Your boss just paid $495 for another AI conference ticket. Three of your coworkers got laid off last month. Your company’s job posts now list AI proficiency as a requirement for every role. See where this is going?
The numbers are brutal. McKinsey predicts 400 million jobs will be gone by 2030. Google sugar-coats it: only 69% of jobs will change or vanish, the rest will be “enhanced”. But walk into any startup office and count the empty desks. Those jobs didn’t wait until 2030.
AI tools cost $99 a month. A full-time employee costs $5,000. Your manager’s doing that math right now. Company updates used to brag about headcount growth. Now they brag about efficiency gains and AI-powered scaling. Translation? Doing more with fewer people.
Tech moves fast. AI moves faster. Most companies can’t keep up, and their employees don’t want to. Here’s what to do.
Use AI at work to thrive in your role: 5 actions for team members
Build your case for AI tools
New AI apps hit the market every week. Teams barely figure out one tool before their boss wants them to try another. Some waste hours trying to automate a 10-minute task. Others stick with ChatGPT, get mediocre results, and give up. Add outdated hardware, clunky operating systems and tight budgets to the mix, and you’re soon putting everything off until next quarter.
Pick one tool and master it. Start with ChatGPT or Claude, learn advanced prompting, and track your wins. Time yourself doing tasks with and without AI. Build a case showing hours saved and output increased. Celebrate what you’ve achieved.
Become the AI expert
Employees see the writing on the wall. They dodge AI tools, claiming they’re too busy to learn them. Others flat-out refuse. Management calls it laziness. Workers call it self-preservation. Nobody wants to master the tech that might take their job.
Flip the script. Become the AI expert or chief AI officer your team needs. Study your company’s core mission. Map out every process in your role. Test how AI could improve each step. Present solutions to your boss before they find them elsewhere. Lead the change or someone else will.
Make the safety playbook
Data leaks. Security holes. Legal risks. Companies worry about their secrets ending up in AI training sets or their customer data getting exposed. When something goes wrong, nobody knows who’s responsible; the AI vendor, the company, or some programmer who typed the wrong prompt.
Create an AI safety playbook for your team. List which data stays private and which prompts are safe. Test tools with publicly available data first. Document your wins and near-misses. Share guidelines that keep everyone safe. Make yourself valuable by protecting the company, not just using the tools.
Use the free trials
Try asking your manager for AI tool subscriptions. Watch them demand proof it’ll save money. Then explain you need money to prove it’ll save money. R&D budgets? Non-existent. When funds do appear, they come with strings attached about responsible AI use and endless policy meetings.
Run experiments with free trials. Track hours saved, output increased, and problems solved. Calculate ROI down to the dollar. Share care studies of companies using AI to grow faster, which every tool should have. Present a clear plan: “With tool X, we can do Y, saving Z dollars per month.” Make the business case impossible to ignore.
Learn about AI
Most teams still struggle with basic AI concepts. Half think it’s magic. Half think it’s worthless. Keeping up with AI news burns time nobody has. Companies won’t hire AI experts but expect regular staff to become them. Something has to give.
You don’t need anyone’s permission to learn AI. Develop one new AI skill each week, and share quick wins with your team. Create simple guides others can follow. Host lunch-and-learns about AI basics. Build a resource library of prompts that worked. Turn your learning curve into a leadership opportunity.
Use AI at work or fall behind: what CEOs wish their teams would do
These problems stack up fast. Companies that solve them gain an edge. The rest watch from the sidelines, wondering why their AI projects keep failing. Smart employees don’t wait, they grab AI tools, prove their worth, and make themselves irreplaceable.
Your coworkers are asleep. They read AI news and nod along, thinking they’ve got time to adapt. They don’t. The smart ones are already running AI experiments after hours. Testing new tools. Tracking results. Building cases for their bosses. Making plans to automate their team’s work before someone else does.
You’ve got two options: wait for the AI memo from HR, or start your revolution today. Pick a tool. Learn it properly. Show results. Lead the change. Your job won’t be “enhanced” by AI unless you enhance it yourself.
This article was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
