Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 186 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're all doing great.
I hope that your English learning is going well and that you feel more comfortable understanding me in these episodes, and And in today's episode we're going to talk about the topic of artificial intelligence, which I've already talked about in a previous episode.
But in this episode...
I want to talk specifically about being replaced by artificial intelligence.
And specifically I'm going to be addressing myself here as someone who creates content online for English learners.
I want to talk about this idea of that I might be replaced by AI.
AI stands for artificial intelligence.
So will I be replaced by AI?
Can AI do what I do and do it better?
And more effectively and efficiently?
This is an interesting question and I want to talk about some of my own ideas about how I plan to avoid this avoid being replaced by AI as a content creator.
This will be more particular to content creation doing what I do.
However, many of you can probably also learn from this as well.
Even though I'm going to be talking about my own experience and more about my job and not being replaced.
I'm sure that many of you can learn from this as well.
You can apply some of these principles to your job if you have this doubt about whether or not you might be replaced by AI one day.
So this is an interesting topic, a relevant one for the present day, and I hope that you find it interesting.
And I want to mention that if you haven't used my advanced podcast episodes yet, It's time that you start to use them if you feel comfortable with these normal episodes.
If these normal episodes feel pretty easy for you, now it's time for you to move on to the advanced episodes, to take your listening to the next level.
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If that's your case, then I recommend that you sign up for my US Conversations podcast, in which I talk to other native speakers from around the country.
It's great practice for your listening, and it's a lot of fun.
You learn a lot about the U.S.
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All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let's talk about being replaced by artificial intelligence.
I constantly hear content creators like YouTubers and podcasters talking about how important it is to start using AI artificial intelligence or else you'll fall behind, meaning Everyone else will pass you up and you won't be able to keep up with your competitors your competition right.
I partially agree with this.
Of course, if there is AI, if there are AI tools that will make our job easier and faster and better, then it's important to try to incorporate this right.
Otherwise, other people who are using these tools will be way ahead of you, right?
Because you're not using the tools you should be using, right?
And you should use these types of tools for what they're good at.
In my opinion, that is like the mindless tasks.
Mindless means that you don't have to think, really.
You're just doing it without needing to use a lot of brain power.
So it's probably a good idea to use AI to help you complete these mindless tasks that just take up a lot of time, right?
So I partially agree with this idea that people should start using AI or they might fall behind.
I get that.
However, the problem is that Some people use AI to do their job for them.
Like, they're just relying on AI to actually do more than just the simple mindless tasks.
Like they want to use AI for a lot of things almost everything right, and if they're content creators like me, for example, they might even be using AI to do the creative parts of their job and Admittedly, I've tried this once, not because I wanted AI to do my job for me, but because I wanted to see how effective it was.
I wanted to just try it out and see what it could do.
So me, for example, I have to write a lot of scripts because I have weekly podcast episodes, bonus episodes, advanced episodes, phrasal verb episodes, all kinds of content, YouTube videos and seminars online.
All these different things that I have to write scripts for.
When I say that I write scripts for these different things, that doesn't mean I write down every word that I'm going to say.
No, I have to just prepare everything outline.
An outline is like a general structure that you can follow right, I have to do this, otherwise I'll have no idea what I'm gonna talk about, right?
And so this is a lot of work that I do every month just writing scripts, and it takes creativity.
I have to think of ideas and be creative with ideas.
It's not easy, actually.
This is honestly one of the hardest parts of the job.
I think, for example, the editing and uploading, that takes a long time.
That's probably what takes the longest amount of time, but it's not the hard part.
That just takes a long time, right?
For example, if I had an AI tool that could effectively edit my content, then that would probably be a good idea for me to do that, to use that tool.
I don't have that tool yet, but who knows?
Maybe in the future I'll have one for that.
However, the script writing part is the part that really involves creativity.
And of course, the recording part, what I'm doing now, right?
These are the creative parts of my job personally, right?
And so I've actually tried to use AI to help generate my scripts.
First of all, I actually used AI to generate a couple scripts for those YouTube videos.
I used to make those really short videos like A1 listening, practice videos etc.
