Change Lessons from My Part-Time Italian Life

Part 2 - Artifacts of Professions Gone By: Lessons for the AI Era from Italian Bicyclists

?

The artifacts of bygone professions—the tools of the trade—tell stories of expertise honed over time. Picture a person on a bicycle, tools overflowing, horn in hand, announcing their arrival in town. These scenes evoke confidence that a need will be met: the clock will tick again, the perfect spices will flavor the meal, the whiskey will enrich an evening respite.

As AI reshapes the way we work, it challenges us to reconsider the essence of professional identity. The tools may change, but how we wield our tools and hone our skills remain critical. Yet, this transformation raises pressing questions:

How will we develop essential skills when traditional opportunities to learn diminish? How do we ascend a career ladder when its foundational rungs are removed?

A recent?New York Times?article by Sarah Kessler,?Should You Still Learn to Code in an AI World? highlights these concerns. She notes that evaluating AI-generated code requires significant expertise. Senior developers, facing error-laden AI output, often find it more efficient to generate and refine code themselves rather than delegate to junior programmers. She reports that this dynamic creates a troubling paradox:

“Beginners need more expertise to be useful but getting the type of experience that would normally help build that expertise is becoming harder.”

This challenge extends beyond coding to professions like consulting. Will senior consultants, enabled by AI, bypass the process of mentoring and training junior analysts? How do we ensure that expertise is passed down? When experienced professionals retire, will there be a generational gap in fundamental knowledge and foundational skills?

The professions of old, as depicted in these photos, thrived on apprenticeship. No master watchmaker, spice mixer, or distiller jumped into their roles overnight. They learned by starting small—mastering the basics before delivering refined products or services. The critical lesson is not about status—senior or junior—but about process. Mastery grows from engaging with the essential tasks, building an understanding that enables us to evaluate outcomes critically, even when AI offers sweet and speedy solutions.

As we navigate an AI-driven world, we must safeguard opportunities for learning by doing - the apprenticeship model by which many of us gained our expertise.

Our tools may have evolved from the war years of Italy, but the need to cultivate expertise remains timeless. After all, whether it’s repairing a clock or evaluating AI output, true confidence stems from the knowledge that the task is correct. That we like these artisans know that the next time we ride into town, or log onto Zoom, we will be greeted by satisfied customers keen to use our services once again.

See my LinkedIn page for more feature articles about my change lessons from my part-time Italian life.?linkedin.com/in/mary-cianni-phd