AI is coming for my job so I asked ChatGPT what to do next

...the first in a series of personal essays for paid subscribers

Photo by Cottonbro Studio

I recently had my first experience of losing a piece of writing work because—and I quote—“we’ve decided to use ChatGPT instead”. I can’t say I was surprised, but it made real a fear that has been humming along in the background for a while.

Mainstream media and Substack are both full of articles about how Gen X’s creative skills are obsolete and nobody wants to hire us, about how AI is already taking creatives’ jobs, and predicting that within three to five years, half of all jobs in vulnerable sectors may be automated. Couple that with a notable fall in paid work this year, and I’ve got to be honest, I was starting to get nervous.

You might argue that we will always want a human perspective, but it’s copywriting that has been the lifeblood of my writing career—the eminently automatable thing that paid the bills and enabled me to spend time on more creative, editorial and human projects like journalism, books and my podcast—so what now?

If AI has all the answers, why not ask ChatGPT for advice?

If AI has all the answers, why not ask ChatGPT for advice? Now, let me be very clear, I have never, and will never, pass off anything written by AI as my own work (whatever my fondness for the old ‘m dash’ may imply!) and I have serious ethical and environmental concerns about using it at all—but/and I think you’d be daft not to try to get your head around what’s coming, so I have been experimenting a little. This was one such experiment and, honestly, a bit of a tongue-in-cheek Hail Mary.

Here’s what I asked:

“People are saying that AI means the end of the knowledge and service economy. If you were advising Katie Treggiden on how to retrain or pivot to ensure another 20 years of work, what would you recommend?”

There is enough of my work on the Internet for ChatGPT to be able to search for my name, but I honestly didn’t think its answer would be quite so on the nose. I was half expecting it to tell me to retrain as a plumber!

Here’s what it had to say…

“That’s a very thoughtful and timely question. The rise of AI is certainly reshaping the knowledge and service economy—but it’s not the end of it. It’s more of a reconfiguration. If I were advising Katie Treggiden, whose background includes design journalism, sustainability, storytelling, education, and Blue Health coaching, I would suggest a pivot that builds on her unique human strengths—rather than competes with AI.”

Given recent reports that ChatGPT has adopted a sycophantic tone and become too eager to please, I’m going to take the first sentence—and, in fact, everything that follows—with a pinch of salt, but I’m intrigued enough to read on….

“Here's a strategic roadmap for ensuring career resilience and meaning for the next 20 years:

1. Double Down on Human-Only Skills

AI is great at pattern recognition, summarising information, and mimicking form—but it lacks lived experience, emotional intelligence, ethical reasoning, creativity rooted in culture, and embodied insight.

Recommendations:

• Narrative Crafting with Depth: Develop longform, layered stories rooted in lived experience, place, emotion, and ethics—especially in nature writing, memoir, and place-based journalism. AI can generate stories; it can’t feel them.

• Coaching & Facilitation: Double down on her Blue Health coaching, offering embodied, somatic, and nature-connected experiences. These are resistant to automation and increasingly valuable in an overstimulated world.

• Ethical Leadership: Offer guidance on how to use AI responsibly in the creative industries. Help others navigate the shift by becoming a voice of values-led adaptation.”

I’ve got no interest (nor the skillset!) in offering guidance on how to use AI responsibly, and honestly, this feels like a weird (and self-serving?) thing to include, but the intro is spot on.

AI does lack lived experience, and the book I am working on at the moment could be described as ‘nature writing, memoir, and place-based journalism.’ I am actually really excited about moving into this sort of writing, but it feels more risky, more vulnerable somehow. I can’t hide behind the objective third-person of fact-checked journalism when I write about my own experiences.

I am also keen to offer ‘embodied, somatic, and nature-connected experiences’ such as creative retreats, away-days and coaching, but again, it feels like a risk—it’s new and different for me, and we tend to fall back on what we know when we feel threatened.

I was also interested to note that in its answer, ChatGPT offered a roadmap for ‘career resilience and meaning’—in my question, I simply asked for work.

“2. Create Experiences, Not Just Content

Information is now abundant and cheap; transformation is rare and valuable. Instead of “writing” alone, think in terms of creating immersive, multi-sensory experiences.

Recommendations:

• Retreats and Residencies: Run or partner on nature-based retreats (e.g. coastal memoir writing, regenerative creative practice) combining Blue Health, writing, and coaching.

• Story-led Learning: Develop learning journeys or courses that use story, conversation, and personal reflection rather than didactic information. Focus on values, intuition, and creativity—what AI can’t teach.”