In day 3 of my email series The Creative Within: Rediscovering Who You Are (Beyond Your Résumé), I want to prepare you for the massive shift we’re about to experience in the creative workforce because of artificial intelligence.
ANNOUNCEMENT:
Learn how to future-proof your creative career and become an “irreplaceable creative” this weekend in my brand new live workshop!
Save the Date: Saturday, Sep 9th*
Time: 9:30am – 12:30pm PT
Location: Zoom
*If you can’t attend live, the recording will be available for 30 days
👉 In day 1 of this email series I introduced you to the term “Match Quality,” i.e. the degree of fit between your unique skills & abilities and the many ways you can provide value to the world beyond your current job (and get paid for it!).
- Maximizing Your Match Quality is one of the core exercises I’ll be teaching in this Saturday’s live workshop that will help set you apart from AI and become an irreplaceable creative.
👉 In day 2 of this email series I demonstrated how one of my students workshopped her “Creative Calling” to reeenergize her passion for her career after feeling really depressed about the state of the industry and how the only way she would stay relevant was “starting over” by having to learn AI tools & workflows.
- Fulfilling Your Creative Calling is another one of the core exercises I’ll be teaching in this Saturday’s live workshop that will help you build your network and find stories and project that truly inspire you.
👉 In day 3 of this series it’s time to address the elephant in the room:
The AI Revolution is upon us.
And I don’t think any of us are prepared for what comes next.
I’ve been talking about AI on a lot of podcast interviews, industry panels, and with the general media to help people understand why AI is central to the conversation about the strikes. Needless to say, not everyone agrees with where I think things are headed.
To be clear: When it comes to AI and predicting what comes next, nobody knows what the hell is going on (including me). But after speaking with a lot of “experts” on the subject, I feel pretty confident in the following prediction:
“Artificial intelligence will be the most radical inflection point in our lifetime that causes the creative workforce to shift from specialization (back) to generalization.”
There is no doubt in my mind that sooner rather than later, highly specialized jobs that focus on one specific task or craft that is systematic, predictable, and repetitive will be replaced. (It’s already happening in many other industries.)
For example if the only thing you do is rotoscoping or motion tracking, your job is in trouble. What was once a highly specialized skill in the VFX world will quickly be replaced by a few mouse clicks using tools like RunwayML. Or if your only job is organizing and managing databases in Filemaker Pro or Google Sheets, your days are numbered thanks to tools like ChatGPT.
Even if you make a living with a much more generalized & broad creative job like an assistant editor (a role which I believe will be safe for a long time to come), artificial intelligence is going to change the entire end-to-end workflow. For example if you refuse to learn how to use AI to automagically script sync your dailies, you will be replaced by someone who understand how to communicate with the technology.
There Is No Stopping Progress
We can either stamp our feet and whine like children, desperately fighting for AI to go away, or we can accept the reality that the only constant in life is change. Despite the VERY vocal minority spreading nothing but doom & gloom about the future of creative crafts, I am incredibly optimistic about our future.
I believe the emergence of artificial intelligence will finally give us the opportunity to re-establish our identity as generalists with a wide range of skills, abilities, and experiences that allow us to reconnect with who we are beyond our résumés.
I believe that as long as we set incredibly strong boundaries around the time that new technologies will ultimately save us, we have the opportunity design more fulfilling lives far beyond our careers.
Most importantly, I don’t believe that creatives will be replaced by artificial intelligence anytime soon.
But make no mistake: Creatives WILL be replaced by creatives using artificial intelligence.
I believe the work we do as artists, creatives, and storytellers is absolutely vital to the human experience. But in order to stay relevant, we have to better understand how our work experience, our life experiences, and our interests & passions have helped us develop a particular set of skills that make us irreplaceable creatives.
Most importantly, I think this is our opportunity to not only become a generalized (and more fulfilled) Jack of All Trades, but also a highly specialized Master of One.
If you’re interested in taking the necessary steps to better prepare yourself for the seismic shift heading towards us, I’d love to see you this Saturday morning in my brand new workshop Design Yourself.
Learn How to Diversify The Skills That Make You Irreplaceable and Become a “Jack of All Trades, Master of One”
Saturday, Sep 9th*
Time: 9:30am – 12:30pm PT
Location: Zoom
*If you can’t attend live, the recording will be available for 30 days
Keep an eye on tomorrow’s email, because in day 4 of this series I want to help you better understand how diversifying your career portfolio can help you live a more fulfilling life in alignment with your values.
Zack Arnold
Zack Arnold (ACE) is an award-winning Hollywood film editor & producer (Cobra Kai, Empire, Burn Notice, Unsolved, Glee), a documentary director, father of 2, an American Ninja Warrior, and the creator of Optimize Yourself. He believes we all deserve to love what we do for a living...but not at the expense of our health, our relationships, or our sanity. He provides the education, motivation, and inspiration to help ambitious creative professionals DO better and BE better. “Doing” better means learning how to more effectively manage your time and creative energy so you can produce higher quality work in less time. “Being” better means doing all of the above while still prioritizing the most important people and passions in your life…all without burning out in the process. Click to download Zack’s “Ultimate Guide to Optimizing Your Creativity (And Avoiding Burnout).”