Can AI still take my place
I use AI every day to do my job faster. Here is my honest audit of whether it is coming for the job itself.
I have used AI daily for years now, so I decided to run an honest audit: of everything I get paid to do, how much could the tools do without me? The uncomfortable answer is more than half. The interesting answer is which half.
Production is mostly gone. First drafts, variations, boilerplate code, resizing, documentation, all of it is faster with AI and getting faster. If your job is only production, the honest answer is yes, it can take your place, and pretending otherwise is not a strategy.
What was never production
But clients have never actually paid me for production. They pay me to sit with a vague, contradictory idea and turn it into something specific enough to build. They pay me to say no, to notice the question behind their question, and to care whether the thing works for a stressed human on a small screen.
AI has not touched that work. If anything it has exposed it, because now everyone can generate output, and output was never the scarce thing. Judgment is. So can AI take my place? It already took the part of my place that was easiest to stand in. What is left is the part I actually chose this career for.