Marketing in the Age of AI: Which Path Leads to Your Best Work?

The Gist

AI is reshaping your creative identity. From Cyborg to Artisan, marketers now rotate among multiple “work modes” depending on the task and the tech in front of them.
De-skilling is inevitable — but so is re-skilling. As AI takes over certain craft skills, marketers gain new responsibilities around orchestration, judgment, and experimentation.
Your role shifts by the minute. Modern marketing isn’t about choosing one identity — it’s about learning when to collaborate with AI, when to monitor it, when to innovate and when to go fully human.

From the gramophone to the compass to the computer, advancements in technology routinely cause people to abandon skills, says The Atlantic’s Kwame Anthony Appiah in The Age of De-Skilling.

“It’s a reassuring pattern—something let go, something else acquired,” he says. “But some gains come with deeper costs. They unsettle not only what people can do but also who they feel themselves to be.”

Of course, AI is the big advancement that’s causing the current cycle of de-skilling. The question for marketers (and everyone else) is: What skills will people give up? And how will that impact their identity?

4 Identities in the Age of AI
Are You a Shapeshifter?
As AI Adoption Accelerates, De-Skilling Is All but Inevitable

4 Identities in the Age of AI

As people come to grips with the changes wrought by AI, they have several paths available to them:

1. The Cyborg

They use the technology collaboratively, keeping most of their skills while gaining speed, precision or other benefits from the technology.

2. The Monitor

They watch over the technology as it does their former job, stepping in to assist when the technology falters. In this role, the person invariably loses skills, as well as their former identity. A craftsperson becomes a line manager or inspector. A copywriter becomes a copyeditor.

It’s around these two choices that most of the conversation about AI has revolved. Will you be the “human in the loop” that stays actively engaged in your craft? Or will you be the “human on the loop” that merely oversees and signs off on the work the technology does?

But I think there are two other paths:

3. The Innovator

Freed from some aspects of their profession or task, they specialize in one or more of the remaining aspects. In the age of AI, this means focusing on very niche subject areas where there’s relatively little domain knowledge—or, more commonly, being on the forefront of new discoveries. The innovator doesn’t compete with the new technology, although they may use it in some way. Instead, they expand knowledge or pioneer new methods, which over time improve the new technology or fuel the next technology innovation.

4. The Artisan

Some people continue doing things the old way, maintaining their skills and identity while competing directly with the new technology. In some cases, a critical mass of consumers will appreciate this hand-crafted product or human-delivered service for any of a variety of reasons, making it a viable choice. In other cases, there won’t be a viable market and therefore no place for the artisan.

However, even this expanded list of possible roles presents a false choice.

Are You a Shapeshifter?

It’s a false choice because marketers and others will need to rotate among those roles depending on the task in front of them and the circumstances they’re in.

For example, machine learning is great at optimizing email send times at the individual subscriber level. That’s never been a job that a person has been responsible for. So, when working with this tool, the marketer will be a monitor.

However, if your brand has only ever sent its promotional emails on Friday at 4 p.m. ET, then send time optimization engines will be ineffective. They just don’t have any data from which to draw conclusions for individuals. In order to make the algorithm effective, the marketer will need to act as an artisan and systematically test a bunch of different send day and send time combinations. Then, in time, your brand will accrue enough data for the machine learning engine to take over.

Sometimes it will make sense to write marketing copy in cyborg mode. For instance, you might use AI to research, ideate or draft some of the copy, and then do some heavy editing. Or you might draft all the copy yourself and then use AI to rewrite that copy to tailor it to certain industries or personas, which you’d then do a light edit.

Other times, you might want to be completely original or sincere and not use AI at all, acting as an innovator or artisan, depending on the content.

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