A lot has happened in AI so far in 2025. ChatGPT 3.5 only made its public debut three years ago, but if you’ve been following the developments of it and other companies, it feels like a lifetime ago. I remember people saying, “Imagine what GPT-5 and on will be like!”

I’m going to illuminate five reasons why GPT-5 will not take your job in 2025. Unlike many of the articles out on the internet, these are not the obvious, clickbait reasons you might expect. These could only come from someone like me, a fellow Huntsvillian with a keen interest in our exact situation. Here are the reasons your job will not be taken by AI:

Lack of sentience
Alabama’s progress
ChatGPT is not “cleared”
AI doesn’t want your job, but …
You still have a choice

Well, now we know, three years later. Super intelligence is still not here. However, that’s not to say that the world isn’t changing. There is a lot of nuance, subtlety, and change happening to us even if we don’t realize it. So reason #1 is ChatGPT is still no more sentient than your toaster.

Also, here’s more good news! Reason #2 is Alabama is not “behind” when it comes to AI. In a recent study, our state falls in the middle in terms of preparedness for an AI-centric workforce. We are #34 when it comes to how many of our businesses use AI, but we are #11 when it comes to elementary computer education. And given that much of the traction is likely Huntsville and Birmingham, we are doing something right. However, ChatGPT came out three years ago. Are we doing enough? The middle ground is safe, but it can be lost.

On the theme of fives, I’ve taught five training programs for local entities in government and contracting, teaching them how to use AI. I was pleasantly surprised to see how many have started to use AI, but also alarmed at a much larger number who had little or no experience. We have a vast talent pool here of engineers and contracting experts. Do we have the talent we need to compete? That’s a bigger question.

The third reason your job is safe: ChatGPT is not yet a fully secure system for most contracting purposes. Therefore, you still have runway to catch up. Keep in mind, runways are not super long in comparison to the speed at which takeoff requires.

If you work in government, either in an agency or as a contractor, you know about SAM.gov. It’s where a lot of the major contracts are published. If you searched about a year ago the exact phrase “artificial intelligence” in SAM.gov, it showed about 200 contracts. Guess what it is now? Over 1700 contracts contain the words artificial intelligence. So if our contracting companies here don’t have those skills in both office work and in technical engineering, will Alabama and Redstone thrive in a contracting environment where there are now 10 times more requirements in AI?

The point is that GPT-5 and its future versions are unlikely to take your job. Understand me when I say that reason #4 is that someone else is out to take your job, but it’s not ChatGPT. Companies who use that software and can edit or even build their own … will take your job. If you’ve not been paying attention, relatively small companies like Anduril are swinging well above their weight. We are known as Rocket City, and our legacy for space travel is one to be proud of! But while space is vast and immense, we don’t go there very often in comparison to all the other work we do here down on earth. There’s no more open space right now than AI.

The last and final reason that ChatGPT is not taking your job is that you have a choice right now. Are you going to figure out what role AI has in your future or will you continue to stick your head in the sand and chalk up $100+ billion of investment in AI this year as a fad? You still have time, and time is one thing we as humans still have full control over.