The real threat of AI isn’t what you think.

In this episode of The Fuck It Shift, Adam Ross dives into one of the biggest conversations happening right now: AI, the future of work, and what actually makes humans valuable.

Adam breaks down why the real threat of AI may not be the technology itself—but what happens when people rely on it without developing emotional intelligence, communication, empathy, and the ability to think for themselves.

The conversation explores why emotional IQ could become one of the biggest separators in the job market, especially as AI starts taking over more technical tasks. Adam explains why being smart with AI is only part of the equation. The real advantage comes from being able to connect human to human, understand pressure, lead through failure, and bring something to the table that a machine can’t.

He also talks about the power being handed to AI companies, why society should be paying closer attention, and how AI—like social media—can either become a tool that makes people better or something that makes people more passive, distracted, and dependent.

For students and young professionals, Adam gives a direct warning: your degree alone may not be enough anymore. Whether you’re studying law, accounting, bookkeeping, or any field that could be disrupted by automation, the opportunity is in learning how to pair your knowledge with AI and becoming the kind of person a company still wants in the room.

This episode is a wake-up call about the future of work, the importance of emotional intelligence, and why the people who win with AI will be the ones who learn how to use it without losing what makes them human.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Fuck It Chip Podcast. I'm Adam Ross, joined by producer Jay. As always, and Jay, you're gonna hit me with a question right off the top.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Adam, let's talk about AI for a bit. And what do you think the biggest threat is right now to humanity?

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Well, I'm not a sky's fallen guy on AI. I see a lot of great opportunities for AI to actually enhance life, but only if the right decisions are made by our so-called government. Here's the thing about AI to me is that emotional intelligence, your emotional IQ, could very well be the only thing that separates you in a job market, in anything that you want to do with AI. AI can generate a lot of great tools. It can write you a program, it can do a lot of great things, it can make the smarter person smarter, but reverse, it can also make the less intelligent less intelligent because relying on a program to do the work for them. And if you don't have strong emotional intelligence, how are you ever going to deliver that program? How are you ever going to get the message across? One of my greatest wins in life is that I failed. Everybody wants to be the king, everybody wants to be the leader in AI, everybody wants to be next, to meet them at the spot, to be at the spot ahead of everybody. If you really want to be a king or if you really want to win in life, it's because you're willing to fail. You were willing to lose. One of the greatest things about loss is I can understand why somebody would make a decision that doesn't make sense to you and I on paper based on the situation they were in or why they chose to do what they did because of pressure. A real king is somebody who's gone through everything and was the crown wasn't given to them. They earned it. And I'll circle this back to AI, I promise you. But being able to accept your failure, see failures another, and be empathetic towards that and help them while they're going through their struggles because you went through yours. I mean, that that's a king, that's a leader. So if you want to be a leader in AI, you need to be able to be empathetic. People are, it's like going over everyone's head. All the videos I watch, there's only a few really smart people that are waving, hitting the panic button about how important it's gonna be, how important your emotional IQ, your ability to connect human to human will be, or your job will be gone. It will be done by a machine. But a machine can't make someone feel, can't help understand how someone's feeling and really feel it. Your AI can tell you it sounds like you're feeling sad, but that's not be the that wouldn't be the same thing as me saying, Jay, are you okay? Do you need me? A machine will connect, another machine will talk to another machine and connect two humans together. What are you gonna do then? If you want to be a leader, if you want to be a king, you need to open up your mind and you need to be empathetic towards others and you need to really lean in. You've got until 2027 to lean in on and go all in on emotional intelligence and your IQ to bring yourself up to speed, to learn to give a shit about somebody else and what they're going through and be able to help them and not rely on what AI tells you to do.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

How does one learn how to become more intelligent in that emotional space?

