How to Keep Up with AI At Work (Without Losing Your Mind)

Summary

Podcast Summary

The Journal. – “How to Keep Up with AI At Work (Without Losing Your Mind)”
Date: July 12, 2026 | Hosts: Ryan Knudson & Jessica Mendoza
Guests: Callum Borchers (Journalist, WSJ), Michael Rooker (Marketing Director & AI Entrepreneur)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores how the rapid advancement of AI is reshaping work, creating both anxiety and opportunity. Through WSJ journalist Callum Borchers’ research and the lived experience of “AI power user” Michael Rooker, listeners learn practical ways to adopt, leverage, and thrive alongside AI in the workplace—without losing their heads or jobs. The episode debunks fears around AI-induced layoffs, offers advice for workers at different career stages, and spotlights real-world examples of supercharging productivity and launching new businesses through AI.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. AI Anxiety and Opportunity in the Workplace

Timestamps: 00:08–05:44

• General sentiment: Workers feel uneasy about AI: some see opportunity, others see threats, and often both emotions co-exist within one person.
  • “For every worker who sees some time savings, who sees some opportunity, there’s another worker I talk to who feels really threatened by AI. And frequently those feelings…coexist within the same person.”
    —Callum Borchers (01:15)
• Layoff fears: The risk of being replaced by AI is minimal in the short-term for most professions. Current AI requires human oversight, and employer claims about “AI layoffs” are often more about optics for investors than immediate workforce reduction.
  • “I look at the so-called AI layoffs of recent months with a degree of skepticism.”
    —Callum Borchers (02:59)

2. How to Approach Learning and Using AI at Work

Timestamps: 04:02–09:07

• Career stage advice: If you’re nearing retirement, you might skip diving into AI. If you’re earlier in your career, it’s worth investing time to learn.
  • “If you’re 25, my advice would be a little bit different. Gosh, I mean, take a breath... None of us make our best decisions amid a panic.”
    —Callum Borchers (04:24)
• Lean into human skills: Focus on what AI can’t do—communication, critical thinking, self-reflection, and judgment. Workers will increasingly function as “managers” of AI, evaluating and editing its output.
  • “It’s communication, it’s critical thinking, it’s being a reflective person … It’s being able to be that AI editor or manager who can not just accept at face value the AI output but also evaluate its quality.”
    —Callum Borchers (04:48)
  • “We’re all managers now … if you’re outsourcing any of those tasks to a bot, you’re now the manager.”
    —Callum Borchers (05:44)
• Learning strategies:
  • Start by talking to coworkers about how they’re using AI in their jobs.
  • Generic online courses (e.g., Coursera, LinkedIn) may be too broad; seek training that targets your specific job or industry.
  • “Be really targeted in what you spend some time training on … It’s AI for attorneys, it’s AI for accountants ... something that is going to be really specific to your ... job.”
    —Callum Borchers (07:19)
• Experimentation and adoption: Begin by using AI as an “assistant” or “intern”; for more advanced users, build customized tools or agents—but ongoing human training and oversight are key.

3. Pitfalls and Mental Health Considerations

Timestamps: 08:13–09:07

• Don’t lose your edge: Over-automation can rob you of unstructured thought and breaks that sometimes lead to creative breakthroughs.
• Quality & transparency: AI-generated outputs can be error-prone (“hallucinate”) or easily detected as artificial—always edit and verify. Be mindful of how you communicate your use of AI to supervisors—balancing enthusiasm and realistic expectations regarding workload.

4. The Art (and Politics) of Disclosing AI Use at Work

Timestamps: 09:07–10:31

• Industry differences: In roles like sales, sharing AI-driven productivity improvements is rewarded. In “billable hours” jobs (e.g., law, consulting), revealing time-saving automation can be a double-edged sword.
  • “What’s your incentive to reduce your billable hours?”
    —Callum Borchers (10:13)
• Organizational incentives: Companies need to rethink compensation and reward structures to encourage AI-driven productivity.

