I, like many others in the great city of San Francisco, suffer from AI anxiety. I wake up pondering the meaning of work as more jobs are automated, what skills remain important in a world where knowledge work is trivialized, how best to run a swarm of coding agents in parallel without losing productivity due to context switching...

With everything moving so quickly I started to ponder the Jeff Bezos question of "What's not going to change over the next 10 years?". In particular I was reflecting on recent experiences I've had that were the farthest away from AI.

Here are three random tales from my life that feel the most "AI-proof". Fair warning: this is anecdotal and vibes based, but maybe directionally correct in what it means to be human.

Children

As a recent father, my ChatGPT history is filled with at least a hundred parenting questions. Despite that, I didn't realize how much of childbirth, newborn care, and parenting is so instinctive, so far from logic and reason by conscious thought. It's weird to hear medical professionals in this century say things like "trust your gut" as legit advice, but I totally understand it now.

We were wired subconsciously to do this, through intuitive action, built into our brains way before humans could read or write (or code). The way a nurse chooses to swaddle a baby, the decision a doctor makes on when it's time for a mom to push, the subtle feeding cues of each child: all things that have tremendous amounts of latent complexity. There's no perfect answer here, no optimization function to train on, no counterfactual to assess against. Every child is N of 1 in the most amazing way.

Jobs that are safe: OBGYN, labor and delivery nurse, postpartum doula

Music Festivals

I distinctly recall a moment at Coachella 2025 sitting on the hill overlooking the Sahara stage between sets, people watching while my wife went to the bathroom. It was earlier in the day, so people were radiating energy, triple checking the schedules, eagerly awaiting the sets to come. People moved in waves, like happy puppies chasing a ball, confident in their best outfits that they may have planned for months. Some were there for the music, some for the party, and others to see and be seen by their social circles.

For less money, effort, and discomfort we could listen to the same song on our phone, watch a greatest of all time set on YouTube, or even have an AI create a custom song for us, yet here we were. I saw a group of teenagers randomly run into their friends on the hill, and watched them leap into each other's arms in a wild group hug that turned into a dance. In that moment I realized that we are just social animals: vibrating balls of emotions seeking connection through shared experiences.[1] Music festivals facilitate this beautifully.

Jobs that are safe: event coordinator, live musician, club promoter

Cooking

I recently read Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and it made me a noticeably better cook. Thanks to it I'm now much better able to add salt or lemon juice/vinegar into my dishes to add that missing "oomph" as I make something. Even though LLMs have probably read every cookbook in the world, AIs have no use for the sense of smell or taste, so every suggestion they make is just pattern recognition based on written information.

It can suggest, maybe even innovate, but can't close the loop with real sensory feedback. And unlike a human, it has no incentive to make things taste better.

Jobs that are safe: chef, baker, sommelier

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Hopefully reading this gave you some hope that not everything is going to change. People are still people, and will do people things. We don't compete with bulldozers on pushing dirt, because we know that's not what makes life meaningful.

If you have more stories of things that won't change, I would love to hear them.