AI in 10
The most important AI story—explained in 10 minutes.
Every day, I break down the biggest AI story in just 10 minutes - what it is, why it matters, and how you can actually use it. No tech jargon, just AI made simple.
AI in 10
AI is quietly killing the middle of your career
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Referenced Links:
ChatGPT by OpenAI
Claude by Anthropic
Google Gemini
Brookings: What Jobs Are Affected by AI
McKinsey: Generative AI and the Future of Work
Want to go deeper with AI? A community of professionals is learning AI together right now at aihammock.com — show notes, links, tools, and real conversations about how to actually use AI in your life.
Welcome to AI Inten. I'm Chuck Getchell, and every day I break down the biggest AI story in just 10 minutes. What it is, why it matters, and how you can actually use it. There's a quiet war happening inside every major company right now. And most employees have no idea they're losing it. I'm Chuck Getchell. This is AI Inten. What happened, why it matters, what you can do with it. Let's go. Let's talk about something that doesn't have a single headline attached to it, but probably should. Over the past several weeks, a pattern has emerged across industries, from finance to healthcare to marketing to logistics, that researchers, workforce analysts, and a lot of quietly nervous HR departments are all watching very carefully. Companies are not just using AI to do new things. They are using AI to do the things that middle skill workers used to be paid very well to do. And the speed at which that is happening is accelerating faster than most people expected even a year ago. Now, I want to be careful here. This is not a doom and gloom episode. It never is. But it would be irresponsible to look away from what the data is actually showing us right now. So let's walk through what's happening, what it means for real people with real jobs, and most importantly, what you can actually do about it starting today. Here's the pattern researchers are calling the missing middle. For the past few decades, economists talked about something called job polarization. The idea was that automation would kill low-skill routine jobs, and high-skill creative jobs would be safe. The middle would hollow out. And that's exactly what happened with the first wave of automation in manufacturing and data entry. But here's where AI changes the equation completely. AI isn't just coming for the bottom of the skill ladder, it's coming for the middle rungs. And in some cases, it's reaching pretty high. We're talking about roles like junior analysts, paralegals, entry-level software developers, financial associates, content writers, customer success managers, and mid-level marketing coordinators. These are jobs that require training. They require degrees. They pay $50,000, $70,000, sometimes $100,000 a year. And AI tools, right now, today, available to anyone with an internet connection, can perform large chunks of those jobs with startling accuracy. Let me give you a concrete example so this doesn't sound abstract. A few years ago, a junior financial analyst at a bank might spend 20 hours a week pulling data, formatting reports, writing summaries of earnings calls, and building slide decks for senior partners. That was their job. That's what they got paid for. That's how they proved their value while they learned the business. Today, a senior analyst with the right AI tools can do all of that in about two hours, which means companies don't need as many junior analysts, which means fewer entry-level positions, which means fewer rungs on the ladder for people just starting out. It's not that the job disappeared in one dramatic announcement, it just quietly got smaller and nobody sent a memo. Now here's the part that really matters because I just described a problem, and that's only half of a useful conversation. The other half is, okay, so what do people actually do with that information? Here's what I've seen work, both from running my own companies and from watching people in communities like AI Hammock navigate this in real time. The workers who are thriving right now are not the ones who are technically the smartest. They're not the ones with the fanciest degrees. They are the ones who figured out faster than their coworkers how to use AI as a force multiplier on the skills they already have. Let me say that again because it matters. A tool that makes what you already know worth more. Think about it this way. Imagine two people applying for the same marketing manager role. Candidate A has eight years of experience and does everything the traditional way research, writing, campaign planning, all manual, all slow. Candidate B has five years of experience but uses AI to research faster, draft faster, test ideas faster, and analyze results faster. Candidate B can do in one day what candidate A does in a week. Who gets the job? Who gets the raise? Who gets to keep working when the company decides to run lean? This is not a hypothetical anymore. This is the conversation happening in every boardroom right now. And the people on the wrong side of that conversation mostly don't know it yet. Which honestly is kind of like showing up to a poker game and not knowing who the mark is. Let's make this even more personal. Maybe you're not in marketing. Maybe you're a teacher, a nurse, a small business owner, a project manager, a salesperson, a therapist. Let me tell you, AI is touching every one of those fields right now, not eliminating them, but reshaping what the job looks like and reshaping what makes someone excellent at it. Salespeople who use AI to research prospects before a call are closing more deals. Teachers who use AI to generate differentiated lesson plans are reaching more students. Small business owners who use AI for bookkeeping summaries, social media drafts, and customer emails are getting back hours every single week. Hours they used to not have. The skill gap is not about knowing how to code. It is not about having a computer science degree. It is about being willing to sit down with one of these tools, figure out what it can do for your specific job, and build that into your daily routine before your employer or your competition decides to do it without you. So here's your one actionable thing for today. And I mean today, and not someday, not when you have more time, not when AI gets easier to use. Today, pick the single most repetitive task in your work week, the one you do on autopilot, the one that takes time but doesn't feel like it requires your full brain. Maybe it's writing weekly status updates, maybe it's responding to common customer questions, maybe it's summarizing long documents or reports, maybe it's drafting outreach emails, whatever that task is, open up a free AI tool, Chat GPT, Claude, Gemini, take your pick, they all have free versions, and type this prompt, literally this prompt. I need to describe your task. Here's an example of how I usually do it a paste an example. Can you help me create a template or a process that makes this faster? That's it. That's the whole thing. You're not learning to code, you're not getting a certification, you're just asking a very smart tool to help you do one thing faster. And when you see how fast it responds and how close it gets on the first try, something clicks. And once that clicks, you'll start asking it about the next task and the next one. That's how this actually works. Not a big dramatic transformation. Just one task at a time until one day you look up and realize you're operating at a level that would have taken twice the headcount a couple of years ago. If you're brand new to all of this and you don't even know where to start, my AI Explained course walks you through the whole thing in about 30 short videos. No tech background required. We start from absolute zero. It's built for exactly the person who finds all of this exciting, but a little overwhelming at the same time. Because here's the thing I genuinely believe, and it's the whole reason I do this podcast. AI is not the enemy of hardworking people. It is the greatest equalizer we have ever seen. It gives a solo entrepreneur access to tools that used to cost a Fortune 500 company a whole department. It gives a working parent the ability to get more done in the margins of a busy day. It gives a mid-career professional the chance to reinvent what they're capable of without going back to school or starting over from scratch. But none of that happens automatically. None of it happens to people who are waiting for someone else to figure it out first. It happens to people who decide right now, this week, that they're going to be someone who uses these tools. Not someday. Now. The war for relevance in the AI era is not being fought in Silicon Valley boardrooms. It's being fought in your daily habits. And the good news is that's a battle you can absolutely win. That's today's AI in 10. If you want to go deeper and learn AI with a community of people just like you, join us at aihammock.com. I'll see you tomorrow, my friends.
