I graduated two years ago. By the time I started my first channel job, AI was already writing prospecting emails, summarizing call recordings, and filling in CRM fields. I've literally never known a version of this industry where that wasn't the case.
I think that actually gives me an edge.
The people who've been doing this for 15 or 20 years talk about AI like it's coming for them. And I get it. They remember grinding through 200 cold calls a day. They built careers on being the person who kept a perfect pipeline in Salesforce. When a machine starts doing that stuff, it feels personal.
But from where I sit? AI took the boring parts of this job. The data entry. The first-draft emails nobody was reading anyway. Call summaries that used to eat 20 minutes now take 20 seconds. Good. I didn't want to do any of that.
What AI can't do is walk a trade show floor and feel which booths have real energy and which are dead. It can't sit across from a prospect at dinner and pick up that they're frustrated with their current vendor but too polite to say so. It can't text someone at 9 PM with "saw this, thought of you" and actually mean it.
The people freaking out are the ones whose whole value was in executing tasks. The people doing fine are the ones whose value was always in their judgment and their relationships. Timing. Reading a room. Knowing when to push and when to shut up.
My generation didn't lose anything to AI. We just started somewhere different. And honestly, the ceiling from here looks a lot higher than the floor everyone keeps staring at.
If you're new to the channel, here's my advice: stop trying to get good at things AI already does better than you. Get good at the things it never will. Read rooms. Build trust. Ask the question everyone else is afraid to ask. That's the job now. The rest is just software.