The Downside to AI - the other side of the productivity gain

I was discussing the power of AI with Marshall Stanton last week and we got onto the discussion about what the downside of all of this is going to look like over the next few years.

In the past week, I have written a lot about how to use AI to gain productivity. I probably mentioned about a dozen times how much faster one can perform tasks using AI over traditional methods. This is especially true for Product Managers and Product Marketers who's effort has traditionally been heavy in qualitative analysis.

Traditionally, when building a product team you need to take into account the efforts that a product manager needs to go through. In the past, it would be really difficult for one product manager to manage two larger products. Given the amount of research one would have to put into a market to understand it and keep up to date on its growth. But with AI, that effort becomes faster and faster. As I mentioned in a previous article, Market Sizing, which used to take weeks, can now be done in a fraction of that time.

As AI becomes a larger part of our daily lives and is used by more and more companies, these productivity gains in white collar roles will become more prominent. Roles where you needed two or three people to perform the tasks for your market may now be cut down to only needing one person. Thus a major boon for employers, but fewer jobs available for employees.

In the end, AI is coming and the momentum it has right now is essentially unstoppable. Those that adapt and learn to seamlessly integrate AI into the daily workload will make the next leap easily. Those that resist the change...well they will suffer the fate of everyone before them who refused to lean into change and the relentless march of progress and innovation.