Anxiety about AI: What To Do About Fear of Jobs Diseappearing

If you have anxiety about AI; how it will impact jobs, the economy, overall society, then you’re in the right place.

First, know that you’re not alone. People in every single industry out there have similar fears as you. It’s surreal and scary to live in a time where we have no idea what life will look like in 10, 20 years from now.

As someone who makes a living from writing, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.

I’m going to help you with:

• Steps to reduce the AI-related fears that are bothering you, and focus on what will really make a difference
• Important questions to ask yourself, and others, to make you see why human work still is, and always will always be valuable
• What YOU can do to support a future where there is plenty of space for human work and creativity

So, let’s jump in – here’s what to do about your anxiety about AI.

7 Things To Keep In Mind About Anxiety About AI (And Things You Can Do)

1. Reduce your time online

Your online world is like a mirror of your thoughts, anxieties and worries. What you focus on and spend time on will be shown to you more and more.

Algorithms are becoming very powerful at targeting ads and content that you will buy into, and it’s very easy to get sucked into a loop that will keep feeding you more and more of the same stuff that makes you angry, worried and anxious.

Getting sucked into these algorithm loops also makes it very hard to just be present in the moment.

So here are some things to do instead:

• Meditate
• Journal your thoughts with pen and paper. (You can type if you want, but its more effective to do pen and paper!)
• Make a gratitude list
• Practice self-love and forgiveness for letting these anxieties get to you, and how it impacts your actions and behaviour. It happens to all of us, and the key to life is self-acceptance. Check out my list of books on self-acceptance.

2. Stay out of the forums

While reducing time online is helpful, you should specifically try to stay off forums and groups where people are predicting the future of AI and what they think it will do to jobs and our society.

Right now, all the groups related to every kind of job are rampant with people talking about how the job will be taken over by bots in 10 or so years.

It doesn’t matter what kind of job it is; real estate, teaching, law, trades, you name it – the forums are full of people saying the job will disappear within a decade.

Here’s the thing – if I listened to people two years ago that there would be no need for writers pretty soon, I wouldn’t be making a six-figure salary off of my travel blog right now. Instead of buying into the belief that writing would soon be dead, I shut the forums out, and I kept writing.

The truth is, nobody knows what is going to happen with any job. People can make all the claims they want, but history often shows that the future doesn’t always turn out how people predict. (People once believed there’d be flying cars by 2020.)

I’m not trying to deny that more and more automations are becoming possible. But, the more you believe that there are ‘no jobs’, or won’t be jobs, the more that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as you won’t try to find a job or do the best at the job you have. This is what I’ve learned from the many money mindset books that I’ve read

3. Realize that there are still lots of jobs that AI can’t fully replace

AI may be changing how many people do their jobs, but in most cases, it can’t fully take over the job itself.

Read my article on jobs that are safe from AI. When you read it, you will see that there are quite a few jobs that AI couldn’t take, especially not during our lifetime.

4. Understand that a future where no one has jobs would lead to a complete society overhaul

Ok, so this is a bit scarier than I meant for it to sound. But when you really dig into the ‘what would happen if’ you may see that a future where people aren’t working is highly unlikely.

Here are few things to keep in mind:

• AI doesn’t “take jobs” like we keep hearing; people do, by choosing to use AI tools instead of a real person. Would those people still make money in an economy where no one can afford their services if no one has jobs?
• Capitalism doesn’t work if there isn’t an economy with consumers. If no one can spend money because they don’t have jobs, then how would the big guys make money?

5. Avoid thinking about the future; spend more time in the present

Planning for the future can be a healthy thing (ie: saving for big ticket items) but constantly thinking about the future is not.

The reality is, we weren’t meant to constantly worry about events in the future. We are meant to be living in the present. So, rather than think about if X job will exist in 5 years, what the future looks like, what your life will be like… try to come back to the present as much as possible.

The present moment is where we are meant to be spending the majority of our time. The future isn’t even guaranteed. All we have is now. A book that really helped me with this was The Power of Now by Eckert Tolle.

6. Support human creativity

When people say that bots are “getting smarter”, it mostly means that they’re becoming more proficient, but this is from a few things:

• People continuing to invest in them
• People using these AI tools in their daily lives (often over human work)

So, I highly recommend that you be the change you want to see. If you want humans to continue to create, innovate and make money, then you need to be a supporter of that, and encourage others to do so too.

Here are some small, simple (and affordable) ways you can support human work and creativity:

• Instead of using ChatGPT to plan your trips, read real travel blogs and articles. These blogs are living for many people, and often the source of information that ChatGPT is scraping to provide its data
• Read cookbooks or visit cooking sites directly rather than using ChatGBT or other AI tools. Similar to travel blogs, they lose money when you opt for AI tools that scrape their content
• Support human art and talent by choosing media that is human-created. Don’t buy books that were AI-written, or art that was created with AI
• Hire humans when you can, and when it makes sense
• When you hear of someone doing any of the above, speak up about how it impacts our society; human creatives who make a living from the content it scrapes, as well as the environmental concerns. A lot of people simply have no idea!

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make” – Jane Goodall

7. Dabble in a side hustle that you’re passionate about

If you work in a field that you pretty sure is going to be irrelevant soon due to AI, then why not invest some time and energy in a side hustle that you’re passionate about?

This might be a good time to reconnect with an old passion; something you loved doing as a kid that you rarely have time for now. You have nothing to lose, and a lot to gain.

Spending time on something you enjoy allows you to foucs on something else, and brings inspiration to others. See my side hustle ideas here.

Final Thoughts on Anxieties About AI

I hope that this article has allowed you to see that you’re not alone, and helped clear up concerns you have about AI taking over the planet.

The typical trend is that AI is becoming more of an assistant to workers, rather than becoming the worker itself. Most big rich guys can’t afford for a society where no one has jobs because, as long as there is capitalism, there needs to be people making money. The big guys can’t make money if people don’t have jobs to pay for things.