Maxwell Niswander argues in favor of generative AI in this Head-to-Head.

I am not going to get up here on a soapbox and try to convince you that AI belongs everywhere. Nor I am here to debate the philosophy of artificial intelligence. I am here because I understand what tools like this mean for your career, and I think you should too. 

I feel passionately that you, the reader, should please try out AI.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the truth is that AI is never going to go away. This isn’t a “fad” that can be ridden out as you wait for things to go back to normal. Society has fundamentally changed as a result of this technology, so I urge you to do this:

Watch a YouTube video about it. Read a research article. Listen to a podcast.Whatever it is, go out and learn about it. There is a big risk in drawing a line in the sand and refusing to explore this new tool. You don’t have to vibe code an entire app or set up a virtual personal assistant—just start by asking it something simple. 

One of my favorite uses that I have found so far is asking it for specific advice that requires context of my situation. For example, one night I was following a recipe I found online and realized I was missing one of the ingredients listed. Instead of just winging it, I took a picture of my ingredients, my pantry and the recipe, and uploaded it all into ChatGPT. 

Not only did it find a suitable replacement for the ingredient, but it also told me how I should alter the rest of the recipe to fit. Just when I thought it couldn’t get better, it ended up recommending that I add some of the other spices in my pantry that weren’t originally listed in the recipe. Let me tell you,  these were some of the best chicken tacos that I have ever made in my life.

The anti-AI group will try to convince you that the data centers are consuming dangerous amounts of water for cooling, and to be fair, only looking at the raw numbers seems like a staggering amount. The 2023 Lawrence Berkeley figure amounts to 17.5 billion gallons of water used to run AI software. This is a confirmed statistic, and unfortunately it is the most recent one we have. The projection for 2024 is roughly 27 billion gallons, which is still a lot but not confirmed. 

For the sake of this argument, let’s be extremely generous and say that AI will use 80 billion gallons in 2026. Annually, car washes use 92 billion gallons of water. You can try to argue that the value that car washes provide is greater than the value that AI provides, and maybe you would be right. Golf courses, however, are a different story.

Golf courses consume 1.8 trillion gallons of water per year, but nobody is clamoring for the end of Pebble Beach.Even at our generous estimate of 80 billion gallons, AI still only uses around 5% of the water that golf courses use.

The point is not that AI is perfect, or that its environmental footprint is something to ignore. The point is that the criticism is being applied selectively, and that the people raising it are rarely the ones skipping their Saturday tee time in protest.

Here is the real question you should be asking yourself: what does it cost you to opt out? If AI turns out to be less transformative than everyone thinks, you spent a few hours learning a tool you didn’t need. Fine. But if it becomes as embedded in professional life as email and spreadsheets, and every indication is that it will, then the person who refused to engage is going to feel that decision for a long time.

The job market is already signaling this. AI proficiency is showing up in postings across accounting, finance, law, and medicine. These are not industries known for reckless adoption of trends. When they move, it means something.

You do not have to love it. You do not have to trust it completely. But please, make the chicken tacos first.