Josh: A Journalist's AI Struggle
Key Points
- Josh is a composite character representing many real‑life journalists who have seen their careers upended by AI and related industry upheavals.
- After graduating in 2018 with a journalism degree, he landed a short‑lived newsroom job that was quickly shut down as AI tools proliferated, compounded by the COVID‑19 disruption.
- Struggling to pivot, Josh lacks the equipment, contacts, and financial stability needed to turn his AI‑focused story ideas into published work, even moving back with his parents in Vermont.
- He views AI not as an enabler but as a barrier that “took his job,” rolling his eyes at advice to learn coding or embrace AI as a solution.
- The speaker shares Josh’s story to remind audiences that the AI narrative also includes difficult, under‑reported experiences that don’t fit the usual optimism.
Sections
- Josh: The AI-Displaced Journalist - A composite narrative about a young journalist named Josh who loses his newsroom job to AI and struggles to adapt, illustrating the broader impact of AI on media careers.
- Supporting Those Struggling with AI - The speaker urges society to listen to and genuinely assist individuals like Josh—who feel displaced and distrustful of AI—by valuing their contributions and thoughtfully offering help, rather than providing superficial handouts or policy solutions.
- AI Displacing Jobs, Yet Some Remain - The speaker recounts how AI has automated roles they once held in grant management, e‑commerce, and marketing, while urging AI‑interested professionals to lead conversations about the profound, unavoidable changes AI brings to our aspirations.
- Awkward Beginnings, AI‑Driven Growth - The speaker reflects on feeling out of place and encountering career ceilings when first entering product management, then emphasizes how AI can act as a flexible learning and practice tool that reshapes professional dreams.
- Inclusive AI Revolution Discussion - The speaker urges open conversation about AI's transformative impact on work, personal life, and society, warning that ignoring or alienating skeptics like “Joshes” will create division and exclusion.
Full Transcript
# Josh: A Journalist's AI Struggle **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-vDL5O2f_E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-vDL5O2f_E) **Duration:** 00:14:46 ## Summary - Josh is a composite character representing many real‑life journalists who have seen their careers upended by AI and related industry upheavals. - After graduating in 2018 with a journalism degree, he landed a short‑lived newsroom job that was quickly shut down as AI tools proliferated, compounded by the COVID‑19 disruption. - Struggling to pivot, Josh lacks the equipment, contacts, and financial stability needed to turn his AI‑focused story ideas into published work, even moving back with his parents in Vermont. - He views AI not as an enabler but as a barrier that “took his job,” rolling his eyes at advice to learn coding or embrace AI as a solution. - The speaker shares Josh’s story to remind audiences that the AI narrative also includes difficult, under‑reported experiences that don’t fit the usual optimism. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-vDL5O2f_E&t=0s) **Josh: The AI-Displaced Journalist** - A composite narrative about a young journalist named Josh who loses his newsroom job to AI and struggles to adapt, illustrating the broader impact of AI on media careers. - [00:03:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-vDL5O2f_E&t=213s) **Supporting Those Struggling with AI** - The speaker urges society to listen to and genuinely assist individuals like Josh—who feel displaced and distrustful of AI—by valuing their contributions and thoughtfully offering help, rather than providing superficial handouts or policy solutions. - [00:06:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-vDL5O2f_E&t=409s) **AI Displacing Jobs, Yet Some Remain** - The speaker recounts how AI has automated roles they once held in grant management, e‑commerce, and marketing, while urging AI‑interested professionals to lead conversations about the profound, unavoidable changes AI brings to our aspirations. - [00:10:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-vDL5O2f_E&t=618s) **Awkward Beginnings, AI‑Driven Growth** - The speaker reflects on feeling out of place and encountering career ceilings when first entering product management, then emphasizes how AI can act as a flexible learning and practice tool that reshapes professional dreams. - [00:13:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-vDL5O2f_E&t=822s) **Inclusive AI Revolution Discussion** - The speaker urges open conversation about AI's transformative impact on work, personal life, and society, warning that ignoring or alienating skeptics like “Joshes” will create division and exclusion. ## Full Transcript
I think we'll call him Josh.
Josh isn't real. Josh is an amalgamation
of a lot of different stories that I've
been privileged to be a part of over the
last year or two. Often in a small way,
often overheard in a cocktail lounge or
through a conversation with a colleague
or in a few cases one-on-one talking
about work and life.
Sometimes at a conference, sometimes at
home, sometimes on the phone, sometimes
out in the world walking around where
people talk about AI. Josh's story is
about AI.
So many of our stories are about AI
right now. And the reason I'm sharing
this story is because I don't think
Josh's story gets shared enough.
