The 2023 Update on The Future of Everything
Harish Shah
The Speaker who Teleports Audiences into The Future | The Singapore Futurist | Coach Harry
In This Update
Previous Updates
Introduction
2023 began with a massive and high-speed tsunami of Generative AI advances and diffusions. That tsunami has been growing throughout the course of the twelve months constituting the year. Moving forth, the waves of that tsunami are expected to keep growing for the next few years, at an exponential pace, and they are expected to keep moving faster and hitting harder.
That said, Artificial Intelligence is not limited to just "Generative AI". The hype, the exaggeration, and the overwhelming euphoria/hysteria triggered by Generative AI is a telling symptom of how unprepared the world of Professionals and Enterprises really is in general, for the wider and imminent impact of the broader advances in Artificial Intelligence we will be seeing over the next 3-10 years.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) on its own achieves or means absolutely very little. When AI converges with another technology, such as the internet, Office Software, robots/drones, etc., it does not just modernize a business process or function, but rather, it completely revolutionizes and transforms it, with an immense propensity to render all prior states and methods of the process or function wholly obsolete.
To note, is that, as all technologies, including AI, become more pervasive, more permeating, and more universal, the overall long-term cost of employing technology for business purposes plummets drastically, relative to the rise of its benefits or returns. In such a situation, for enterprises to remain competitive and relevant, adopting certain technologies after a threshold point in time, more often than not, will no longer be an option, but rather, a must, in the simplest of words.
On that note, I open this update with the future of the very subject that has dominated 2023: AI
The Future of AI: Anybody Can Create
The general future of AI, is not just AI rendering things technological easier to use. More than that, it is about the simplification of the process behind the creation of AI apps, tools and models, to the extent, that children, without any technical or coding knowledge and training, can create their own useful and productive ones, at any time and at any place.
That is not to say, the Machine Learning Researchers and Engineers become redundant. Take the this forecast in the context of time with Microsoft Word as a comparative example. Compared to 30 years ago to 2023, how skillful, talented or tech-savvy does one need to be, to type out a short essay on Microsoft Word on a personal computer?
Technology gets less complex over time. The difference is not in the technology here. The difference today, is in the time periods and in the different dynamics. Progress happens a lot faster, when it comes to technology as of 2023, than it did as of 1993.
Long story short, your 10 year old children will be able to, if they want to, create their own AI apps, by before 2030. Go Google it.
Majority of App Workers will be Replaced by Apps & Machines
Examples of App Workers are Delivery Drivers/Delivery Workers, Rideshare/Private Hire Vehicle Drivers, Taskers, Virtual Assistants and even low level Marketers, to name a few.
The Advent of Autonomous Tech
As we see greater and more rapid progress in advanced AI, coupled with its more rapid diffusion and mass commercialization for industrial, enterprise and consumer use purposes, we will witness the further rapid spread of the following (the following are already in varied stages of the spectrum between gradual diffusion and mass commercialization):
Note: The above is not an exhaustive list, but rather a list of examples to scratch the surface
As technology becomes more economical, with advanced AI better enabling Autonomy of Software, Hardware and Cyber-Physical Systems, the need for human labor will diminish in a wide variety of tasks that are delivered as services via applications. And if workers who are currently depending on a wide variety of app-based tasks for income today, around the world, do not quickly adapt and transition out of their current occupational or employment situation, they are going to face severe long-term or permanent unemployment. This will have serious implications for business models depending on the work done by such workers that do not transit away from reliance on the employment of such workers - they will no longer be price competitive.
Not Everything Can Be Automated
That said, it is impossible to automate all work, and it will be impossible well into perpetuity, to completely render obsolete or replace every type of App Worker you can think of as of 2023. The App Workers that will survive the universalization of AI will be very few however, forming a very small percentage. For example, Plumbing. It may be possible to build Robot Plumbers, but it is one of those particular types of trades where a Robot Plumber will likely always find itself at its limit in replicating human intellectual expertise for the task, and a human Plumber will have to come onto the scene to solve an issue with a human pair of eyes and a pair of well-trained expert human hands.