And I was not happy with it.
I had to change the scripts.
It didn't really help me out that much.
And this is a good idea, right?
Because AI can think of all these different ideas that you haven't thought of, and you can still be creative, but just use AI, the ideas generated by artificial intelligence, right.
So I did this and honestly, I didn't really like a lot of the topics that it gave me.
And part of that is my fault.
I should have continued and I should have been more specific maybe with my question for that AI.
But yeah, I took one of the topics that it gave me and I said, OK, let me do this.
And I did this topic.
I talked about it in one of my episodes.
And honestly, I think that was one of my worst episodes of all time.
I'm not going to tell you which one it was, but it was an episode that just lacked creativity and it lacked the human element that is in all of my other episodes.
So I just took that topic that the AI tool gave me and I just kind of wrote a logical outline uh around that topic and recorded the episode.
And it was the only time uh, that i've talked about a topic that didn't really come from my own mind, my own inspiration and, in my opinion, it you can tell when you listen to that episode.
Maybe you can't, and I'm very happy if you have no idea which episode I'm talking about, but I can feel it.
And I think that the reason for that is that I didn't add my own creativity to to this topic, and so yes uh, i could say that this saved me time in terms of thinking of a topic right um, it generated an idea for me, so that's good.
However, if AI does all the creative work for you, then we have a problem.
Because number one for me at least I'm not adding my own creativity, so it doesn't really have the same value as my other content.
But number two, if AI can do your job for you, even the creative parts, the really analytical parts or the personal parts whatever, that means that AI can replace you.
Think about it.
If AI does your job for you, then what is your purpose?
Why do you need to be there?
Someone else can easily just command the AI to do the same thing.
So here is where the problem is with people trying to use AI to basically do their job for them.
If the AI does their job for them, that means that this human is completely replaceable.
All right.
There is nothing that you in that situation are replacing. adding.
You are only relying on AI, right?
So I think that the advice that people give to use AI for as much as possible is not always the best advice, because if you're using it too much, then you're actually just showing you're proving that you're not needed.
AI can just do everything.
Imagine if you are an employer and you realize that your employee doesn't actually do any of the work.
They just are able to command the AI to do all the work for them.
Well, you as an employer might think, well, why do I really need this employee?
AI is doing all the work.
The employee isn't really necessary here.
Maybe I can give commands to AI or someone else can do it for much cheaper or something like that.
You can see that issue there, right?
So, as a content creator for me, for example I want to make sure that I am creating content that is not something that AI can create.
And you might say to me, oh, AI can do what you do, right?
Sure, AI can probably create a podcast and do this type of stuff now.
However, can AI talk to you about my experience learning Spanish?
I don't think so because that AI does not have my experience learning Spanish, right?
Can AI talk to you about my recent trip to Mexico and everything I did there and ate there?
No, that's something that only I can talk about.
And for me, as a content creator, that personal element, that unique perspective that I offer, is what makes me non-replaceable.
As long as I'm adding my own perspective, my own creativity, my own experience, my own stories, my own personal opinions, things like that, I can't actually be replaced by AI in the sense that AI can't say these same things to you right from my brain.
OK, sure.
You might find a better podcast made by. artificial intelligence and then go listen to that.
But you get my point.
There is no AI that can give you exactly what I'm giving you from my experience.
And when it comes to the language learning world, when it comes to people learning English, for example, most language learners value this human aspect.
I've asked students this before.
I've asked them if you could have classes with an AI robot that can talk to you just like a human and can have great conversations with you and help you with your English and point out your mistakes.
But it's a robot and you know that it's not a person.
Would you want to do that?
And many times people say no.
Even if they know that AI is going to do a good job.
One huge element of language learning is human connection.
Okay, people can be excited about robots, about ai, but you don't feel the same human connection to that ai that you do, uh with a human and uh, trust me, if you're learning a language without any type of goal or ambition to talk to people in that language or understand humans and their culture or whatever in that language, it's harder to find the motivation to learn that language.
I'm not saying it's impossible.
Some people learn languages and never interact with the culture of that language.
But that's the minority of people.
