A Hard Lesson I Witnessed: AI Is Not Coming… It’s Here
This week, I witnessed an eye-opening moment that perfectly reflects the reality of today’s workplace.
An executive urgently needed a storyboard/product-design workflow completed as quickly as possible. She provided clear guidelines and immediately reached out to her usual go-to staff member for design support. The staff member agreed but explained she had other deliverables and could only work on it later that night.
The executive asked what tool she used – the answer was Figma. “Does your Figma have the AI features enabled?” The staff member wasn’t sure.
She shared her screen with her co-workers and attempted to build the workflow manually. Hours later, she came up with a design. The results were fine for a traditional design process, but nowhere near the speed or precision required in that moment.
Sensing the delay, the executive offered a piece of advice – blunt, but undeniably true:
“You must learn how to use AI. Otherwise, you may soon realize that AI will take your job.”
Then she did something remarkable.
After that meeting, the executive went online in search of a tool to match her urgent need. She found one. It was an AI tool called Eraser DiagramGPT. Using the free version, she entered the same instructions, and generated a polished workflow in minutes – faster and far cleaner than the manual version produced over several hours.
When both outputs were compared, the difference was striking.
This wasn’t about talent or effort. It was about leverage – and AI offers leverage that multiplies human capability.
And here’s what many people miss:
AI is only as powerful as the prompts you give it. The executive’s superior result wasn’t luck – it was the result of clear, structured instructions, and perhaps multiple iterations. This is where prompt engineering becomes a critical professional skill.
Across the global workforce, fears about AI “taking jobs” are no longer theoretical – they are real, visible, and accelerating. AI won’t replace everyone, but professionals who know how to use AI will increasingly outperform those who don’t.
Just recently, I needed to create new pages for my website – something I would normally outsource to a developer. Instead, I collaborated step-by-step with my AI virtual assistant and completed the pages myself. My developer in that instance lost the opportunity to earn that income, and I gained the opportunity create and learn something new.
This is not an AI advocacy post (I’ll save that for another day). But the reality is clear:
We are experiencing a major shift in how work gets done – and the divide between those who adopt AI and those who resist it is widening quickly.
The executive left the team with one more statement that has stayed with me:
“If I used to call you to do something for me, and suddenly I stop, just know I may have replaced you with AI.”
Harsh? Maybe. True? Absolutely.
The future belongs to professionals who embrace AI, learn how to prompt effectively, and use these tools to elevate their work instead of competing with them.
-Olu Efunwoye, PhD