How to Keep Your Job When Competing With a Neural Network

As AI systems outperform humans in increasingly complex tasks, career coaches are recommending bizarre survival strategies. Their top tip? "Strategic incompetence" - deliberately failing at tasks machines do well, like remembering meetings ("I'm too creative for calendars") or doing math ("I work in whole numbers like a visionary"). One consultant suggests leaning into "human quirks" like "forgetting" passwords to prove you're not a bot, while another recommends crying at work occasionally since "AI can't produce authentic tears yet." The most extreme advice? Start smoking - "No company wants to retrain a chatbot every time someone needs a cigarette break." Meanwhile, employees report the real challenge isn't competing with AI, but pretending not to notice when management replaces colleagues with obviously fake "Meet our new team member, Chat-Greg!" announcements.