What's the Cursive of the AI Age?
Episode notes
I learned cursive in third grade and used it exactly once - to sign my name. So what's the cursive of the AI age? Which skills should you actually keep learning when the machine can do so much?
No guest this week - just me thinking out loud. I'm not a futurist or an AI expert; I'm a curious guy who reads a lot, builds things, and likes chewing on which skills are actually worth your time.
What you'll take away:
- A simple gut-check for which skills survive AI - and which ones quietly became optional
- The one skill I think is wildly underrated right now (and it's not technical)
- Why understanding how something works matters MORE now that AI can do it for you
Chapters:
00:00 What's the cursive of the AI age?
00:40 Algebra, calculators, spreadsheets - fundamentals first
01:00 Skill 1: Understanding the levers (the rental calculator)
03:00 Skill 2: People skills (the one nobody's talking about)
04:40 Bonus: I took a coding class and didn't learn to code
05:10 What would you learn? (tell me)
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Transcript
Transcribed from the recording and lightly formatted for reading. Nothing has been reworded, so the occasional mis-hearing is left as spoken.
Jeff Albaum
What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Curiosity Class. Today I wanted to talk about skills in the age of AI. I think everybody is wondering and asking themselves what skills to focus on in the age of AI? And what do you what do you learn? What do you let go by the wayside? for those of you who are my age and above, like what is the the cursive of today? Right. Like I don't I don't know if kids learn cursive anymore, but
Like I remember learning cursive in third grade, and then I never use it except to sign my name. So I would call that kind of like a this maybe a hot take, but a pretty useless skill. that being said, I'm really glad that I learned, you know, how to do algebra, right? And then it's great to have a calculator because you then you understand the the fundamentals and then you have this machine that helps you do it way faster, right? Same thing with spreadsheets. It's really helpful to have a spreadsheet to help you with.
basic math and that way you can model out different equations that would otherwise take forever, right? So in the age of AI that can do things instantaneously, such as spreadsheets, for example, what are skills that are are worth pursuing and worth learning? You know, five years ago you would have been pretty intelligent to say, if you don't know what to do, study computer science because you'll always have a job, right? Same thing with accounting, always have a job. Now it's a little bit less clear of okay
Is computer science like as AI can do coding tasks better, what is the need for for software engineers? I think you can make the argument either way of, you know, you'll definitely need more of them, or you'll maybe need less of them. And I think both sides of the argument have their merits. but I want to talk a little bit about the skills that I think are very valid to maintain pursuit of, especially in the age of AI. So
The first one is understanding. I'm gonna use it and first I'll give a real estate example and then I'll give a a non real estate example. So the real estate example is making your own rental calculator. You could have the argument that says, go to any AI tool, tell me to tell it that I want to make a real estate investing calculator spreadsheet, and I'll use that, right? Teach me how to use it, right? And that is valid.
I would argue that it's still super critical to understand the components of what goes into that spreadsheet because you're gonna need to understand what I can tweak here and there to get different outcomes. And when you're looking at deals, you're gonna wanna understand, okay, if I can drop the purchase price, this amount, how is that gonna affect my mortgage payment? And in order to do that, you either need to A, well, it's probably a combination of the two, you need to both analyze a ton of deals. So you kind of start seeing patterns, you can get pattern recognition.
And B, understand the levers that go into that spreadsheet so that you kind of get an intuitive sense, or you start to after looking at enough deals of, if I do A, then B follows, right? So that that's an example of something that I think is still super valuable to learn how to do. You can definitely use AI to help you make the spreadsheet initially, but I think it's wise to understand the components and levers that go into making a real estate spreadsheet. another one that I think is super undervalued.
Especially now, and I haven't heard so many people talk about this one, is people skills. I think in the age of AI, you people are pretty not stoked to say the least, to get like an AI sales call. Right. And I think a lot of companies are not hiring or even firing their sales development reps, their SDRs. But I think just on a on a personal level, like I don't know that I would buy something if it was from an AI.
Show full transcript
Jeff Albaum
Right. And maybe that's naive because I I spend a lot of money on services that I've never spoken to somebody. Like I spend money on Spotify and Monarch, right? And these are all subscriptions that I I've never s I've never spoken to a Spotify sales rep. So maybe it's naive of me to say, but I think that in the age of AI, when everything is so digitized, you kind of start to see the swing back to in person and, you know, doing things together and like a human to human interaction, I think is going to be a really big
industry, I I guess. Maybe it's just not so much of an industry as it never left. But you know, I feel like we went from in person and then during COVID everything went remote. And now there's a little bit of a swing back to I want to be in office. I want to go in person. I want to do like real human stuff. And I think as part of that you're going to see a lot of folks le like all all the companies that are making these like dumb phones, I think they call them, where it's like a flip phone that just does like GPS and music and phone. Like that's it. There's no true like internet browser.
and I think people are really longing for that kind of simple like return to simplicity. And so I think as you're thinking about skills to develop or work on in the age of AI, I think people skills are gonna be in a a very hot, very high demand. so those are a couple of things. The third one's a little bit of a bonus that I think is a little counterintuitive is I did actually learn or I took a coding class. I didn't learn how to code. I I took a coding class to try to teach myself how to code a little bit.
and I learned enough to realize that there is so much that I don't know or understand. but that being said, it was really fun to use my brain in that kind of way. And I don't think that coding is necessarily a great skill to learn in the age of AI, but I do think it was a fun use of a couple months to spend, you know, 30 minutes in the morning just playing around with with some JavaScript. So
that was my hot take. I'm curious to see what other people are thinking are the valuable skills to learn or or kind of dive deep on in the age of AI. And so let me know, drop your comments in the comment feed below or shoot me a message saying what you think is the most valuable skill to learn in the age of AI. And I'll see y'all next week. Bye everybody.