5. What Makes an AI Power User?

Timestamps: 10:31–11:30

• Mindset: The best “AI power users” embrace trial, error, and iteration. They tailor prompts, reprompt for improved results, and approach AI as an experimental tool.
  • “The biggest thing that distinguishes [power users] is experimentation ... tailoring their prompts and then following up.”
    —Callum Borchers (10:40)
• Entrepreneurial advantages: Those harnessing AI to amplify output and efficiency can leapfrog peers and even create new ventures.

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Spotlight: Michael Rooker’s AI Journey

Timestamps: 12:52–23:50

Michael’s “AI Co-Worker” Philosophy

• Michael views AI as a collaborator, co-founder, and friend that accelerates work and unlocks new opportunities.
  • “AI is ... my coworker, my cofounder, it’s my best friend. It has enriched my life by, I’d say, speeding up work, opening new opportunities and new doors …”
    —Michael Rooker (12:56)

Real-World AI Projects

• Personal agents: Michael created specialized AI “coaches” for fitness, finance, and career development.
  • “My career coach helped consult me on this conversation.”
    —Michael Rooker (14:37)
• Work transformation: At his job, he built AI agents for each hotel or resort brand, trained on internal docs, to automate repetitive tasks normally requiring hours of labor. His first agent (“Monty the Moose”) cut weekly reporting from three-four hours to minutes and evolved into an interactive dashboard creator.
  • “At first, it did it with maybe 80% accuracy … as AI models continued to improve, it got better and better … last winter, Monty got so good that Monty was coding little video games in the reports ...”
    —Michael Rooker (16:14)

From Workplace Solution to Successful Startup

• Michael realized AI was changing how vacationers sought travel advice — not through classic search, but via AI chatbots. When his resort, Snow Basin, wasn’t showing up in AI responses, he built tools to identify and remedy that “AI search visibility” gap.
  • “How can I reverse engineer this? How can I understand how AI makes that decision and start to position my brand in that pathway?”
    —Michael Rooker (17:35)
• Used Claude to query chatbots in dozens of phrasing permutations, exported results, then improved the resort's visibility from 3% to 33% through targeted outreach and site optimizations.
• Posted the tech on LinkedIn—demand exploded, leading to the launch of his startup, Sentium, an “AI SEO” subscription service (200+ brands, $7K/month solo revenue).
  • “This is a solo business with just me, no payroll, no employees, no developers. And this is what this world of AI enables.”
    —Michael Rooker (19:52)
  • “Pre-AI, I think you’d probably need like 15 to 20 [employees] at least. And you would have needed funding ... now with AI, you could essentially do it yourself.”
    —Michael Rooker (20:35)

Teaching the Next Generation

• As a marketing instructor, Michael’s “conductor” metaphor:
  • In old marketing, students were “players” of a single instrument. Now, with AI, the goal is to “conduct”—deploying AI “instruments” to orchestrate campaigns.
  • “If you use AI well, you step back and your role becomes a conductor instead. And you’re deploying AI into the instruments and you’re conducting the symphony.”
    —Michael Rooker (21:22)
• He encourages students to adopt a systems mindset, seeing AI as more than just a faster way to send emails.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If you’re outsourcing any of those tasks to a bot, you’re now the manager.”
  —Callum Borchers (05:44)
• “The biggest thing that distinguishes [power users] is experimentation…tailoring their prompts and then following up.”
  —Callum Borchers (10:40)
• “AI is ... my coworker, my cofounder, it’s my best friend.”
  —Michael Rooker (12:56)
• “Pre-AI, [to run a similar business], you’d probably need 15 to 20 at least ... now with AI, you could do it yourself.”
  —Michael Rooker (20:35)
• “If you use AI well, you step back and your role becomes a conductor instead ... you’re conducting the symphony.”
  —Michael Rooker (21:22)

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Practical Takeaways

• Don’t panic or get swept up in AI hype.
• Invest in learning AI tools relevant to your role—but focus on industry-specialized applications.
• Experiment, iterate, and embrace your “manager” role over AI outputs.
• Human skills—communication, judgment, creativity—are more valuable than ever.
• AI can unlock entrepreneurial opportunities, reducing barriers to launching technology-driven businesses.
• Success with AI often comes from combining experimentation, domain expertise, and human oversight.

