There's TWO Elephants in the Room!

Magnificent animals! But they represent the things that everybody thinks, but nobody wants to talk about!

The Other AI Elephant in the Room: Fear of Becoming Irrelevant

Some of the current conversations remind me of what I thought was a perplexing experience. We were at a lake house with friends, one of them had their two sons with them, both of whom were tenured with one of the big consulting companies. This was a year + ago, when AI and GPT had recently broken into the “mainstream.” Neither of these sons could have been less interested, or more dismissive of this new phenomenon, while their father and I were discussing it at length. I walked away wondering why? It occurred to me that with them both being in the “business of expertise” (consulting), did AI/GPT represent a threat in that it “democratized expertise?”

We’ve talked constantly about AI triggering job-loss anxiety. But there’s a quieter, more  unsettling fear haunting people: the dread of seeing your hard-won expertise suddenly available to anyone with a prompt.

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A recent MIT study (WSJ, Dec 2024) dropped a scary data point into the AI discussion: scientists who used a domain-trained model discovered 44 % more new materials—yet 82 % of them felt less satisfied with their work. One researcher summed up the dread: “I couldn’t help feeling that much of my education is now worthless.” When AI can compress a decade of PhD know-how into a click, expertise stops being a moat that defends your castle and starts feeling like a dried up river - a commodity. And this isn’t just about job loss; it’s about identity erosion. The very knowledge that once made you indispensable is now available to anyone with a prompt. That’s the other elephant nobody wants to acknowledge. It feels like the “castle of you” is under siege, and the protection afforded by “your moat of expertise” has been forded.

Why does this feel so personal?

Identity Threat	“My expertise is my personal brand; if a chatbot can replicate it, who am I?”
Investment Loss	Years of study, certifications, and on-the-job scars suddenly look like sunk costs.
Level Playing Field Panic	Junior employees or even customers can now access similar insight instantly, eroding status hierarchies.

 We all have to reframe this - What the WSJ Piece Actually Shows:

Productivity 🚀, Happiness 😬	AI boosted materials-discovery output by +44 % compounds, +39 % patent filings, +17 % prototypes
Top Guns Pull Further Ahead	Some researchers became 81 % more productive
Specialized, Domain-Trained AI Wins	BUT - The gains came from a bespoke materials-science model—not a generic ChatGPT bolt-on—hinting that contextual AI is where the real upside sits.

What next?

We’ve all been talking about the implications of AI (for a while now!) We liken it to other technology developments – various hardware, “off-the-shelf” software, the internet, mobile devices, and so on. We’re looking for parallels we can draw. Is it the same? Is it different? One pal of mine made the comparison with the dawn of spreadsheets in finance. He said that those who embraced Visi-Calc, Excel, Lotus 123, etc leapt ahead - what’s the difference with AI?

Context beats generality.”

Progress comes from purpose-built AI. Savvy people appreciate they must tailor tools, use their expertise to provide the much-needed context, not just toss ChatGPT links around.

Democratized expertise isn’t a death sentence—it’s a promotion.”

We need to evolve into more of a Sherpa role - veterans will preserve or move up the value chain by guiding interpretation, ethics, and strategy.              

Just because you know “what” to do, doesn’t mean you know “how” to do it.

GPT can tell you how to perform surgery. In our business it can tell you how to best conduct a sales call – but it will do neither for you. You still have to actually “do it” yourselves. And until your AI buys from my AI (whenever that is!) that’s the way it is.

I always use a football analogy – AI (in our case, Shadow) will get you 80 yards up the field to the opposition red zone – but you’re still going to have to punch the touchdown in yourselves!