Knowing or Growing: Job Security and Innovation
Re-framing concepts of mastery in legacy fields from expertise of traditional methods to adaptability in efficiently applying emerging tools and technology, using the shift from SEO to GEO as a case study.
A lot of the discussion surrounding AI and AI robotics centers around the idea that AI will take over, that it will steal our jobs and that it will replace us. It is true that AI will likely be ubiquitous, and that it will make some workers redundant through increased levels of efficiency. But it also offers immense promise to those who master it. Those who have developed expertise in their field and embrace new tools rather than clinging to legacy formats will navigate the AI transition with grace and success. Throughout history, those who thrived in moments of transformation weren’t necessarily solely the best in their field but they were the best at adapting to a new landscape. As technology develops and new tools emerge, the medium of many fields will shift. It is the key players who can adapt the knowledge they’ve garnered in their fields to the new mediums who will become the leaders of the future. Tools and technology are developing at a rate never seen before and the skill of the future is no longer creating a specialization but performing constant adaptation, knowledge vs learning.
A prime case study is the field of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the practice of making online content more visible on search engines like Google. The goal is to increase organic (non-paid) traffic by ranking higher in search results so more users click onto your page. This skill moves an entire lucrative industry which involves the use of keywords, optimizing content, titles, headings, images, and internal links, getting backlinks from other reputable sites, improving site speed, mobile-friendliness, and crawlability and ideally, by creating valuable, original, and engaging content. This skill is also quickly becoming antiquated. The proliferation of Large Language Models which give simple natural language responses rather than a list of links has rendered the concept of SEO relatively obsolete. A recent study out of Elon University reports that 52 % of US adults now use LLMs likeChatGPT and Gemini as of March 2025. The new skill necessary to surface content online in today’s world is not SEO but GEO or Generative Engine Optimisation. With GEO the field is even more competitive because rather than offering the user a list of links to explore, the Large Language Model is optimised to generate just one authoritative voice in its response. That means that it will optimize differently from before and those utilizing the old metrics of keyword density and previous clickthrough rates on links will be overtaken by those who learn how LLMs choose what to include in their outputs. GEO optimization takes into account articles written in an authoritative voice using rich, semantically related language with heavy use of quotations, citations and statistics. These techniques, confirmed in their efficiency by a recent research paper out of Princeton University, prioritize the way in which LLMs choose their sources over the SEO ranking techniques of the past. This keen understanding of the tools of new technology and adaptability for their goal shows that the success of early GEO strategists isn’t because they are better marketers, it’s because they’re faster adapters.
The SEO to GEO case study is a clear example of a current adaptability concept, but this ability to be flexible in methodology in order to keep up with new tools has deep historical precedent with endless examples. Time and time again we see examples of those who clung to knowledge and got left behind and those who learned new tools and rose to the forefront of their fields. In the mid-20th century, print unions in the US and UK fought to protect what had long been the backbone of the publishing industry, the work of the skilled tradespeople like compositors, linotype operators and typesetters. Tech driven efficiency and cost-cutting measures prevailed, and thousands of skilled jobs disappeared almost overnight. Some enterprising typesetters, however, adapted their skillset and utilized their expertise to become layout designers and early adopters of desktop publishing. They had experience in the field and were willing to adapt to new tools and methods and not merely cling to what they knew and as a result, they quickly rose to the top of their field.
Librarians are another example of a speciality which underwent a full transformation throughout the 20th century. Computers came to libraries in the 1950s and some began experimenting with automated cataloging and early databases. The 1990s saw the rise of digital catalogs and online public access catalogs as more traditional card catalogs began to disappear. There was resistance by some librarians who defended the Dewey Decimal System and refused to update their catalogs. By the 2010s the role of a librarian evolved into being an information scientist and managing metadata schemas, digitization protocols, and even designing user-centered information systems. These digitized, catalogued and annotated corpuses created the foundations for training the AI models we know and use today. Thanks, in part, to the adaptation of the tools used by librarians, today’s knowledge is machine readable and contextually rich. The classification and organization of written knowledge has endured as the overarching expertise, yet the field of library science has done an excellent job of adapting its tools and therefore, its skillset to the changes in information technology.
A final example to explore are cartographers. Mapmaking has long been a desired and highly prized speciality. Maps went from showing rivers and valleys and being carved on mammoth tusks 25,000 years ago to displaying real-time data, 3D environments and AR overlays. The Age of Exploration up until the 18th Century saw more mathematically accurate maps created for politically charged purposes. The 19th Century saw global topographical mapping for colonization, war, and science. The 20th Century brought aerial photography, satellite imaging, and GPS which lead to today’s digital GIS or Geographic Information Systems. The essence of cartography remains steadfast. We hope to record where things are and how they relate to one another in space. The tools used, however, have shifted over time and now cartographic technology can be used to capture, store, analyze, manage, and visualize spatial or geographic data in order to accomplish a much wider range of tasks. GIS mapping can track deforestation, manage traffic in smart cities, map disease outbreaks and even optimize delivery routes. Those who remained in the discipline with their expertise but adapted their skills to embrace new tools for their work protected their jobs and helped move the field forward as industry leaders while expanding the capabilities of their craft.
In each example, historical and current, the adapters accepted that the new tools available meant that their medium was changing and they treated their expertise as a malleable currency rather than a fixed practice. They reinterpreted their core goals as a field and found ways to apply the new technology to meet and broaden their purpose. By prioritizing learning over knowledge, they maintained adaptability and were able to benefit from the new tools that rendered many of their colleagues redundant. In a time when new models are released daily, our competitive edge and saving grace is not what we’ve already mastered, but what we’re willing to master next. It is in all of our best interests to re-frame our value from traditional specialties and knowledge to thematic expertise with the ability to adapt to new tools and methods as formatting and mediums shift with each new innovation.