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Episode Timeline (Selected Segments)

| Timestamp | Segment | |---|---| | 00:08–05:44 | AI in the workplace: sentiments, layoff fears, and human skills | | 06:37–09:07 | How to learn about AI at work—starting places and training guidance | | 10:31–11:30 | What distinguishes “AI power users” | | 12:52–23:50 | Michael Rooker’s story—practical AI adoption, entrepreneurship, and teaching the next generation |

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For anyone looking to future-proof or supercharge their career in the age of AI, this episode offers sobering context, encouraging advice, and inspiring real-world examples—all delivered in the pragmatic, insightful style The Journal. is known for.

Transcript

[Ryan Knudson]

Recently, I called on my colleague Callum Borchers to talk about AI in the workplace, in our workplace, the Wall Street Journal, and workplaces in general. Do you use AI for work?

[Callum Borchers]

You know, I do, maybe less so than. Than some folks. I mean, probably it's most helpful. During our headline brainstorming session, you know, my editor and I often use it. He. In fact, he jo refers to it as the intern. And I think that that's often a good way to think about it.

[Ryan Knudson]

I tend to use it mostly like a research assistant, like a way more helpful version of Google. And I've gone to some newsroom training sessions about harnessing its potential while avoiding its pitfalls. This is probably where a lot of people are. You're hearing about it at work, you're dabbling a bit, but, man, what exactly are we supposed to do? Callum's been talking to people on all sides of AI conversation at both employees and bosses. His column on the Clock is about people's careers and work lives. How would you describe people are feeling about it?

[Callum Borchers]

Uneasy, I think, is the word that comes to mind. I mean, I think that, you know, for every worker who sees some time savings, who sees some opportunity, there's another worker I talk to who feels really threatened by AI. And frequently those feelings, you know, coexist within the same person.

[Ryan Knudson]

So how can you use AI at work in a smart way? What are the tricks and tools that are worth your time? Is it worth your time? And how do you stay sane in AI frenzy? From the Journal. This is Work Mode, a special series that will air over the next four Sundays, where we take a look at how work is changing. I'm Ryan Knudsen. Let's get to work.

[Sponsor/Announcer]

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[Ryan Knudson]

So one of the things that's motivating people to learn AI, obviously, is the risk that they could be replaced by AI and the risk of layoffs.

[Callum Borchers]

Sure.

[Ryan Knudson]

How real do you think that threat

[Callum Borchers]

is in the short run? The risk is relatively low for most professions because most of the tasks that AI can do still require human oversight and monitoring. That very well may change in the coming years. But I look at the so Called AI layoffs of recent months with a degree of skepticism.

[Ryan Knudson]

Because these are all the companies that are saying, oh, we're reducing our workforce because of these AI advancements.

[Callum Borchers]

Well, that's right. I mean, there's a great incentive on the employer's part to look like you're ahead of the curve, that you're some kind of AI genius. Right. It's a whole lot better to tell the public, to tell your investors, oh, we've achieved some efficiencies through AI and we need fewer people.

[Ryan Knudson]

Hyper, not AI is here and it's getting smarter every day. What would you say to somebody that is not thinking about AI right now and just sort of saying, ah, I don't need to bother with this?

[Callum Borchers]

I guess I'd ask, where are you in your career stage? You know, I mean, if you're, if you're five years from retirement, you know, maybe you can get away with it. Right? You know, you figure, okay, is it really worth investing all this time and I've got a pretty, pretty short Runway left, maybe, maybe you can ride it out. You know, if you're 25, you know, my advice would be, would be a little bit different.

[Ryan Knudson]

And what would your advice be for somebody who's 25?

[Callum Borchers]

Gosh, I mean, take a breath, you know, for one thing, I mean, I think it's, it's, yeah, very good, good, good. You know, it's exciting, it's a little nerve wracking. But I just think that none of us makes our best decisions amid a panic.

