AI Is Overrated: Why Returning to Basics Will Make You Irreplaceable

 The other day, I was reading an EY blog explaining that tech companies are shifting toward diamond-shaped hiring, where fresh hiring is consolidating.

And again, the same fear surfaced everywhere:
“AI is going to take our jobs.”

But why are we so frightened of AI?

Today, the large majority of people — in India and outside — only use AI for the most basic tasks: writing emails, drafting letters, summarizing notes.
Even in major consulting environments, there have been cases where teams relied heavily on AI tools to produce content that was later flagged by other AI tools. It simply shows one thing:

People are overusing AI without understanding it.

I sometimes wonder what the top institutes like IITs are teaching now — maybe prompt writing for Copilot or ChatGPT?
And even the certificates we collect in India are becoming inflated in value, very similar to the hype around foreign consultancies that charge massive fees for writing fancy AI-themed reports.

🏗️ The Reality I Have Seen First-Hand

Once, I worked with a top Indian company as a contractor-consultant through a well-known foreign consulting firm.
The reporting head asked me:

“How are you people so well-versed with the technical details of the project? What kind of backup support does your company provide to you?”

I said:

“None.
We bring our own expertise, our own SOPs, our own methodologies.”

He probably thought I was exaggerating —
But that is the reality.

We learn by doing.
We survive by learning deeply.
Not by outsourcing our thinking to AI.

🤖 AI Is Overrated — And So Are the People Who Fear It

AI is still learning the nuances of project management, engineering, design, and execution.
It may take another 10 years before AI can even understand 20% of what a seasoned engineer or project manager knows through real-world experience.

By the time AI learns this,
the human mind will already have moved to another level.

There’s a reason why, in every Terminator movie, AI was hell-bent on eliminating the one human who could think independently.
Because that one person thought logically,
analyzed situations,
and wasn’t afraid to challenge the machine.

He knew one truth:

What we create, we can destroy.

So can AI overtake humans, no matter how much we teach it?
Not as long as humans keep thinking.

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🌱 The Solution: Return to Basics + Build Modern Skills

To defeat the “overrated threat” of AI, we must make life simpler, not more complicated.

✔️ Return to basics

Farming
Craftsmanship
Manual skills
Hands-on trades
Self-reliance

✔️ Learn advanced skills

Modern engineering
Modern design
Project management
AI literacy
Tech innovation

When a person can do both —

basic skills + modern skills —

no system can replace them.

The Real Enemy Is Not AI — It Is Mediocrity

Most people don’t lose jobs because of AI.
They lose jobs because they never mastered the skills deeply enough.

• We learn halfway.

• We depend on tools.

• We depend on jobs.

• We stop learning.

And that is why we become replaceable.

**AI replaces the mediocre.

AI cannot replace mastery.**

If we are not overdependent on our corporate jobs,
then those jobs cannot remove us.

The only way forward is simple:

**Understand AI.

Use AI.
But never fear AI.
Rule it.**