Will AI Replace Me?

I've worked in my company for a very long time, and I know who to call to steer me in the right direction. I've also worked with some of my major customers in the past, and I have earned the respect to call them directly and get honest answers about their needs, likes, and dislikes.  When I develop a vision and value proposition, I have to sell it to my bosses and my staff.  Some of them prefer slide shows, some like to read white papers, and yet others prefer back-room, one-on-one conversations, usually with some negotiating on features, etc. Could an AI do any or all of these tasks? Certainly not in the immediate future, although again, AI is very helpful in developing papers and presentations.

And then there is program planning and execution. I usually start with PERT  and Work Breakdown Schedule (WBS) analyses to see how components of the program will fit together and who should do what, and from that, I develop a GANTT or timeline schedule. I don't get too detailed with these timelines because the software development engineers use agile project management methods, like Scrum or Kanban. These methods don't mix well with the "waterfall" project management schedules, so a lot of my work is interpreting agile results within a time-bounded framework. Project execution consists of weekly and quarterly meetings where progress and problems are discussed, plans are modified, and results are reported. 

Can AI do any of this? Of course, given inputs from the project engineers, AI can do PERT, WBS, and GANTT planning very well. If the software engineers were AIs instead of people (which seems increasingly likely in the near future), then my replacement AI should have no problem developing a plan and beginning execution. Weekly meetings? Probably no longer necessary as the AI version of me will be connected in real-time with all contributing AIs. I cannot envision AI doing agile software development, like scrum, because that's a process that keeps the result open-ended and rewards discovery of new use-case possibilities.  It requires a close connection to the customer to evolve the final solution. I'm making an assumption here that the customers (or at least the end users) are still humans.

So my conclusion is that AI will not replace my role very soon. As an early adopter of AI, I'm already using it for what it's good at, and, by the way, I am much more productive, not that it shows up in my paycheck. AI is definitely reducing the headcount of project engineers under me, and I fully expect that it will improve rapidly at doing other parts of my job. So far, I am still essential for all the human "gluon" activities of holding the program together, dealing with customers and stakeholdrers and delivering a successful solution.

If you have a professional job that you would like to keep, my advice is to break it down to see what could be done by AI, and learn how to employ the AI to do it. After that, figure out where you add the human value, and work on moving up and increasing that value.

If you are looking for a job, first get good at using AI. Or check with my friend Curt Robbins.