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AI is moving fast. Should you ditch the job you love?

Our answer cannot just be that everyone becomes a plumber.

Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column offering you a unique framework for thinking through your moral dilemmas. It’s based on value pluralism — the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. To submit a question, fill out this anonymous form. Here’s this week’s question from a reader, condensed and edited for clarity:

I’m grappling with the impact AI is having in my industry and what it means for my career. I feel wildly lucky to have found a line of work I love, one that brings a lot of meaning and fulfillment to my life (I’m a journalist and author). So far I’ve been able to mostly pay the bills, and crucially, it feels invaluable to get to use my brain in this way every day and to have the sense that my skills and human experience are somehow useful in the world.

But like other knowledge workers, I’m suddenly wondering if I may soon truly not be adequate for this job that AI will be better equipped to do than I, with my meager meat-brain and physical constraints like needing to sleep and take my kids to school. Am I being self-indulgent — or worse, reckless — if I think I can keep doing this sort of work that I love for the next two or three decades?

I hear tech leaders proclaiming that the future of professional and financial security is in the trades. And I do have a mortgage to pay and children to raise. Should I start planning a full career switch to something less AI-replaceable, even if it might not fill me up in the same deep way my work does now?

Dear Irreplaceable You,

I hear you — these are anxious times! So much so, that a couple of researchers recently proposed a new psychological clinical construct — artificial intelligence replacement dysfunction (AIRD) — to describe the existential distress that more people may start to experience as AI systems automate their jobs.

“Workers may present to mental health professionals with symptoms such as anxiety, insomnia, depression, or identity confusion symptoms that may reflect deeper fears about relevance, purpose, and future employability,” the researchers write. Sounds a lot like the worries you’re feeling.

And the worries make sense. AI won’t leave journalists or authors unscathed. It’s already changing newsrooms. One higher-up at the Associated Press straight-up told staff recently that when it comes to AI becoming part of the writing process, “resistance is futile.”

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I think that’s an overstatement — by participating in a union, for example, workers can win some meaningful protections. And I don’t believe all........

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