Most people, when they want to learn a language, they want the human element.
They want the human aspect, the cultural aspect, etc.
So that's something that helps me in my job.
I add that human element.
So how about your job?
You might not do anything similar to what I do, but there might be some similar concepts there.
Maybe you add a very personal touch to your job, as we say.
Maybe you have a unique perspective, a unique background, maybe a unique way of communicating to people.
There might be something that you add that is very human, that is very valuable in your position, that that an AI can't add to that position, right?
And I think that it's important to capitalize on those attributes, those traits or those skills that we have.
When you capitalize on something, this means that you take advantage of that thing.
You really make the most of that thing.
So I think that you should identify what it is that you bring to your job that AI can, And you should really focus on that and make sure that that element is really adding a lot of value to the job.
Right.
So in my case, it's pretty clear because I have a podcast, a YouTube channel.
I'm talking.
I'm being creative.
But you can probably find something similar here. in your job, right?
So, in my opinion, I think it's better to focus on the things that AI can't replicate rather than just focusing on trying to use AI for as much as possible to save you time.
I think both of those things are good.
Like I said at the beginning, I think we should use whatever tools we have to help us do our job better faster, more effectively, etc.
Especially with mindless tasks or tasks that can be easily delegated to an AI tool right.
So I think we should do that while, at the same time, focusing on doing things, creating things, adding things that aren't replaceable by an AI right.
Focusing on increasing our skills that are really not replaceable.
Okay.
So yeah, an AI might end up being better than you technically speaking, but your job probably isn't 100 technical.
There are probably other things that your job involves, right?
So for me, I have a lot of personalization in my podcast, my YouTube channel.
There's a personal angle, right?
When I talk to you about language learning, I'm not just looking up facts about language, language learning and talking to you about them.
I'm talking to you about my own experience as a language learner, right?
That's very valuable.
That's something that AI can't replace, right?
So all of that is, I think, important in terms of me, at least, not being replaced by AI.
All that being said, I do want to say that AI is very helpful for many things.
I've used it before.
It has helped me find information very fast.
There are some great things that it does.
There might be some really cool AI tools. language learning tools.
And if there's a really good one that I end up liking, I'll endorse it here, right?
I think that if you can incorporate AI to help you even with your language learning, that's awesome right.
So maybe in the future I'll talk about AI tools that help with language learning or or whatever else, right?
So i don't want you to think that i'm down on this technology.
Obviously there is a lot that it can help with, and it will only become more helpful in the future, i'm sure.
But i won't worry about being replaced by ai as long as i'm creating content the right way.
As long as I don't start using AI to generate all of my ideas and try to do the creative part for me, at that point, that probably means that I have lost the human aspect of my job and I'm not valuable anymore and I can just be replaced by an AI that can do this podcast for me, right?
That's what I want to avoid.
So maybe I can use AI in the future to help generate some ideas, but then take those ideas and make them my own and get inspired and talk about those things from a very personal angle.
So I think I can use AI together with my creativity, in conjunction with my creativity, and to be more effective and faster, but maybe not lose that human aspect.
And so who knows, maybe I'll do more of that in the future.
But admittedly, right now, I think of all my ideas on my own.
I tend to get inspired at random times throughout the day.
And I'll think, oh, I'll do an episode about this or that.
So, so far I haven't needed AI's help for that, but who knows?
Maybe one day it can help me even with generating certain ideas that I can use and then be creative with in my own way, right?
We'll see.
But I hope this episode was interesting for you.
Maybe it got you thinking about your own career and how you can avoid being replaced by artificial intelligence, and i want to encourage you to use my advanced episodes if you haven't done so already.
These will help you get accustomed to fast english because i speak fast in those episodes.
So the link to sign up is down below.
And I also want to encourage you to check out my US Conversations podcast, because eventually you will need to understand conversations when you're with groups of people.
You have to be able to understand when more than one person is talking.
So that US Conversations podcast is designed to help you with that.
It's a good introduction to that.
So If you want to check that out, the link is down below.
And, like I mentioned before, if you can, please give this podcast a five-star rating and write a review.
All right.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
