The Zombie AI-pocalypse Has Already Come for You
You just don’t know your brains have been eaten.
A lot of you have been complaining about bullshit jobs for years. Doing your “quiet quitting” — being a drag on your company’s bottom line, and a royal PITA to the 20% of your colleagues who provide the actual value.
Well, now’s your time to do something about it.
AI isn’t turning healthy people into zombies — it’s exposing the zombies who have been living amongst us.
Want to know more?
They took our jobs!
If you’re not providing value at work that improves the bottom line and the customer experience — why the hell are you even there?
There’s a lot of whingeing about AI stealing jobs because people don’t bother reading beyond the headline. Yes, those bullshit jobs have been pruned away, but companies also use it as an excuse to cover financial mismanagement.
The fact is — people are more necessary than ever — but not the 80% of deadweight. Is this you?
1. You’re not proactive in your current role.
2. You’re not proactive about the challenges AI brings — or the opportunities.
3. You’re not educating yourself or trying to grow. You expect the status quo to last forever.
The entitlement would be shocking if I hadn’t seen it for so long.
And if you think this message is too hard or rude — try living the rest of your career knowing you never understood your role or tried to improve your situation.
And never thought about helping your company win amidst all this market instability.
Your job isn’t there to provide you with a salary and a coffee corner. Zombie communism may be real, but not for long. Like your job.
The “have my brains been eaten?” checklist
As zombies look like regular people, here’s an easy checklist to see if you are one. A look in the mirror won’t help, and those special sunglasses from the movie are sold out.
–– You have handed all your thinking over to an LLM.
You accept its praise.
You only select from the three options it gives you in the chat.
You don’t verify its claims, citations, or facts.
You can’t make a decision for yourself. “What do think, Claude? Spaghetti tonight, or pizza?”
–– You use LLMs for tarot reading, Google search, puzzles — and whether you should leave your spouse.
–– You use LLMs to write:
Your emails to colleagues and customers.
Your brain-dead LinkedIn posts (and the horrendous “art” accompanying them).
Your presentations.
Face it — you gave up writing for yourself so long ago you get sore fingers typing prompts.
Think not what you can do for AI, but what AI can do for you!
I think JFK said that. Ask ChatGPT.
AI can 10x your learning in depth and speed, and help you be genuinely productive. The catch? You need to use your own intelligence, objectivity, discretion, and integrity to make it happen.
You can use AI to augment your perfectly good brain (if you didn’t fail the checklist above) towards what it was meant for: developing real relationships, and figuring out what you really want to say — and the best way to say it.
You can use it as a Mr Spock — testing your hypotheses, asking for verifiable data, and not losing your head amidst the information chaos.
But you have to make yourself the master — not the servant of the chatbot. The hungry-for-brains chatbot.
Are you still here?
Okay, by now I hope I’ve chased away the zombies, who ought to feel insulted by what’s gone before. Now it’s just you and me, bud.
Part of the 20% who keep the economy running. On the same salary and benefits as the zombies.
No one said life is fair. Life is frustrating, boring, heartbreaking, painful, disappointing — and it’s over far too soon.
(That could be my Catholic education showing, though.)
Want to stay in your current role? You’re probably already winning. AI offers you the best way out.
Want to start a side hustle or business? You can bootstrap your way up and win big with small teams of like-minded people. AI offers you the best way up.
And if you’re a founder struggling to find talent that adds value, you now have a shortcut to spotting it: people who use AI pragmatically to augment initiative, eliminate rote work, and keep learning.
What do you think those people have in common?
The learning mindset – an unfluffy version
Until now, the “learning mindset” has been a cosy afternoon workshop that made zero impact on your bottom line.
It’s been watered down into pop-psychology LinkedIn wallpaper posts. In a pleasing serif font, written at an angle over an Unsplash photo of a beach, or something.
But applied in real life, a learning mindset is a matter of survival.
If you can’t learn, you are zombie snacks.
In survival mode, you adapt whatever tools you have to hand. Is the tool made for that specific job? Not usually. But it will do in a pinch.
The real utility of AI tools has yet to be fully discovered. And it will be discovered by the 20% with the curiosity, drive, and willpower to make it so.
My inspiring CTA
I’d say, “Thank you for coming to my TED Talk,” but those people are all zombies.
So here’s my TL;DR, annoyingly put at the end of the article and not the top:
– The big AI names are doing their IPOs as I mistype this. AI is not going away – if anything is too big to fail, it’s this.
– You currently get access to cutting-edge technology for pennies – or for free. This won’t last. Seize the day.
– The people who recognise the opportunity are the ones who have always looked for opportunity. Whether they’re employees or founders, they’re the ones who will survive the zombie AI‑pocalypse.
And when AI takes your job – you had it coming. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Citations
They Live!, Star Trek, Fight Club, 28 Days Later, The Walking Dead, South Park, JFK, Starship Troopers.