Get EVEN Podcast | Rachael Bolton | AI, Work and Career Identity
In this episode of the Get EVEN podcast, EVEN co-founder Ellen Sullivan speaks with Rachael Bolton, business and technology journalist and creator of Tokenised Human, about how AI is reshaping work, careers and our sense of identity.
Rachael uses AI every single day. She has built her own skills in Claude and ChatGPT, taught fellow journalists how to use it safely and used it to prepare for this interview. She also calls herself a joyful pessimist about AI and the work dynamic. Rachael is not necessarily pessimistic about AI technology itself, but she has serious questions about who holds the power and whether we're designing a future of work that actually works for humans.
Here are three ideas that stayed with us:
Your component parts form your career identity, not your job title
For many of us, work is much more than how we earn a living. It's where we build relationships, find community, develop our sense of competence and derive meaning.
So what happens when AI starts to change the work we do, or even replaces parts of it?
Rachael argues that we need to start thinking about our identity differently, moving away from defining ourselves by our job titles and employers, and towards a broader understanding of who we are.
She introduces the idea of a 'self-audit'. Rather than asking what job you do, consider your component parts. What are your strengths, qualities, talents and attributes? What makes you, you, regardless of where you work?
As Rachael puts it:
"My identity remains stable because I own my identity. The workplace doesn't."
This means our jobs can change, our skills can evolve and there’s optionality in the pathways available to our careers.
Women aren't using AI less. They're questioning it more.
Rachael highlighted women and men are now using AI at roughly similar rates in their personal lives, although some differences remain in workplace use. What does seem to differ is the level of scepticism between men and women.
Rachael offers several possible explanations. Women are more likely to work in roles exposed to AI-driven automation and augmentation and are already underrepresented in technology development roles. This background means women are asking important questions about whether AI delivers what it promises, what consequences it might create and who ultimately benefits.
As Rachael explains: "I think it's reasonable to want to take it a little bit more slowly, to really think through the consequences of adoption."
The need for perpetual upskilling cannot become another unpaid shift for women
Continuous learning is a must in this new world of work. We all need to keep up with AI, learn new tools, develop new skills and constantly stay on the cutting edge.
Rachael cautions against employees needing to find the extra time, outside of work, to do this – it must be done during work hours. If continual upskilling is required to remain capable of doing the job people already have, then it must be on paid time.
For women, who continue to carry a disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work, the pressure can be particularly acute.
"We can't all be doing a second and third shift every single night."
Rachael also connects this relentless pressure to optimise ourselves with wider cultural trends, from the tradwife fantasy of being able to focus entirely on caring, to the hyper-masculine productivity culture of squeezing more work into every waking hour.
Both, she suggests, reveal something about our dissatisfaction with the way we're working and living. Rather than simply using AI to make ourselves more productive, what do we actually want our work and lives to look like?