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Read a book, take a course. If you don't know whether you have high emotional intelligence, there's so much information out there and so many courses, and I'm not promoting any of them. I got my high emotional intelligence through uh the way I was raised. That's a bonus. Um, the way I was taught it's okay to feel, and then by going through a lot of uh failure, and that allowed me at the time I wouldn't have told you that was building social or building uh uh emotional intelligence. So I'm not telling you you got to go out and find your failures. What I'm if you don't have any in life or you're in your 20s, get dive into every book you can find about emotional intelligence and emotional IQ and it'd be communication. These will be the these will be the separators as AI takes over in another year on all kinds of jobs that can be can be done by a machine.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

What's your take on giving individuals who run these AI companies this much power?

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Well, it's terrifying, right? But we get we are all willing to give the companies, the social media companies this power. There's a great book, and I the author's name escapes me right now in the anxiety generation about how serotonin and dopamine all interact with all the social media platforms, and we've allowed you know videos at slot machine speed to be part of our everyday life. 5.3 billion videos are watched in a month in North America, and 85% of them have no sound. You have trained yourself to scroll, you have trained yourself to feed yourself with negativity because that's what makes you stop. Drama, negativity, something emotional, or maybe something valuable that you found. So if we've been already willing to give that up and we already gave in, the general society is going to just follow suit and give into AI. That should scare the shit out of you. Because AI is more than just social media and filling your time and your mind with useless information, depending on what you follow. Now AI is gonna give you tools. Tools in the right hand could be powerful. I this is a joke in the office all the time. AI is gonna make those who have a lack of intelligence stay the same. Somebody who wants to be entrepreneurial, wants to do something good, wants to actually do something good for humanity, could do something amazing with AI. Can they execute it? It's a whole other ball game. Or vice versa, somebody who wants to really shit on the world could probably find a way to make AI do that for them, too. So you should be concerned. You should not have your head in the sand. I've been talking about AI. It was a joke here in the office for two years before we got here because I could see the danger. And I can see the good in it. And now we're at a crossroads right now. It's what we decide to do as a general society. Do we put pressure on the government to put in hard rules? And do we really want guidelines on it? That's what I think should happen. And there's a lot of people way smarter than me, the people that developed it that are calling for the same thing. So wake up and pay attention to it.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

What would you say to those young kids who might be in school for law or to become an accountant right now, who might get out of school in a few years and understand that AI could just wipe out that industry completely?

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Well, number one, I would hope like that you're hoping for the same thing, that your student debt's gonna get eliminated. They're talking about eliminating that. They're doing that because they know that if you come out of school and you're trying to enter a job where AI has taken over like a law clerk, an accounting, a bookkeeper. These are these are tasks that can now be done with very with probably no error or no human error, and uh cost-cutting measure for law firms and and accounting firms. So you should be worried. That's the honest truth. But here's the silver lining. What can you do with that degree and AI on your own? What can you do better than a giant software company is doing that you can do for less and you can create something on your own with the knowledge that you have in bookkeeping? How can you make my business better? So, look, bookkeeping is something we're keeping an eye on, right? And it doesn't make my accounting team all that happy. And I I get where they're coming from, but my fallback on that is I'm gonna show you what I can do. What can you do? You now, this is where you come into play, your emotional intelligence, your brain power. What can you do? AI's smarter than you, not gonna make mistakes. It's already smarter than us. But what can you do as a human that enhances AI and makes you stronger and a bigger asset to the company that you want to work for? That'll be the that will now be the separator. It won't be your degree, it won't be where you went to school. It'll be what other tangible intangibles do you bring that makes you a player, makes you worth the being the hire, and you understand AI backwards and forwards. So whatever you're in school for right now, and you're becoming an expert in law, you're becoming an expert in accounting. Now tag that on. You've got six months to make yourself an expert in AI, that when you graduate, you got both of them, and you come to a company well prepared, well versed in what's going on, and you become a bigger asset to me or anyone else in the world. So it's not doom and gloom for you. You just have to think differently. Now the degree doesn't matter as much as your skill set and what you bring to the table. And with that, Jay, we'll wrap it up this time. I'll see you next time.