Josh is a guy who got a good college
education. He got a journalism degree
and he has a little bit of college debt
left, not a lot. And he had hoped, as
many hope who get into journalism and
liberal arts, to make a career for
himself from a media perspective. He'd
hoped to be a celebrated columnist one
day. He got his start at a very small
internet newsroom
that got shut down very quickly when AI
came along. And
Josh will tell you, AI took my job. AI
took my job.
He never really got the chance for that
to shift because he graduated in 2018.
He didn't have more than a couple of
years of experience in the newsroom. And
then COVID hit and things shifted. And
then after CO hit, AI hit. And Josh
feels like he's been taking it on the
chin for a long, long time.
And
when Josh hears advice like, "Hey, you
should vibe code," he just kind of rolls
his eyes. Like that's not what he set
out to do. That's not what he's
passionate about. He got into journalism
to tell stories.
He wants to tell people's stories. And
Josh has a dream to tell the stories of
how people's lives are changing in
tangible ways because of AI.
But Josh is at a local minima to use a
machine learning term. Josh can't get
the equipment that he needs. Josh can't
get the contacts that he needs. It's
much more expensive than equipment
actually getting the contacts to have
the right conversations with people.
And Josh is struggling to get from I
have an idea on my couch to I'm putting
out some stories out there that help me
tell that story and also I have enough
to make my you know my college debt
payment and make my rent this month.
Josh has moved back home with his
parents uh to Vermont. uh he's settled
in and he's not sure where his career is
going at this point and all the AI
coursework that he can find and he does
a little bit of learning online isn't
really helping him move forward. Josh
doesn't see AI as an enabler. Josh rolls
his eyes when people talk about AI
helping. Uh all Josh sees is obstacles
uh created by AI. Frankly,
AI is the one that took Josh's job away
in Josh's words.
And I share Josh's story
because
as much as I like to talk a lot about
the potential that we all have to
unleash with AI, I don't want to miss
out on the difficult stories. I don't
want to miss out on the challenging
stories, the stories that don't
fit as easily into that narrative of
progress. And the reality is with any
story of technical change, there are
stories like Josh's.
And a lot of the responsibility that we
carry as a society is to think about how
we can support the Josh's of this world.
not support them in the sense of giving
them uh a handout. I'm not trying to
talk about policy in that sense. I don't
think Josh is interested in that either.
I'm talking about helping Josh find a
place where he knows that he's valued
for the contributions he can bring, the
passion he has for telling stories in
this world. finding the joshes in our
lives, the ones who are feeling lost
because of AI
and telling them one that we're happy to
listen
and two
that we're happy to try and find ways to
help. Now, I'm the first one to say,
having had a lot of conversations with
uh folks who sort of have a lot of the
characteristics of Josh's story, that
Josh
is sometimes not an easy person to help.
Josh doesn't want to hand out. Josh is
suspicious if you try to give him
advice.
Josh resents AI to the point where if
you recommend a practical solution to
him that might help, he's going to say
no.
Um, and so that makes it difficult,
right? That makes it hard to find ways
to be positive and helpful because
sometimes we want to sort of fix things.
And so, yes, sit there and listen, but
also I think it's fair
to check with the Joshes in our lives
and say, are you open to having an
honest conversation
about the idea that the game board has
changed? You're right about that. The
rules of the game have changed a bit.
You're right about that.
But there still may be a space for you
and your talents and your passion that
you bring even if it's not what you
originally imagined. Are you open to
your dreams shifting?
That's the thing at the root that I
think we need to talk about. And that's
not really an AI conversation. And I
share that because that feels like
that's a conversation many of us who are
interested in AI, who are passionate
about AI need to be having with those
around us. I see the the poll results. I
see that AI is not trusted. There are a
lot of doshes in this world. It makes
sense that that they may not trust AI.
I don't blame them. It's kind of
rational.
But in that world,
we have to be the ones, we who are
interested in AI have to be the ones who
are able to sit down and invite a
conversation about how all of our dreams
are changing because of AI.
That's not
that's not something that anybody is
immune to. And so besides telling Josh's
story, I'll tell my own story a little
bit.
I got my start in uh a job that AI has
changed dramatically already, right? I
was doing nonprofit grant management.
AI can do a lot of the work that I was
doing at the push of a button.
Then I went over to Oracle eyes store
management and conversion optimization.
Conversion optimization doesn't exist as
a job anymore. AI took it away.
Uh, and eyesore. I mean, who has Oracle
eyesore anymore? I'm sure there
someone's going to come up and say I
have Oracle eyesore after this, but most
people don't.
And then I went and did marketing and I
looked at marketing attribution systems.