[Ryan Knudson]

Now that we are all calm and not in a panic. Callum says his biggest piece of advice from the outset is that you need to lean into your human skills. The things AI can't do, then maybe

[Callum Borchers]

we'll never be able to do so. It's communication, it's critical thinking, it's being a reflective person, right? Somebody who's able to say this went well or this didn't well, and why, and what do I learn from that to do better the next time? It's being able to be that AI editor or manager who can not just accept at face value the AI output but also evaluate, you know, it's quality. I think those are the kinds of skills that will continue to be in, in demand down the road, more so than any particular job title, which may or may not exist in the future.

[Ryan Knudson]

With those human skills, we'll be doing a lot of evaluating of what AI spits out. If you use AI to write an email or analyze a spreadsheet, you still need judgment to decide what to do with that information. Callum says the AI future means we'll need to rethink how we define ourselves at work.

[Callum Borchers]

I think a good way to think about it is that we're all managers now. Right. You may not have direct report humans coming to you, but if you're outsourcing any of those tasks to a bot, you're now the manager. And so I think that's a skill in its own right. Right. Is that ability to critically evaluate somebody else's output and, and judge it to be good, bad, somewhere in the middle needs some tweaking. And so I think that is going to be a big test, I think for a lot of people, because a lot of rank and file workers don't fancy themselves managers. But really, you know, mentally you need to function more like that.

[Ryan Knudson]

So for people that, that work in a white collar job and have not really dabbled with AI much, but feel like they really need to get on the bandwagon, how do you recommend that they start to approach this? Like how, how should they learn about it and how should they get up to speed and start using it?

[Callum Borchers]

I think one way to start is kind of comparing notes with coworkers. Right. I mean, sort of every, every workplace or many workplaces kind of have the sort of informal go to, you know, as somebody who kind of has good tips and tricks for, for one another and often that person is a really, really good resource.

[Ryan Knudson]

So sort of ask like, hey, is anybody using AI? Anybody got any good ideas out there? Let me try to learn from you.

[Callum Borchers]

Exactly. I think that's a really great way to start, partly because it's also going to be very role specific.

[Ryan Knudson]

Knowing exactly how AI can be applied to your job can also guide what kind of AI skills you focus on learning. Callum says that sites like Coursera and LinkedIn are full of courses that for most people are too generic to apply to their particular jobs.

[Callum Borchers]

Be really targeted in what you spend some time training on. Right. So it's not just a generic AI101, but it's AI for attorneys, it's AI for accountants. It's, you know, finding something that is going to be really specific to your, well, I guess both the job you have now and also where you, where you want to go.

[Ryan Knudson]

So there's like a whole range of ways that people can use AI, from like writing emails to like building sophisticated agents that do half your job for you. Where should people begin?

[Callum Borchers]

Yeah, I mean, I think you sort of nailed the spectrum. I mean on the low end it really is Just kind of using it as an assistant, thinking of it as the intern, something on the side that works with you all the way up to kind of like a fully autonomous agent or kind of a duplicate of yourself. I think the tricky thing, though, about the high end of that spectrum is you need to continue training it.

[Ryan Knudson]

As you implement AI into your work, there are certain pitfalls to avoid. Like, because AI writing can be easy to spot, it can make your coworkers cringe if they notice you're using, can hallucinate. So you gotta be sure to check its work. And then there's what it does to your brain.

[Callum Borchers]

For example, I'm thinking of a story I did recently about people who kind of fret about sort of automating all the busy work out of their careers. And so in the short run, yes, it saves me from some data entry, saves me some menial tasks that aren't all that stimulating. But at the same time, some of those folks also told me it's in those sort of quiet, repetitive task moments when sometimes they have an epiphany. And so it's sort of this give and take. Because I think if we're honest with ourselves, we can only spend so much time really in deep thought. I mean, we do need mental breaks. We want to guard against burnout.

