Beat your bot!

    I am in an unusual position, insofar as my life’s work is in the public domain, and I have a bot with my name on it not only tracking all of that work, but also shadowing me on any new work that I do. In short, my AI threat is here, and I don’t have the choice of denying its existence or downplaying what it can do. Your work may not be public, and you may not have a bot with your name on it, but it behooves you to act like there is one that tracks you at your job.  As you consider how best to respond, there are three strategies you can try:

1. Be secretive about what you do: My bot has learned how I think and what I do because everything I do is public - on my blog, on YouTube and in my recorded classes. I know that some of you may argue that I have facilitated my own disruption, and that being more secretive with my work would have kept my bot at bay. As a teacher, I neither want that secrecy, nor do I think it is feasible, but your work may lend itself better to this strategy. There are two reasons to be wary, though. The first is that if others do what you do, an AI entity can still imitate you, making it unlikely that you will escape unscathed. The second is that your actions may give away your methods and work process, and AI can thus reverse engineer what you do, and replicate it. Active investing, where portfolio managers claim to use secret sauces to find good investments, can be replicated at relatively low cost, if we can observe what these managers buy and sell. There is a good reason why ETFs have taken away market share from fund managers.
2. Get system protection: I have bought and sold houses multiple times in my lifetime, and it is not only a process that is filled with intermediaries (lawyers, realtors, title deed checkers), all of whom get a slice from the deal, but one where you wonder what they all do in return for their fees. The answer often is not rooted in logic, but in the process, where the system (legal, real estate) requires these intermediaries to be there for the house ownership to transfer. This system protection for incumbents is not just restricted to real estate, and cuts across almost every aspect of our lives, and it creates barriers to disruption. Thus, even if AI can replicate what appraisers do, at close to no cost, I will wager that courts and accounting rule writers will be persuaded by the appraisal ecosystem that the only acceptable appraisals can come from human appraisers. 
3. Build your moat: In business, companies with large, sustainable competitive advantages are viewed as having moats that are difficult to competitors to breach, and are thus more valuable. That same idea applies at the personal level, especially as you look at the possibility of AI replacing you. It is your job, and mine, to think of the moats that we can erect (or already have) that will make it more difficult for our bots to replace us. As to what those moats might be, I cannot answer for you, but the last section lays out my thinking on what I need to do to stay a step ahead.

Needless to say, I am a work in progress, even at this stage of my life, and rather than complain or worry about my bot replacing me, I will work on staying ahead. It is entirely possible that I am embarking on an impossible mission, but I will keep you posted on my progress (or absence of it). Of course, my bot can get so much better at what I do than I am, in which case, this blog may very well be written and maintained by it, and you will never know!