Will AI Take My Job?
Spoiler: It depends on you
An honest reflection on the most real fear we have as developers and creatives. No drama, no wild predictions—just my experience navigating this chaos.
While studying programming in college, I had that typical student anxiety: "Am I wasting 4 years studying something a machine will do better?" 😅
That doubt haunted me for entire semesters. Until I decided to face it head-on: I tried AI as my study companion. What I discovered completely changed my perspective.
Credit: Majd Rouijel
When my college projects took forever
Before discovering AI, my college projects were a nightmare. I'd spend days doing things that now take me hours. And the worst part? There were professors who got annoyed because "students weren't really learning."
But here's the dilemma: to learn programming, you need to program a lot—it's not an overnight process. And if you're stuck for 3 days on a silly bug, you're not learning, you're wasting time.
That's when I decided to use AI as my assistant. In seconds, it could do things that used to take me forever. But careful—it's not all perfect...
My mistake: "Add these numbers"
My first mistake was thinking AI could read my mind. I'd say "create a function to add" and it would give me a simple two-number addition—I guess that's the standard. Surprise: what I actually needed was to sum arrays with indefinite length.
I learned that if you don't give it good context, there will be problems. AI is brilliant, but it needs you to be specific. Like explaining a project to a new teammate.
Now when I ask for something, I give complete context: "I need to sum an array of integers to calculate the average grade for students." Boom. Works perfectly.
Advanced projects: where YOU need YOUR knowledge
When I had to do my final college project, I told the AI: "Create a university management app." It gave me an excellent blueprint to know where to start.
But when the blueprint became more advanced, that's where I needed to use MY knowledge. The complete architecture, design decisions, the specific software logic... all of that part I have to do myself.
AI shines at doing specific tasks. But imagine telling it "create this" without context. It'll give you something generic that doesn't solve your real problem.
How AI transformed my college life
Before: I'd spend an entire week making a basic CRUD for a class.
Now: AI helps me with the basic structure (30 min) and I use the rest of the time to truly understand how it works and improve it.
Result: I deliver projects faster, with better quality, and have time to experiment with new technologies.
AI made me a better student, not a lazy one. Now I can focus on learning concepts instead of fighting with syntax.
The evolution we're witnessing that amazes me
Let's remember that AI is advancing at breakneck speed. I once heard it would completely replace us because we already see automated deliveries (those cute little carts), robotic waiters with pleasant voices, automatic payments that used to be considered "dangerous" for businesses and are now almost standard.
But we still need many things that only humans can do. Someone has to program those robots, someone has to decide what problems to solve, someone has to understand people's real needs.
What's most amazing is that AI isn't something to fear. It's like having a helping hand that will assist you and even teach you topics you don't know or find too abstract.
My conclusion as a college student
AI is a valuable tool that has accelerated my college work by about 50%. We better learn to use it rather than run from it.
People who know how to use it are the ones who can excel in more demanding fields. It's not about competing against AI, but about being the student who collaborates with it best.
Because at the end of the day, AI can generate code, solve basic algorithms, create structures... but it can't understand the specific context of your final project, nor the particular needs of your client, nor make complex architectural decisions—that's why it always needs supervision.
That, for now, only we can do. And that's our advantage.
💬 How has your college experience with AI been?
Are your professors for or against it? Are you already using it in your projects or still having doubts? Tell me in the comments how your experience as a student is going in this AI era 🤖📚
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🧠 This article was reviewed and edited to improve its clarity and presentation.