The 5% rule: What can you do that AI still can't?

Time of India

a day ago

By Abhik Choudhury
This anxiety around AI taking our jobs isn't novel, it's just wearing shinier shoes this time. We've been here before when steam engines replaced horse carts, when ATMs replaced bank tellers, when Excel wiped out half of accounting.
This time, though, it's not the blue collars trying to make ends meet but the white collar elite looking nervously over their ergonomic chairs. Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke recently said that the company has paused hiring for roles where AI can already outperform humans, adding,
"You must prove that what you do cannot be done better by AI."
The industrial revolution replaced muscle. The AI revolution is replacing method, and maybe even meaning.
Machines haven't made humans irrelevant, they've forced us to evolve. And that's what's happening again. According to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, on one hand skills like creative thinking are one of the fastest growing while roles like graphic designers are one of the fastest declining. So to reiterate a much needed distinction, no, human intelligence isn't becoming irrelevant, it's just being upgraded.
THE 5% RULE: EVOLVE OR BE EXCEPTIONAL
Here's the uncomfortable truth: If you're not evolving, you need to be in the top 5% to survive. Everyone else? Relearn. Rethink. Rewire. Everything.
AI doesn't care about your job title. And there is now enough research to confirm neither does your customer. They want output,
fast
. They want value,
consistent
. You may love craft, but the customer loves convenience. Be honest: Would you buy a smartphone just because one ad was made by
Gemini
and the other by Gitanjali? Back in 2019 itself, JP Morgan Chase tested AI written copy via Persado and saw a 450% spike in click-through rates. The tool analyzed millions of phrases to pick what would resonate emotionally with readers.
Good three years ago WPP partnered with
NVIDIA
to build a
generative AI-Enabled content engine
trained in layout, typography and brand personality for their advertising briefs exclusively for art directors. These examples are from years ago. Today, the tools are leaner, faster, and trained on every brand brief since Mad Men aired. Recently a global agency head told me how pre pandemic they usually needed an average of 12 people before a campaign went live, now the number is already at 4. Just ask around, in the last two years how many full time, mid to senior level hires have happened in the industry and how many senior creative directors of the biggest names are working as freelance consultants now.
And this is not to say creative legends are obsolete. If you're Stephen King, Gulzar, or Nolan, you'll always be in demand. But if your name isn't also your brand? You're not fighting AI. You're fighting other humans using AI better than you. So don't go to a gun fight with a sword. Especially when we are just figuring out the expanse of AI agents while almost fully liberated, self deciding Agentic AI's are on standby waiting to go live any day now.
In the end, revenue never lies, and it's never sentimental. Really unfortunate but we've built a capitalist system that is supposed to reward results, not romance.
So what are the next steps:
Identify the 10% of your role that relies on deep human insight, nuanced emotion, or cultural fluency. Double down.Audit your last 3 projects. What part was remarkable and not replicable?Study your audience more than your portfolio.Work on your personal brand moat, become so synonymous with a niche that you are good enough to train the software with your experience.
STOP BEING ROMANTIC. START BEING REFLECTIVE.
Let's take journalism. If you're not using AI to scan earnings calls, summarize government reports, or verify PR spin in real time you're not post AI ready. According to UKG's 2023 Survey across 10 countries, 78% of CSuite expect automation in workflows by 2028. Earlier this year, Australia's CADA found itself at the center of backlash when it was revealed that their popular 11am–3pm radio show, 'Workdays with Thy,' was hosted entirely by AI, a synthetic face and Eleven Labs powered voice that went unnoticed for six months. It's still on air.
And it's not just reporting. At McKinsey, an AI assistant named Lilli released in 2023 is trained on 100 years of internal consulting work. It scans over 100,000 documents and as per their own statement is used by more than 70% of its 45,000 consultants who use it weekly to surface insights and accelerate analysis.
What did junior analysts once do in weeks, Lilli does in minutes. Now the partner can just ask Lilli: 'Why did Pepsi Co lose 10K dealers in March 2013?' And they will instantly get references, charts, and insights to draft it into a presentation or proposal. No digging through dead PDFs, old mail trails & 20 TB hard drives over a month. And here's the kicker: prompt performance is now quietly being used to evaluate junior consultants. Not just in consulting, but across industries. The $20 vs $2000 productivity debate is already playing out in every CFO's head.
Now let's take a look at a completely different department: HR. IBM's AI models now claim 95% accuracy in flagging which employees are likely to quit using patterns in tenure, overtime, and promotion history. They saved $300 million by retaining talent before attrition struck. Tools like Humanyze now scan real-time sentiment on Slack, Teams, and some even deep dive into internal email analysis. They don't just predict disengagement, they offer action plans. 'This person is likely to quit in the next 60 days. Please take the following steps to retain.' That's not science fiction. That's Tuesday. The future HR won't just sense attrition, it'll trigger work flows. 'Change the project, schedule a 1:1, lower the workload.' So if the algorithm can sense burnout and enable preemptive retention steps before your boss can, maybe it's time to stop pretending it's still 2018.
So what are the next steps:
Learn prompt engineering. It's today's Excel.Do a macro course in understanding the basics of building & working with AI agents.Build your own AI stack for daily work. Think of it as your second brain.Create a weekly ritual: 'How did AI save me 7 hours this week and how can I use that time more effectively now?'
THE EPILOGUE: SURPRISE THE ALGORITHM
AI can now write poetry, generate illustrations, mimic brand voices, and compose video scripts in seconds. What it can't do is be weird. Or uncomfortable. Or irrational. Or beautiful in a way that makes no statistical sense. AI is trained on what is expected to be good. But it cannot carry the weight of a lullaby or the chaos of a forgotten love. In a world engineered for sameness, your rebellion is your art.
Break the expected patterns till you glow as the glitch.
And ask yourself before your next project, pitch, or personal brand tweak: 'Is this surprising the algorithm?' Want to thrive? Be the one AI can't clone (yet) because your voice, your vision, or your thinking still surprises the algorithm. And that's the t-shirt I would have gifted to my students entering the creative field:
Surprise the algorithm.
Because that, kind reader, is your 5%.
The age of purely human output is gone. What we're in now is the hybrid era where the best of us will look increasingly like Iron Man, not Superman. Tech augmented, emotionally intelligent, and dangerously efficient.
In ten years, this article might not just be translated, it could be psychographically rewritten for each reader. Same ideas, but delivered in the tone, lingo, and rhythm your brain likes best.
Written by me? Maybe.
Written by an AI trained on my brain? Almost certainly.
(The author is chief strategist and founder of Salt and Paper Consulting. Views expressed are personal.)