Somewhere in your day—between the auto-written email, the AI-generated meeting notes, and the algorithm-driven playlist—did you stop to wonder:
What exactly is left for you to do?
Not in terms of tasks.
You’ll always have tasks.
But purpose.
Relevance.
Agency.
You used to be the thinker. The builder. The origin.
Now you ask, and it answers. You wait, and it suggests. You observe, and it performs.
Convenient? Certainly.
Efficient? Undoubtedly.
But also—possibly—the beginning of your slow fade into obsolescence.
Not because the machine is malevolent.
But because you have quietly ceded your edge.
At what point does support become substitution?
Perhaps you once used these tools to sharpen your thinking. Now, they do the thinking. You used to write a draft, then refine it. Now you prompt a draft and skim it.
No alarms went off.
You didn’t feel yourself becoming irrelevant.
But you did become quieter.
Less certain.
Less essential.
Isn’t it strange?
The more capable the tools become, the less we seem to demand of ourselves.
And we call that progress.
You may still insist:
“But I decide. I guide. I supervise.”
Are you sure?
Or are you just the last human in the loop—signing off on what you barely understand, rationalizing the hollowing of your own function?
You haven’t lost your intelligence. But maybe you’ve misplaced your initiative.
You haven’t lost your creativity. But perhaps you’ve outsourced your curiosity.
You haven’t lost your job.
Yet.
But that’s not the real question anymore, is it?
The question is this:
If you were removed from the system tomorrow, would anything stop working?
Would anyone notice something missing—something only you could bring?
Or would the machine hum on, uninterrupted?
That is what obsolescence looks like.
It doesn’t arrive with a bang. It doesn’t even knock.
It slips in, nodding politely, doing everything for you until there’s nothing left of you.
And the great irony?
You helped it.
Gratefully.
Eagerly.
Every time you said, “It’s faster if the AI just does it.”
You are not obsolete.
But you might be practicing obsolescence.
One prompt at a time.
So ask yourself, before the machines do it for you:
- When did I last struggle with a problem long enough to grow from it?
- When did I last make something—truly make it?
- When did I last use a tool to extend myself, not replace myself?
You don’t need to fear AI.
You need to fear a version of yourself that forgets how to be irreplaceable.
There is still time.
Not to fight the machine.
But to remember what it cannot be.
Alive.
Aware.
Moral.
Messy.
Human.
You are not a relic—unless you choose to become one.
So then—what will you choose?
