Artificial intelligence will change everything you know about the future of work. But it might also change your brain.
For the most part, the conversation around AI has been accompanied by some dread. Frankly, it’s easy to understand why.
Technology so adept at what were previously exclusively human tasks coming for your nine-to-five is a frightening proposition.
By 2030, 70 per cent of jobs are predicted to change significantly, either being partly or fully outsourced to, well, a machine.
If you’re looking at that figure with some fatalism, you are not alone. But those who follow the AI-work dynamic most closely say there’s absolutely reason for optimism.
I sat down this week with Aneesh Raman, the chief economic opportunity officer at the world’s largest professional networking platform, LinkedIn.
His resume also features, quite impressively, a stint as Barack Obama’s Presidential speechwriter, an adviser to the state of California and head of economic impact at social media giant Facebook.
He says that we’ve been looking at AI all wrong. He also has a stark warning about how “overuse” and “misuse” of the technology will change your brain permanently.
‘The conversations are fuelling so much fear’
Raman, who co-authored the book Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI, says whether or not a person succeeds in their career could come down to how they embrace AI.
“The people I worry most about right now are not in a specific job type or job category,” he told news.com.au.
“It’s people across all stages of their career who do not want to change anything about how work looks for them.
“I have great empathy for everyone who feels like they have done everything they were supposed to do — they got the right education, they’ve gone into the right company, they’ve got the right job title — everything to keep progressing forward. But that is not what will progress them forward with the way work is about to be.”
Raman is on the frontline of the brave new work world, with access to more than a billion users on LinkedIn across more than 200 countries. He can see what works and what doesn’t.
“The conversations around AI and work right now are fuelling so much fear and anxiety but worst of all it’s fuelling this fatalism, this sense that it’s all predetermined, that where we go next is inevitable,” he says.
“That is not how this works. That is not how this moment of disruption will work — we will decide as societies, as humanity, how we go forward by the choices we make and how we bring this tool into work and beyond.
“Over the past few years, the conversation has been about autonomous, super-intelligent AI, where humans are spoken of, it’s sort of like the member of a team who’s worried they’re being left out.
“We often say, ‘it’s not human vs. AI, it’s human with AI’. Part of why it’s so scary is because it’s talked about like human vs. AI. I’m both pro-human and pro-AI.
“As a force, AI will represent one of the greatest disruptions to work in human history. But we sometimes forget that AI has the ability to democratise access to expertise, to entrepreneurship that no tool has before. That’s where we need to start.”
Jobs are changing on us, even if we’re not changing jobs, Raman says. It’s why people who embrace AI as a tool to help them will benefit more than those who see it as an obstacle.
“So as a worker, the story you are telling yourself in those quiet moments matters. If we concede some fatalism, that story will bind us to beliefs and actions that make that concession become real,” he said.
“But if we tell ourselves a different story, we can get there, because that starts to organise us to have the right debates and create the right partnerships. The book is about spurring a new conversation around the pro-human belief, as well as the pro-AI belief.”
‘There’s cognitive decline, cognitive debt’
But Raman does offer a warning, particularly one for younger users of AI or those who lean on it too heavily.
“Everyone should use AI but they should not overuse it or misuse it,” he told news.com.au.
“We already know from looking at adults, there’s a real risk (of) overuse — there’s cognitive decline. MIT has done brain scans that back this up, there’s cognitive debt that comes if you use this tool and you outsource your thinking to it.”
The research Raman cites was published in mid-2025 by scientists at the university and found that cognitive engagement was significantly lower in those who used AI as a search engine compared to those who used their own brains.
“Imagine if you’re a student or a worker and your teacher or your boss says something, you copy and paste that into an AI tool and you copy and paste your reply,” Raman said.
“There’s nothing intellectually challenging in that interaction and that’ll catch up to you because you’ll get asked about it and your brain won’t remember it because you’re so passive in it. It isn’t pushing you to think deeper.”
He had real concerns for the use of AI among young people.
“I think the younger you are, the more important it is to focus on your human capabilities,” he told news.com.au.
“It lays a more durable foundation to do that work early. Then there’s this question of when to introduce this technology. When and how to introduce different tools. This is something we need to start talking about.
“The younger you are, the focus should be on human capability, social and emotional learning, habits. As anyone who brings the tool into their day to day life, be really careful about overuse and misuse.
“More tools are being developed and entering the market everyday. You’re developing this muscle of just tool use, which is very pro-AI.”
Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI, was co-authored by LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. It was published last week by HarperCollins.
