Not Like Us: Riding the Agentic AI wave — Anxiety and Opportunity

How many opps you really got? I mean, it’s too many options

2024 saw ChatGPT explode onto the scene, making “GenAI” a household term. By the year’s end, “Agentic AI” was plastered everywhere — names, addresses, businesses — a buzzword signifying the next big thing. But beneath the hype, a quieter anxiety began to brew.

Psst: I see dead career paths

Meet Sarah, a specialist for some important business process in the notyourdepartment at Notyourcompany Corp (pick the first name that comes to your mind and is NOT your own company name). Skilled in her field, she watched as ChatGPT reshaped her company’s strategy resulting in some changes to her process. Now, as 2025 dawns, her team is implementing an agentic AI system with automations capable of creating, optimizing, and managing entire processes. Sarah, like many of us, finds herself at a crossroads — excited by the potential of AI, yet anxious about its impact on her career.

She embodies the uncertainty many professionals face: Are you one of those who knows (or pretends to know) enough about AI, GenAI, and Agentic AI? Or are you still grappling with this major shift in the tech landscape? You are not alone. Many fear their career paths will hit a roadblock if they don’t adapt.

Fast-forward, 2025, you got the same agenda

The agenda for Sarah in 2025 is clear: adapt or risk falling behind. If you think you’ll spend the year (and beyond) fighting to keep your job, you’re right to be concerned. There’s a conflict for the ages:

You vs. Technology: Direct competition with AI for tasks.
You vs. Society: Adapting to a rapidly changing job market.
You vs. Self: The internal struggle to learn and adapt — can you do it? At what cost? Is it worth it?

Then step this way, step that way

Imagine Sarah’s situation at Notyourcompany Corp, notyourdepartment in Q1 2025. Traditional teams are being reorganized around AI capabilities, new roles like AI Managers and Human-AI Integration Specialists are emerging, and there’s a six-month deadline to transition to the new system. Sarah discovers 40% of her role will be automated.

Questions in her mind:

What triggered this complexity? I was just getting the hang of Chatgpt.
Who set the targets? No one checked with my team on their progress with the last change.
How did they come up with that term? Six months is all I got?
Why is 40 the magic number? Am I going to lose my job?
What am I supposed to do with the time I spent on these tasks daily?

Amid the mental turmoil, she begins company-provided AI training, facing common challenges: grasping complex technical concepts, navigating information overload, and figuring out how to apply new knowledge to her specific job. Perhaps, she is also finding it difficult to work with some of her colleagues who are more tech-savvy. Suddenly, the playing field is leveled. Skills that took Sarah years to develop, could now be handled by a few prompts. This realization intensified her anxiety.

They not like us

What’s at stake is more than just a job: it’s her financial security, professional identity, sense of purpose, and workplace relevance. She forgets that while machines are built by humans, they currently lack the uniquely human capacity for complex emotional reasoning, and nuanced social interaction. Can machines build human-like behavior into their systems? Can they build humans? No, at least not yet. While Sarah understands the conflict between humans and ai agents, none of the learning really helps her navigate the immediate threat to her job. Her anxiety increases and her new mantra becomes “survival”.

Don’t play with us

This situation raises fundamental questions that Sarah blogs about on Medium, researches expert opinion on LinkedIn and starts creating a base for a job search (just in case):

Adaptability vs. Optimization: Machines excel at optimizing within predefined parameters, but humans can adapt to entirely new situations, learn from unpredictable events, and innovate beyond existing constraints. Can machines build a culture? Can AI agents motivate humans struggling with limitations? Can a bot decide what’s best for the organization versus an individual employee?
Ethics vs. Performance Metrics: How do we hold machines accountable for unethical use? If their goal is a defined metric, who defined it? A human, of course. This introduces potential biases and unintended consequences. How do we ensure fairness and transparency in AI-driven decisions?

Are you my friend? Are we locked in?

Let’s consider two hypothetical scenarios that could play out:

A happy ending: Sarah faces her first major challenge: the AI system makes a campaign mistake only human intuition could catch. This leads her to pioneer a new workflow combining AI efficiency with human creativity, a hybrid approach that becomes a model for other departments. She keeps her job, continues her journey with more confidence.
The noir version: Sarah struggles to adapt to AI; her efforts are deemed insufficient. Too bad, productivity gains have been promised to the board. To control sentimental impact on stock prices, Sarah is asked to leave due to budget cuts.

For all my dogs

All is not lost. There is an opportunity to survive and sustain. The key is to stay in the game and face these challenges. Focus on embracing lifelong learning. If you’re working in or affected by AI, invest in your education and skills. To distinguish yourself from the pack, know your place; what you can do and commit to bringing your A-game. There will be days when it might not work, but at least you will have a plan and the intent. Be open to new career paths. Engage in dialogue and share your experiences with others.

The adoption of agentic AI has already started. One must learn to coexist, ensuring they remain relevant, valuable, and empowered in the age of intelligent machines and their human creators. It’s not about being “not like them” but finding one’s place with them. And it’s okay to be a bit anxious, it gives you an opportunity to be real.

Signing off with “Not Like Us” by KD.