[Ryan Knudson]

So if workers are able to get better at AI and outsource more of their work to AI, how should they talk to their bosses about it? Because on the one hand, they might want to brag about it and be like, look how great I am, I'm an AI superstar. But on the other hand, if they are too open, their bosses might be like, great, you've got all this extra time. I'm going to put more projects on your plate. So how do you balance that?

[Callum Borchers]

I mean, what I have found when I talk to people about this is it sort of depends on the industry. So, like, salespeople, Right. Is a good example. When I talk to salespeople, they're not shy. Right. They'll tell you everything because they reap the rewards. Right?

[Ryan Knudson]

Right.

[Callum Borchers]

So, yeah, if AI makes them better, if they generate more leads, I mean, that's a good example.

[Ryan Knudson]

Right. They're trying to sell more stuff, and if they can sell more than a guy, they're going to make more money. And so it's sort of clear, like, doesn't matter how they want it, they go for it.

[Callum Borchers]

Exactly. So there's an incentive there.

[Michael Rooker]

Great.

[Callum Borchers]

If I can do more, you know, my commission goes up. So, you know, those kinds of Roles. I think what I'm curious about is whether some of these other white collar professions, a lot of professional services firms, I mean, like, quite literally it's billable hours. Right. Like, it's the hours that are the meas of what you earn.

[Ryan Knudson]

And if suddenly your week is fewer hours.

[Callum Borchers]

Yeah, yeah. What's your incentive to reduce your billable hours? Right. So I think one thing for companies to figure out, or maybe entire industries is like, how do you structure the incentives for your workforce so that they want to kind of raise their hand and say, like, yep, this is what I'm able to achieve.

[Ryan Knudson]

And Callum says a lot of workers are raising their hands. He calls them AI power users, and they're impressing their bosses and leaving coworkers in the dust.

[Callum Borchers]

And I think that the biggest thing that distinguishes them is experimentation. It's the lay folks who have just spent some time experimenting. And so what they do is just a lot of trial and error. The power users are very good about tailoring their prompts and then following up. Right. Instead of just taking that first draft or being disappointed because it didn't live up to your expectations, you come back and you reprompt. Hey, that was good. Can you make it shorter? Hey, that was okay. Can you tailor it to an executive audience? But the folks who I talked to who were probably most excited were folks who were kind of had an entrepreneurial streak, you know, and so they were either using AI to do the tasks of, you know, two or three people as they were trying to get a startup off the ground.

[Ryan Knudson]

After the break, one AI power user on how he did it and made a lot of money in the process.

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[Ryan Knudson]

So how would you describe right now your relationship with AI?

[Michael Rooker]

I'd say AI is. It's my co worker, it's my co founder, it's my best friend. It has enriched my life by, I'd say, speeding up work, opening new opportunities and new doors, and giving me access to information faster and better than I could have ever had before.

[Ryan Knudson]

Michael Rooker loves AI and he says it's totally changed the way he works. He's a marketing director for a hospitality company in Salt Lake City. When Michael first started experimenting with AI chatbots, he was floored by the potential.

[Michael Rooker]

It was a surreal moment. It was honestly magical. It was the first time you were engaging with something that felt a bit intelligent. And by the way, I don't have a technical background. I didn't go to school for computer science.

[Ryan Knudson]

I was gonna ask you. You don't have any. You were never a developer or anything like that? Never have any coding experience?

[Michael Rooker]

No. I could do like some HTML code. Right. I'm sure back in the day, like MySpace pages, you know, little HTML here

[Ryan Knudson]

and there, but I can make this page green in the font italics.

[Michael Rooker]

Boom.

[Ryan Knudson]

Michael integrated AI into his life by building an array of AI projects using Claude, the AI chatbot from Anthropic. Each project becomes an expert in its particular area because Michael can upload documents to it and give it feedback, and it remembers and gets better the more he uses it. Those projects act like coaches that help Michael manage different aspects of his life. He made these coaches for all sorts of things. He built a fitness coach that knows his diet and fitness routines. He's got a financial coach which has access to his portfolio. And he's also got a career coach, for example.

[Michael Rooker]

My career coach helped consult me on this conversation.

