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Video · Leading change

Will AI Replace Designers?

A designer of 29 years on the line that decides it: whether your week is spent producing things, or being accountable for how they turn out.

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A designer with 29 years behind him takes the Block layoffs as his starting point and argues the dividing line is not the job title but the work. Roles that are mostly production, screens in Figma, tickets in Jira, code to a spec, are the ones being handed to smaller teams with AI. Roles where someone is accountable for how the product turns out are not. He walks designers, product managers and engineers through what to change now, and reveals at the end that the presenter was his own AI avatar.

He is talking to individuals about their own careers. Read it as someone running a team and it says something harder.

His test is whether your week is production or judgement, and whether anyone is accountable for the result. A person can't fix the second half alone. If nobody in your organisation owns whether the experience worked, that's a fault in how the work is set up, not a failing in the person doing it.

What people actually hear in all this is quieter: am I still good at what matters, what am I valued for now, will I still matter here. You won't get those questions straight. You'll get hesitation, and jokes about robots. That's someone protecting who they are, not resisting a tool.

So ask them. Could every person on your team say what they're valued for now that the producing is cheap? If you're not sure, neither are they, and that's where to start.

The presenter for most of the video is his own AI avatar. He says so at the end, and it makes his point better than the argument does.

Highlights

  • Work out what share of the week is producing things and what share is deciding them. That ratio is the risk.
  • Knowing the tools is a fading advantage. He gives it twelve to eighteen months before everyone has it.
  • A machine can't be accountable. It can't sit in front of the board and explain why the product failed.

From the transcript

So the real question isn't, will AI replace me? It's, am I accountable for anything that matters?

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