Again, another area where AI has taken a
lot of the work away. I looked at voice
of customer almost totally automated by
AI now.
And what's funny as I say all of those
things is that even though AI has made
huge strides, we still have people who
are grant fund managers. We still have
people who are working in web production
and how to make excellent experiences on
the web, which is basically what
conversion optimization does. We still
have people who are focused on store
management online, which is what I was
doing with eyesore. We still have people
who are focused on learning from the
voice of the customer which what what I
was doing when I was uh later in my
career at Amazon. We still have people
who are focused on marketing and
understanding marketing data.
Those functions
still have humans doing important work
in those areas, but many of the
individual day-to-day skills ended up
getting peeled away. And that's one of
the really interesting things about the
nature of work that I think we need to
talk about more honestly with ourselves,
with those around us, with the Joshes of
this world and the Joshes in our lives.
If I had stuck with any individual
dream, if I had told myself, I'm going
to be a marketer
uh and I'm just going to do marketing or
I'm going to be in conversion
optimization and get really good at
that. or more recently I'm going to be
in product management and get really
good at that cuz I've done a number of
different product management roles now.
I would have
given myself a constraint on my dreams
that I did not need to have.
Instead, I've been focused on what are
problems that I can run after solving as
hard as I can. How can I figure out how
to add value against those problem
spaces? Even if it feels scrappy today,
even if it feels cluy, even if it feels
awkward, even if it feels like I'm not
doing a great job because I'm new at
approaching the problem in this new way.
When I was uh you know first getting
into product management, I felt really
awkward. When I was first getting into
the professional workplace decades ago,
I had the exact same feeling. I felt
awkward. I felt like I didn't fit. I
felt like my professional skills were
rusty because they'd never been used.
Every time we learn a new skill, it's
like that. Every time we begin again,
it's like that. And it's especially
painful because that is the moment our
dreams are in flux. That's the moment
our dreams have to change because we
learn the realities of the professional
workplace. We learned the bitter reality
that if you were in a particular product
management role for a while, there's no
guarantee above senior PM that you are
really going to progress in your career.
This is, you know, I'm in product,
right? Like this is something I know
very well. I talked to a lot of other
PMs about and so I can share. But you'll
have similar ceilings everywhere.
And
the thing that AI enables us to do in
this world that has been hard at every
other point in human history is it
enables us to dream differently. It
gives us more flexibility on our
dreaming. It gives us the ability to
stretch our wings in new areas very
easily. It's an incredible teaching
tool. Yes. It's also a tool that enables
us to practice our skills confidently.
We can practice our interview skills if
that's what we're working on. We can
practice our coding skills if that's
what we're working on. We can get
someone to help us read a new book and
learn a new skill set from that book. If
you want to learn the why machines learn
textbook by Anneil right here,
you can do that. You can literally take
a picture of a complicated diagram that
you don't understand and you can get AI
to help you learn it. And that's just
one example.
I I know that Red Bull gives you wings
as trademarked. I know we can't say AI
gives you wings, but that's the vibe.
That's the vibe. And one of the things
that I would like us to be able to do is
to be honest about the fact that even
though AI gives us a lot of flexibility,
it gives us a lot of upside.
It does mean a different world. It means
our dreams are going to be different
because the world around us is changing
so fast.
I do not expect product management to be
the same discipline in a year, two
years. It's already changing really,
really fast.
People are looking for builders of all
kinds and they are increasingly less
looking for particular defined roles
that have particular defined expertise
chains in a particular job family and
that is leading to a lot of confusion
and heartache. That is why major
companies can say AI automation
engineers can apply to literally any job
in the company.
The new world is a confusing place.
And so my encouragement is if you have a
Josh in your life, find a way to gently
ask if they're open to having a
conversation about the idea that they
might be welcome, useful, loved, their
passion is important, but their dreams
might need to shift. And ask yourself
that too. Where do your dreams need to
shift? Because AI is coming for us all.
Not coming in the Skynetut sense, but
coming in the sense of changing
everything we everything we work at.
Changing how we interact in our personal
lives. Changing how we are able to
get from where we are today to where our
dreams might be and along the way
changing where those dreams end up.
This is this is the trade-off we live
with. We've taught the sand to think,
but because the sand thinks, everything
is different now.
And so, it's up to us to figure out how
to turn that revolution into something
that we can all participate in and all
enjoy and all live with. And if that
sounds really kumbayan, that sounds
really cheesy, feel free to roll your
eyes. But it's a real conversation that
we need to have. And the more we roll
our eyes and step away from it,
especially with the Joshes of this
world, the more we create a society
where some people feel really left out
on AI and really angry about AI. That is
not a society I want to live in. So talk
to the Joshes in your life. Cheers.