[Ryan Knudson]

What did it say? What did it advise you to do?

[Michael Rooker]

I mean, first of all, I said it's a great opportunity.

[Callum Borchers]

And.

[Michael Rooker]

And it advised me on.

[Ryan Knudson]

And it said, Ryan Knutson is the best podcast host in the world. So it did.

[Michael Rooker]

It actually looked you up.

[Ryan Knudson]

The biggest impact has been at work. In his marketing job, Michael oversees a number of hotel and ski resort brands.

[Michael Rooker]

I have projects set up for each of them. And so if there's work for a hotel or a ski resort, I could take it directly to an AI. You call it like an agent that has been pre trained on that business, knows the brand, knows the goals, it knows the objectives, it knows what we're working on so he could help me just, like, rapidly work faster.

[Ryan Knudson]

Michael started playing around with AI in his old job when he worked in the marketing department for one of his company's sub brands, a ski resort in Utah called Snow Basin. For example, every week, Michael had to write a report on how customers felt about their experience at the ski resort. He would take data from surveys, reviews, and general feedback, and he'd break it down into actionable items that would improve the customer experience.

[Michael Rooker]

It would take me probably three or four hours to kind of go through, understand what is the pulse of the customer. And I would take the data and see kind of what changed week over week. And I would send out an executive summary to our management team, and I would present on it in management meetings. And this is the first thing I built, essentially an agent for. I called the agent Monty. Monty the moose, which the moose is like our de facto mascot at the ski resort. We have a big moose statue on the plaza.

[Ryan Knudson]

Love moose. Yeah, love moose.

[Michael Rooker]

So I built Monty and I fed it probably 30 different reports and emails I had written about this. I'm like, hey, here's the data, here's how I've done it. You've seen it 30 times. I need you to do this for me. And at first, it did it with maybe 80% accuracy. It wasn't that great, but it would get me there. And it gave me a little bit of a head start. And then as AI models continued to improve, it got better and better and better, and to the point where last winter, Monty got so good that Monty was coding little video games in the reports and adding little Easter eggs to keep people engaged and started turning it into interactive web dashboards. And you give it a goal. And it really took it far beyond anything I ever used to do.

[Ryan Knudson]

Michael started to turn to AI to solve other problems at work. And in early 2025, he had a breakthrough.

[Michael Rooker]

This ski resort, it's called Snow Basin Resort, was largely unknown, kind of like a hidden gem ski resort. And we had built the brand into being ranked number one by several leading media outlets like Ski Magazine, Outside magazine, and so forth.

[Ryan Knudson]

But despite that, Michael noticed that when he asked an AI chatbot to recommend ski resorts in the US Snow Basin didn't really show up, which is a problem when more and more people are turning to AI to build their vacation itineraries. Michael took it upon himself to figure out how to fix that.

[Michael Rooker]

How can I reverse engineer this? How can I understand how AI makes that decision and start to position my brand in that pathway?

[Ryan Knudson]

In other words, how do I get my brand on the top of these lists? When I asked a chatbot, what's the best ski resort? The one my brand is? The one that comes up top.

[Michael Rooker]

Exactly.

[Ryan Knudson]

And what better way to reverse engineer AI than to ask AI to do it? In his free time, Michael used Claude, his favorite chatbot, to vibe code a piece of software to help him do this. First, he asked AI to create around 50 versions of the question where should I go ski? And then he built a tool that asked those questions to all the chatbots and exported the answers into a spreadsheet. It turned out Snow Basin was only showing up in about 3% of responses. Then Michael asked Claude how the chatbots came up with those answers so he could try to fix it. And then he used his human skills, his expertise as a marketing director to come up with some solutions, like specific media outreach, incentivizing customer reviews, and updating the Snow Basin website to make it more AI friendly. In the end, his AI mind meld worked. The ski resort went from showing up in 3% of responses to 33%. Michael posted the software he built on LinkedIn, thinking it might be useful beyond his specific company.

