Those who don't use Artificial Intelligence tools will be left behind

The future will involve embracing Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. I'm not saying this because I'm a designer and there are several online programs that promise to create images at the snap of a finger, powered by a non-human brain, that are sprouting up on the web landscape like mushrooms. I believe that these tools are going to impact everyone's life, whether at a creative or organizational level.

We started with ChatGPT, but we already have Midjourney, Figma, and many more. I already use one of them regularly in my work and there's no getting away from AI - from Siri, which helps us on a daily basis, to Google Maps. In the near future, we'll probably have robots that make our jobs easier. These technologies help us to do more and better, and the ones that don't know how to use them will be left behind.

I stress: those who use these tools will have an advantage over others. In the future, I believe they will be so simplified that they will be much more creative than us, that we will be mere "accounts" and that things we do manually will be developed almost directly with Artificial Intelligence. And this brings both benefits and challenges. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, believes that many people will lose their jobs and others will regenerate and find a solution. There are a lot of hypotheses about new ways of working, of being in life, and I think many of them are frightening and others are not. The Industrial Age, the emergence of computers and the Internet seemed apocalyptic to many, but it's all about how we face change. And there will come a time when we will have to deal with AI on a daily basis and when it will surpass us as intelligent beings.

I believe that in five or ten years' time, much of what we do today will be done differently. We still don't have 100% perfected tools at our disposal, and if we had them in a turnkey version we'd be totally lost too. They are progressing gradually, which gives us time to learn and evolve with them. I believe that anyone who has never worked with a 2.0 tool will find it very difficult to get to grips with a 15.0 edition. So, once again, those who invest in training have an advantage over the rest.

The crucial roles of organizations, leaders and executives right now is to seek out and provide knowledge in these areas, because we are already at a turning point. Bosses need to encourage the learning of new skills to ensure the competitiveness of organizations, but employees themselves must also seek to invest in themselves to ensure that they remain active in the job market for years to come.

Today, not everything can be done with AI but tomorrow much more will be conceivable, and perhaps it will come a day when these tools will be the ones giving us orders. We have to be able to look to the horizon, know what the next step is, and constantly analyze it along the way.

And that can only be created with education. I'd tell everyone to, at the very least, learn more about these tools and their potential - designers and otherwise. Right now, in every area, tools are beginning to appear that make our lives much easier and that have AI built in. There are already people who can work very well with these new tools, but I would say that a large part of the population still uses them at a very basic level. I'm also on my way to becoming fully proficient in their language, talking to AI and bringing my vision to life, which always leads me to other challenges - understanding how it works, how I have to structure my dialogue with the platforms, realizing that, to get there, there has to be a lot of trial and error.

This is called evolution. And more than evolving our skills, we have to realize that our roles are going to change too. There are those who say that, in the not so distant future, humans won't work and that AI will replace us completely - I'd like to see this because I don't see it happening - but even if it doesn't, in a few years' time, the job we're doing may cease to exist. In any case, we have to have the mental plasticity to embrace new challenges and be open to the evolution that these new technologies will bring to the world of work.