The takeaway: The market is rewarding tool-fluency right now, and it's easy to mistake that for the whole job. But noticing something true about a person and putting it on camera in a way that actually moves someone isn't a thing AI does and that's getting rarer, not less valuable, the more everyone else specialises in the tools.
Amazing People I Know
A young designer said something last week that's stuck with me.
She's been going for design jobs, good ones - and said nobody in the interviews actually asks about her design skills.
Instead, they want to know which AI platforms she uses. How well she talks to them. What she's made with AI. Not with her own hands.
I heard this at a panel discussion that Terry - an amazing old friend from my advertising days - was hosting.
It was at The Tuesday Club, and the venue was packed full of young media students, fresh grads looking for creative work, lecturers, and a few old timers (like me).
On the panel there were psychologists, a politician, and a couple of people who work in AI.
Earlier in the night, one of the psychologists had warned the room about something.
He said talking to AI trains a very particular set of muscles - precise and narrow. Ones and zeros. Good for the machine.
Not the same muscle as being intuitive and emotional, using body language to read and connect with another person.
So - back to the beginning - there's this young woman, about to build a career, and the market's telling her the thing worth having isn't the thing she's actually good at. It's how well she can "work the tools."
Now, if we're honest - this isn't really new. Every generation gets told the machine's coming for the skill that got them into the room. What's different this time, maybe, is how fast it's showing up. Everywhere.
Here's what I keep coming back to, though.
AI's brilliant at doing (some) complex things fast.
But what it can't do is notice something true about a person and put it on camera in a way that actually moves someone.
If anything, that's going to get rarer and more valuable as more people focus their energy on becoming a dedicated worker with the ones and zeros on their platform of choice.
Ngā Mihi,
Dave
Hot Butter Productions
A couple of questions people ask about this one
Is this a real story?
Yes. It's from a panel discussion Dave went to recently — psychologists, a politician, and a couple of AI-industry people on stage, hosted by an old friend from his advertising days, in front of a room mostly full of media design students.
Does this mean design skills don't matter anymore?
The opposite, really. Tool fluency is common now - most people can learn a platform. What's rare is the ability to notice what's actually true about a person or a brand and communicate it in a way that lands. That's the skill worth building, not the one to let go of.
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