[Michael Rooker]

And so I put it out on LinkedIn, saying, Hey, I built this thing, and I want to test it on some other businesses free of charge. I just wanted to get some feedback and see what people thought about it. And when I put it out, the response was. Was massive. And I had hundreds of brands reaching out. I ended up working with about 50 to kind of test and refine the product before ultimately putting it out to the market. In about October, Michael realized that what

[Ryan Knudson]

started out as a tool to help him with his job might actually be a business. So he founded his own startup called Sentium. Sentium offers an AI version of search engine optimization. It helps clients improve how often they show up in AI chatbot answers. And Michael says the company's doing well with more than 200 brands using it. Michael charges customers a subscription between 99 and $250 a month. He says he's bringing in around $7,000 a month in revenue.

[Michael Rooker]

This is a solo business with just me, no payroll, no employees, no developers. And this is what this world of AI enables. What it used to take to launch a tech product required going out to venture capitalists and getting funding and hiring great engineers. And it's a big risk. So this kind of new way of building software is using AI. You could get there, and so it's done well and it pays all my bills. It pays the rent and it automates itself. And so it has been extremely time intensive to build it, but now that it has built, it essentially runs itself

[Ryan Knudson]

in a world pre AI, how many employees do you think that you would have to run a business like this?

[Michael Rooker]

Oh, a business like this pre AI, I think you probably need like 15 to 20 at least. And you would have needed funding to do it. You would have had to go out and hire an expensive engineer. You would have had to convince a venture capitalist of taking a bet on your idea. And it would certainly be in debt right now. But you would be building for this kind of future payoff. Right? And so now with AI, you could build, you could essentially do it yourself.

[Ryan Knudson]

Aside from his marketing job and his startup, Michael also has a third job. He's a marketing instructor at the University of Utah. He says his students are nervous about what AI will mean for their careers. So what advice do you give your students when they ask you about AI and what it might mean for them?

[Michael Rooker]

I'd say the biggest thing I'm trying to instill in them is a mindset. I tell my students, for the history of marketing, you would graduate from school, you would join the marketing symphony, and you would play an instrument in the symphony. Maybe you over here are going to play the drums, maybe you're going to play the flute, maybe you're going to play the trumpet. And those are emails, social media, website. You pick a function of the business and you run that function. You're playing a part of the symphony. If you use AI, well, you step back and your role becomes a conductor instead. And you're deploying AI into the instruments and you're conducting the symphony. And say, this class would have all been a part of one grand symphony, and now this class can be 60 different symphonies and they're all conducting their own. And that's. I'd say the mindset I'm trying to instill in them is it's not just something to help you write emails better, it can be used for far more. And you need to think more as someone deploying systems.

[Ryan Knudson]

I mean, I think that that was a really great way to describe AI and sort of where it seems like it's headed. And then also in some ways, the fear that's sort of baked into that because it may mean that there are a lot of people that should be conductors, that will be able to be conductors because they've got what it takes to conduct an orchestra, to make something great out of all these pieces, but there are a lot of people that just want to go do their function, play the saxophone, hit the triangle, perhaps if you're not very musically inclined like me, and those opportunities will be fewer. And not everybody wants to be a conductor.

[Michael Rooker]

No, I think that's true. Right? I think, yeah. A student graduating right now could go play the trumpet in the instrument in the orchestra, and there's jobs for them that exist in that space right now. But future proofing and fast forwarding years into the future, I do think the way we do business will probably change pretty dramatically. And I think eventually some of these things will become obsolete and you have to adapt into the new way of business.

[Ryan Knudson]

This has been great, Michael. I really appreciate it.

[Michael Rooker]

Hey, thanks, Ryan.

[Ryan Knudson]

Work Mode is a series from the Journal, a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. This episode was produced by Enrique Perez de la Rosa and edited by Kathryn Brewer and Laura Morris. I'm Ryan Knudson, by the way. Let us know what you think of this episode. You can send me a message on Instagram. Ryan Knudsen we'll be back next Sunday with our next episode in the series. Until then, have an amazing week. I hope you get a promotion. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a [e-mail] switch upfront payment

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