Evan Schwartz is the Chief Operations Officer at AMCS Group.
I want to begin with a simple but urgent truth. Whether artificial intelligence brings about an apocalypse or a new age of enlightenment is a choice. And it’s a choice we, the collective, must make. If we don’t, the choice will be made for us.
As someone who teaches technical project management and data & analytics for AI at Jacksonville University, I’ve had a front-row seat to one of the most transformative shifts in education and industry. The university system, once firmly rooted in traditional programming curricula, is undergoing a massive transformation. Universities are starting to pull their curricula for master’s programs in programming off the shelf. While the fundamentals of programming are still taught, new curricula around the fundamentals of AI (e.g., data enrichment, dimensionality, deep neural networks, deep learning, self-learning) are being created. We’re building entire courses around agentic workflow design and advanced prompt engineering to command and coordinate armies of intelligent agents to produce reliable, scalable outcomes.
It’s the beginning of a new era, and it comes with a monumental cultural responsibility.
In one of my previous articles, I ended it with a taste of this viewpoint: If AI can release humanity from the “burden of repeatability service excellence,” the same way the industrial age freed us from the burden of difficult and repetitive physical labor (and if we reshape our education system to stop teaching our kids to memorize, repeat and fear failure), we may very well be on the brink of a new renaissance.
Rethinking Risk And Education
My personal experience as a parent has only made this clearer. The current education system was designed to produce reliable workers. People who could follow instructions, memorize workflow steps and execute them without deviation. Risk-taking is discouraged, failure is penalized and creativity often gets buried under the weight of perfectionism.
I saw this happen to my own son. He was imaginative and creative. A straight-A student from the start. But by fourth grade, something changed. He stopped taking risks. He didn’t want to jeopardize his “honor status.” Even today, he remains risk-averse, which is contrary to my nature, as I started my first business at 16, despite not being a straight-A student. I couldn’t help but wonder: Are we raising exceptional employees or limiting the potential of future leaders?
Enter AI
Now, imagine a world where intelligent agents take over the burden of repeatability. One where failure is no longer punitive because the cost of testing an idea, any idea, is virtually zero. That’s the potential of agentic AI. In just the past few months, we’ve seen scientific discoveries once deemed unreachable made possible through AI, such as new materials that are as light as Styrofoam and as strong as carbon steel, major advancements in plasma fusion and chip designs that are enabling quantum leaps (literally) in performance.
One story that stuck with me came from a photographer reflecting on AI’s impact on his profession. He had taken a simple selfie, with no special lighting or makeup, and used AI to reimagine the scene. High-contrast, stark black-and-white tones, water droplets and a somber expression emerging from shadows. The result was hauntingly beautiful. For a moment, he thought his career was over. But then it hit him. The only thing that changed was the tool. Just as the paintbrush was replaced by the camera, so too is the camera being replaced by AI. The artistry, the eye, the ability to describe a scene with emotional depth—those visions were still his. He hadn’t been replaced. He had just been re-equipped.
Evolving Professions
The fear that AI will replace jobs (especially junior and mid-level roles in software development) is understandable. But this isn’t the end of those professions; it’s a shift in how they’re practiced.
Take the story of the photographer who feared AI had made him obsolete. AI didn’t replace him. It became a more advanced tool in his hands.
The same logic applies to developers, data analysts, designers and beyond. Junior developers won’t disappear, but their role will evolve. They’ll no longer be evaluated solely on how fast they can write code, but on how well they can guide intelligent systems, test their outputs and refine results. The IDE (integrated development environment) isn’t just for syntax and pounding out lines of code anymore. It’s now a collaborative interface between human intent and agentic execution.
Yes, AI will reduce the need for some entry-level tasks. But this doesn’t signal a crisis, unless we choose fear over adaptation.
The Choice Before Us
So, we return to the choice. We can delegate all decision-making to AI and fade into irrelevance. Or we can use this technology to reclaim our most human traits: our ability to question, explore, accept risk and create.
Humans weren’t meant to repeat tasks endlessly. In fact, I’d argue that’s a kind of living “hell” we’ve normalized for far too long. What if, instead of punishing failure, we designed systems that encouraged experimentation? What if our children could grow up with fearless inventiveness? What if science were once again a space for wonder, not rigid dogma?
Every week, AI is helping us discover something new that contradicts old assumptions. This is not a sign of chaos. It’s a sign of progress. But progress requires humility. It requires us to let go of arrogance and embrace the idea that our role is not to control AI, but to co-create with it.
It’s time to craft a vision statement for the future. One that doesn’t fear technology but wields it in service of human potential. We must choose a path that empowers rather than replaces, educates rather than intimidates and invites everyone to participate in what could be the next great era of innovation and enlightenment.
Are you ready to make that choice?
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