Dear Andy:
“My name is Francois and I’m a mid-level exploration geologist with a calgary-based intermediate E&P company. There’s been water cooler talk about Chat bots and AI taking over jobs and I’m super worried that one of those technologies will take my job. What should I do?” – Francois
Dear Francois:
Okay here’s the deal. First of all, you’re an exploration geologist working in the WCSB in 2023? Consider yourself a rare breed. Secondly, you think a sophisticated system of artificial intelligence engines is what’s required to do your job and put you out of work?! What the f&#k, man? Let’s be honest here, pal, your job can be done by a lame goat, blind-folded, with a few crayolas in its mouth pointed towards a net pay iso hanging off a flip chart. But you have a point, bud, Chat GPT sure is something else and it puts quite a few jobs at risk in the oil and gas industry. Shoot, I might be out of a job once OpenAI figures out how to be a genuine asshole. Should you be worried about your geology job? Hellz yeah! But I’m here to help you, Frank, with some tried, tested, and true techniques to ensure that no chat bot will ever take your job. Spoiler alert, I’m not going to recommend anything that you can do about your “work” but rather just tell you how you can level-up on the coolness factor… because no AI system can do swag right.
1) Volumetricks – There’s a good chance that you work with a bunch of robotic engineers who frantically walk around the office with spreadsheets and calculators. If you want to keep your job, you’re gonna have to be in good with these guys. So what you do is pretend to like the stuff that they like, such as volumetrics. When talking to an engineer, drop the word volumetrics into every 3rd or 4th sentence, which is like dropping subliminal hints of coolness that will get you on their good side.
2) Schist Does Not Happen – Okay, you’re a geologist and you’ve probably said “schist happens” roughly 3.7 billion times. Stop it. Stop it now. And if I hear that you’ve said “sedimentary, my dear Watson” even once, I will personally come over there and slap that rock hammer out of your mouth. And definitely stop telling your manager that he such a homo-genius. You can’t get away with that shit anymore. This isn’t 1973.
3) Lost Your Marble – Okay, we get it, marble floors are natural… yeah, natural rocks often from beneath the earth’s surface. But this doesn’t mean that you lay on the floor in the elevator lobby and office kitchens with your magnifying glass looking for fossils and traces of turbidites and that other shit you look for in rocks. I realize that AI can’t do this, but you shouldn’t be doing it either.
4) Identitry – This tip will be a little bit edgy to implement, especially nowadays when we are asked to accept people who identify as a wolf. So here’s the deal. Tell your boss that you identify as his boss. Tell him that he must respect and affirm your new identity. Then, as his boss, you tell him that he is not allowed to fire you and that AI will not make it into the company firewalls, and remind him that he must respect and affirm this mandate. In principle, you should be good to go then.
So there you go, Francois, all the best in your journey in becoming hipper so that your boss doesn’t replace you with ChatGEO. And if these techniques don’t work for you and you still get replaced, then perhaps our readers will suggest their own ideas on how you can make your geology career takeover-by-AI proof. Cheers.
Andy Killinger, Staff Counsellor 2P News