoscope. Andy Squyers looked at the perplexity of life and said that humans will someday reminisce on our ability to exercise faith when we don’t have the full picture. Two years later he released a song called I Praise You God:

After I die I will have no more chances
To love you from impossible circumstances
So even if all of my prayers go unanswered
Thank you for all of these days
The scars of my heart are the trust that I offer
I pour out my laughter and tears on the altar
Every cell of my body cries out in praise

Perhaps I will look back and cherish the difficult days of writing YouTube scripts and listening to ill-prepared sermons, but I don’t doubt there will be a unique opportunity to respond to God in that moment too. Today, I labor to articulate, I labor to praise, and I labor to have faith, not to protect my job from AI and not because of what comes out the other side; I labor to articulate as part of being human, and that is a gift.