How to Keep up With AI, and Keep Your Job
As the capabilities of AI grow, so do anxieties about its potential to displace tech workers. But there are steps you can take to stay relevant as AI becomes increasingly prominent at your job.
By Andrew Wig
How to Keep up With AI, and Keep Your Job
As the capabilities of AI grow, so do anxieties about its potential to displace tech workers, but there are steps you can take to stay relevant as AI becomes increasingly prominent at your job
By Andrew Wig
If you’re asking whether AI is going to take your job, the answer might depend on your actions. Freeze, and your skills could one day become obsolete; be proactive, and you could find yourself surfing a wave of innovation.
“AI is impacting companies of all sizes across the economy; any team that develops software or maintains a tech stack is figuring out how to successfully integrate AI into their workflows,” said Paul Farnsworth, president of Dice, a tech careers marketplace.
And with companies doing so much with AI, it is fair to wonder whether AI will soon be able to do your job. There’s a good chance it can already do parts of it.
According to a 2024 report from the International Monetary Fund, 40% of jobs globally—and 60% in advanced economies—are exposed to AI, meaning there is a degree of overlap between AI capabilities and the job requirements.
The Threat Response
“I think you should definitely take the threat seriously,” said Dr. Curtis Penrod, president of the Northwestern State University (Louisiana) School of Business, whose department collaborated with IBM to develop a new programming course focused on AI business applications.
But taking the threat seriously, Penrod adds, does not mean being resigned to defeat; in fact, it’s just the opposite. While the IMF report noted that the rapid evolution of AI technology makes it difficult to determine its effects on future labor markets, there are things tech workers can do to keep their skills relevant while staying atop the growing AI tech stack.
The form of AI that has been the source of so much anxiety over job security in recent years, generative AI, may also be a salvation for those who use it to improve their own skills. Various large language models can code—to varying results—but they can also help coders become better at their jobs.
“AI embraced by a programmer will make you a better programmer,” said Monty Chicola, who teaches the AI class in Penrod’s department at Northwestern State.
On a basic level, Chicola explained, that could look something like this: “You can drag and drop your code on AI and it tells you, ‘Hey, this is what this is doing, but it'd be better if you did it this way.’ I mean, AI is that smart. So, you are enhancing your professional job by embracing AI.”
In other words, if AI will soon do the job of mid-level software engineers, as Mark Zuckerberg predicted for Meta, those engineers might use AI to become high-level engineers. “You need to embrace it for the idea that it's going to make you more intelligent,” Chicola said. “It's going to be able to answer those questions, that thing that you're too lazy to go look up…you can instantly get the code, understand the code, bring the code in, do your thing. And now you're smarter than you were this morning.”
AI embraced by a programmer will make you a better programmer.
—Monty Chicola, AI programming instructor and president of Real Vision Software
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Be the ‘Human in the Loop’
With AI a part of the labor picture, “you’re going to be what they call the human in the loop,” Chicola said. One job in that loop may be supervising the autonomous AI agents that ostensibly threaten human jobs in the first place.
"We're entering a new chapter in how employees get work done with the rise of AI agents,” Jill Goldstein, global managing partner of HR & Talent Transformation at IBM Consulting, said in a list of IBM executives’ predictions for 2025. “...As AI agents become more common, companies will need to reevaluate their work processes and create new types of teams where humans oversee groups of autonomous AI agents."
A system or program that is capable of autonomously performing tasks on behalf of a user or another system by designing its workflow and using available tools. (IBM)
These proactive agents will "heighten the need to upskill employees across every discipline and leadership level so they can responsibly develop, use and oversee agentic solutions," Ritika Gunnar, general manager of Data & AI at IBM, said in the same list of predictions.
Organizations will still need people who understand their mission and what a given piece of software is supposed to do, Chicola said. “AI itself can write code,” he explained, “but you need somebody that really knows what's going on.”
Focus on Your Humanity
Even if AI is only doing relatively basic coding, that is still work that was once reserved for humans, bringing little comfort to those concerned about net job loss. The more optimistic prognosticators, however, focus on the potential for AI to free humans from drudgery and create new kinds of jobs as overall productivity grows.
“It's important to recognize that while AI will automate certain tasks, it also creates opportunities to focus on more complex, creative and human-centric work,” Farnsworth said.
So focus on the characteristics that make you a living, breathing person. “Skills like creativity, emotional intelligence, adaptability and problem-solving are uniquely human,” Farnsworth said, “and essential for decision-making in complex or ambiguous situations, which are often the situations where AI is involved.”
Nodding to that idea of synergy, the aforementioned IMF report, “Gen-AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work,” explained how AI-enabled productivity gains could impact the job market. “If AI strongly complements human labor in certain occupations and the productivity gains are sufficiently large, higher growth and labor demand could more than compensate for the partial replacement of labor tasks by AI, and incomes could increase along most of the income distribution,” the report said.
What might that look like for the individual worker? When AI takes care of the more basic parts of a particular job, “new skill sets become available,” Penrod said, “and people can either add new skills to their existing jobs or become more advanced, and be able to do other jobs.”
It's important to recognize that while AI will automate certain tasks, it also creates opportunities to focus on more complex, creative and human-centric work.
—Paul Farnsworth, CTO of Dice
Skills that complement AI, divided into technical disciplines and soft skills:
Technical Disciplines
Data Analysis • Cloud Computing • Cybersecurity
Soft Skills
Creativity • Emotional Intelligence • Adaptability • Problem Solving
Wisely choosing which skills to develop could require a shift in mindset. “Rather than competing with AI, they should focus on developing skills that complement it—think data analysis, cloud computing and cybersecurity,” Farnsworth said
Another way to ensure you’re “the human in the loop” is to make sure you know how to use the same AI tools that might otherwise threaten your job. So make those tools part of your daily routine, Farnsworth said.
This is where ambitious tech workers may find an opening to become more competitive on the job market. A recent IBM survey found that the “majority of developers who identify as ‘AI developers’ or ‘data scientists’ view themselves as experts in generative AI—but a minority of the seven other developer demographics do. App developers in particular rarely view themselves as generative AI experts, despite being on the front lines of generative AI adoption.”
Expert Experience Level with Generative AI
Source: Morning Consult and IBM, "Enterprise AI Development: Obstacles & Opportunities," January 2025.
Professional Development Opportunities
In AI-infused work environments, staying relevant starts with awareness. “A lot of it is just about being aware of what's going on, and then trying to investigate it further and taking opportunities to enhance your skill, whether it's a class, a professional development session, a YouTube video or whatever it may be,” Penrod said.
Those who do develop specific AI competencies stand to gain financially, according to Dice’s 2025 Tech Salary Report. “Our data found that tech professionals that are responsible for designing, developing or implementing AI solutions command salaries that are 17.7% higher than their peers not involved in AI work—a premium that extends beyond base compensation differences,” Farnsworth said.
Staying ahead of the AI curve isn’t completely up to the will of the individual; it also depends on the culture and resources of their workplace. And there are a few things workers can do to find environments that will foster ongoing AI competence. Farnsworth recommends they ask the following questions when weighing job options.
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How is the company using AI? And are they using it strategically or simply for automation?
What is the company’s culture like? Are they embracing AI and very collaborative, or is there not too much transparency around the technology?
Are there professional development opportunities to build more skills focused on AI and other emerging technologies?
