Will AI take my UX job?

Why you’re getting this: This is a friend-first newsletter. Faangboss is a weave of three essential threads: the craft of design, the art of influence, and the journey of growth in UX. I poke at connective tissues, drawing from my 20+ years of launching products and mentoring designers in tech NYC.

A big question popped into my mind.

Are there any studies that compared the reasoning power between AI vs human? What are the nuisances?

There are key differences.

AI systems process information in parallel across many dimensions. This "reasoning" speed depends on computation resource rather than biological constraints. AI uses "probably-based approach to knowledge" that is largely backward-looking and imitative.

Human cognition involves biological process with attention, memory, and consciousness. It's characterized as "theory-based casual reasoning" that is forward-looking and generation novelty.

MIT researchers found that large language models "excel in familiar scenarios, almost like a well-worn path, but struggle when the terrain gets unfamiliar." Their study showed that while these models can perform well on standard tasks, they have "limited ability to generalize to unfamiliar situations," suggesting that their apparent reasoning skills are often overestimated. 

AI cannot replace my job, but it will transform it.

1. AI can process large amounts of information without mental overload, maybe one day without bias, humans still maintain significant advantages across social consideration, ethical judgement, and empathy.
2. Is AI "creative" at problem solving? No. AI cannot come up with novel solutions unique to human problems. It's computational power is extremely shallow. All the prototypes you build with AI is mediocre, not good because it lacks nuanced understanding of any behaviors.

All of the articles regarding using the latest AI tool to automate building design prototypes in code is cool, but the problem was never about building. The problem is always "is this the right thing to build."

I see two paths you can take. Either you rise above and be the critical thinking leader or be the tactical builder.

I won't be the tactical builder by choice. Why? The biggest problem isn't speed to build, it's People. People are the blockers on why design fails to deliver.

At work, we use internal AI. Our Figma AI features are turned off, we don't use external AI services because external companies catalog your content, and our work is too complex to solve with AI.

It doesn't mean we should stop learning new skills.

It just means, a lot of the perceived value is in the invisible work.

Have a good friday,