Don't Be An NPC
Using AI is fine. Outsourcing your thinking is not.
Everyday we are hitting new heights in AI and everyday science fiction is becoming more and more true. As a science fiction fan, it’s nothing new to me. Science fiction, and art for that matter, has always been a reflection of society. Which one becomes true first, is always interesting. We can have a utopian future or dystopian future, or both. Which one comes first is of course up for grabs.
Recently, Anthropic released Mythos with much hype, as AI companies tend to do. It is a general purpose model, that performs better than previous models at cybersecurity.
Everyone was asking me about it and how it will affect the cybersecurity industry. I’m surprised my mom didn’t ask lol. While Mythos scores better than Opus 4.7 on cybersecurity vulnerability reproduction, what most people don’t know is that amount of resources that went into find some of the bugs that were found.
In any case, let’s talk about jobs and whether evolution in AI will replace jobs or not.
What is a job really?
With all the alarm bells ringing around layoffs and the future of work, let’s step back a second and talk about what a job really is.
Or in other words, a job is a collection of activities, tasks, that are are performed in exchange for payment.
These tasks generally require a level of skill. There a low skill tasks and high skill tasks.
Low skill tasks tend to be repetitive. Often don’t require much thought. Anything repetitive is ripe for replacement.
Side note: Worth reading the book, Bullshit Jobs
High skill tasks, not only require the act of doing the thing… but also the years of experience accumulated that equate to the reasoning and judgment necessary to make one the fly decisions based on environmental input.
Skills do not equal jobs.
Jobs can consist of tasks of varying skill levels.
Jobs that consist of most low skill tasks… can be replaced.
The Loss of Skills and Thinking
One indirect, and arguably more prescient issue with the expansion of AI is the loss of thinking.
AI, like any tool, is just that. But overeliance on any one tool, will cause a handicap.
We’ve seen this before:
GPS - The loss of direction
TV - The loss of reading
A/C and other creature comforts - The inability to adapt to difficult circumstances outside our control; Loss of grit
Texting - The loss of writing or realtime communication (Ever hear of the Gen Z stare?)
Social Media - The loss of reality; or experiencing the world and reality; getting lost; wander
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Don’t be an NPC
I truly believe that those that continue to think critically about the world, and what AI spits back out at them, will succeed.
Those that continue to read first hand knowledge, learn hard skills, as well as communication skills will succeed.
Even those that learn about AI systems, LLMs, and more will be successful.
Even better if you can BUILD those systems at home, you’ll be ahead of 99% of the world. There are open source LLMs out there. There is a future will everyone will have their own local LLM
Here’s a free two hour course from Stanford. Go through it. Don’t stress not knowing the terminology. It will come to you, or you can look it up. Here’s the best AI glossary I could find real quick, but lmk if you see a better one.
So don’t be an NPC. This is a phrase I’m going to start using with my kids lol.
If your job consists of 50% repetitive low skills, you should be concerned. Time to upskill.
There’s a really good interview on the Ted Radio Hour with a philosopher from Notre Dame about AI and the future that is worth listening to:
What About Cybersecurity Jobs?
Ok, so let’s talk brass tacks - Cybersecurity Jobs. What does AI mean for our work?
Well, for example I’m hiring engineers right now, and one of the big things I’m looking for, aside from systems thinking, is their ability to leverage AI to their advantage.
How can they bake AI into their workflows, not to produce slop, but to 2-10x their work?
If you take a 10x engineer (yes, I know the term has its issues, but humor me) and they leverage AI appropriately, they can be a 20-100x engineer.
Even a mid-level engineer, can do the same. There is no discrimination.
Of course, this DOES require experience and first hand knowledge to know which way to go. A junior or inexperienced engineer will not know where to go.
Although, if you are a junior engineer, this is an amazing time. You can have an AI Mentor available to you 24/7 to help you upskill yourself into a mid-level engineer. Build and break things on your own time using all the generous free tier services available, or your local development environment.
One thing I do look for when hiring someone, is their curiosity in technology outside of work. This is one the best feedback loops for growth. Whether you know it or not, tinkering with tech or things in general outside of work will help increase your creativity and productivity in your actual work.
Keep in mind though, the ideal number of employees a company would like is… zero. Employees are the biggest expense for any company. Daniel Miessler points out this out in his blog as well, noting that The Bubble Is Labor.
Jobs At Risk
So it was a tight economy to begin with. Right now we’re experiencing the results of a perfect storm:
High interest rates leading to tighter budgets (no more free money)
Over hiring during the pandemic, causing a correction
Surplus in labor
AI tooling
As a result the job market contracts and is naturally tight. We’ve seen this before. Companies are making due with less.
Some of the jobs I see at risk already or in the next few years in cybersecurity are:
Security Operations
Compliance
Conclusion
It’s a tough market out there, especially for new Computer Science graduates. But in any tough market, you have to create your own path.
To survive you need to be entrepreneurial. What does that mean?
Grit
Resilient
Strong Ownership
Growth Oriented
Risk Toleranc
This is how entrepreneurs live their life EVERY DAY!
They wake up everyday with the uncertainty of a deal not going through, a market shift, supply chain issues, or whatever chaos may come up.
What are your thoughts? There is so much I was not able to cover today. Comment below and let me know. Or restack this post if you liked, it goes a long way.
I appreciate you. Thanks for reading!
I'm going to have to re-title this article to be more direct... "Don't Be An NPC"