The Real Race Isn’t Against AI — But for being relevant!
6000+ roles axed at Microsoft — including some who were building the most advanced AI tools
🔹 The message? Nobody’s irreplaceable. You are just a cost center or AI can already do better
Here’s the survival blueprint for people in Financial Services — whether you’re in tech, product, ops, or sales AND each one of you including me:
🔹 AI replaces repeatability. Humans remain for responsibility.
▪️ AI can run 10,000 credit scenarios in seconds.
▪️But only a domain expert knows why a micro-loan model of WE or Asia can’t just be copy-pasted into a GCC as-is or why UPI solution was not copy pasted as-is in UAE
🔺 Survivors = AI interpreters who get the context, not developers who tweak models
🔹 Tech skills gets outdated. Domain intuition compounds
▪️ An mobile lending app used an off-the-shelf AI model to approve loans via WhatsApp in a market.
▪️ But what made it succeed? A functional lead who knew local risk patterns and designed human-intensive collection process
🔺 Tech got them to market. Business wisdom made them scale.
🔹 The new unicorns aren’t just tech-led — but domain-led with AI muscle
▪️ India’s Jar app (gold savings) didn’t invent AI
▪️ But they use behavioral nudges + micro-intent AI to get users to save ₹10 at a time — because the product team deeply understood low- income customer anxiety around volatility
🔺 Translation: AI didn’t give them the idea. It just scaled the intuition
🔹 Power lies in orchestration, not execution.
▪️ In Gulf banks, RM teams using GenAI co-pilots saw 20%+ better cross-sell — not because of the tech alone, but because someone trained it on regional preferences and built prompts around local festival cycles, not Black Friday.
▪️ AI is just power. It takes a human to aim it.
So what should YOU do to stay future-proof?
🔹 Learn just enough AI to ask the right questions
🔹 Domain knowledge is pure GOLD
🔹 Become a translator between models and money, data and demand
🔹 Don’t chase every tech trend. Chase core impact using your domain edge.
Final Truth:
🔹 AI won’t replace you. But a data-wise peer who knows to wield it, will
🔹 And for life beyond LinkedIn:
▪️ Always build a second source of income
▪️ Meet people, Grow your network, And KEEP SHOWING UP
▪️ Because people don’t get hired on skills when you lose a job and you reach out to people you know. I will leave the rest for your wisdom…