The Majority of App Based Occupations
The above said, let us consider the majority of App based occupations today. In most places, they are predominantly in the areas of transportation and delivery. A drone will always make a food delivery in the long run, for a far lesser cost, at a far lesser risk, minus all the human capital management issues and requirements, than human delivery personnel.
The Inevitable Transition
The initial transition for companies, to move from App Workers, to an army of drones, robots, chatbots or other Apps, will likely seem daunting financially. The companies that do make the transitions, as soon as the windows to do so opens for them in markets where they operate, will see themselves completely eradicate from the market any competitor that does not make the transition in time, simply by being able to significantly price down and yet make better profits.
The Pragmatic Reality
Look at it from the consumer end. If you engage an App based mathematics tutor for your child, and someone comes along and offers you an app which you can use for your multiple children to learn multiple subjects, throughout their school years, for a price that is lower than the monthly fee of a tutor, in return for assistance in learning that is optimally tailored and personalized to each child's individual needs, learning style and preferences, you are going to pick the app. There really is no room for any logical debate there in practical reality.
Not Everyone is "An App Worker"
One must also note, that not everyone that works via Apps is an "App Worker", although they may often be misclassified as such. For example, there are Accountants and Lawyers today that provide services via Apps. Recognize, that these are not at all "App Workers".
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Relying on App distributed and delegated work, and marketing yourself or availing yourself to a prospective client via the App are two very different things. Off course, there will be people less intelligent who will seek a debate on this definition, but really, such people really aren't very useful for productive or meaningful conversations. The point is, higher talent workers or professionals, do not need work handed to them by Apps - they are not at the mercy of an app. The nature of demand for the talents of higher talent professionals come with very different dynamics. This clarification on definitions is necessary, even if not everyone wants to take it.
New Rules for Marketing
There are two things to about marketing that are unchanging and immune to time:
By the end of 2023, we have heard about Bard, Copilot and Gemini. These things are symptomatic examples of how information can now be sought, found, processed, analyzed and organized, in ways drastically different from how most of humanity was used to the very same, by the end of 2022.
The Basics
Fundamentally, Marketing is about reaching the intended client or customer for a product (good or service). More often than not, it is about reaching that intended client or customer in a timely manner. This is where speed comes in:
The Changing Needs
Crucial to note for any Marketer worth his or her income as of 2023, is that given the ongoing revolution in the flow of information in our world (and we are only at the start of a very rapid chain of events to come in that revolution), the needs of clients and customers are going to drastically change both very rapidly and very frequently over the next couple of decades, starting from 2024. The game of Marketing hereon, is about staying on top of those changing needs, and adapting to them, faster than and ahead of those changes that occur at the buyer end in terms of the buyer needs. This very much changes how a Marketer needs to work on a daily basis. It certainly changes the dynamics of how a Marketer deals with and strategizes for every "C" and "P" in the Marketing textbook completely. Note, that the “Cs” and the “Ps” remain the same – but their dynamics affecting the subject matter of marketing will be unrecognizably different from how they have been up to the very recent past, or even up to the time when one may read this article on LinkedIn.
The Impact of Convergence
Also, it is important to note for Marketers, that it is not just AI alone, that is massively impacting and evolving the Marketing function, very rapidly. As mentioned earlier, AI makes an impact in convergence with other technologies. A very wide variety of other technologies.
In convergence with a wide range of technologies, AI, is revolutionizing production in every sense, and logistics, in every sense as well. One of the outcomes, Socio-Technical outcomes to be precise, of the revolutions in production and logistics, is the growing buyer-side expectation and demand, for extreme personalization and customization at an individual level which was previously unimaginable. And there will always be someone in Market Competition willing to fulfil those expectations and demands.
Long story short, the Marketing Function very much bears the prerogative and onus to help the enterprise deliver the mass customization and personalization of its products, for customers at an individual level, in real time. That is a lot to digest, and to do, as easy as it is to word it. And there will be very few industries, where this will not apply over the next decade and beyond.
New Rules for Human Capital Management
The Evolution of Business Functions & Processes
Given the ongoing rapid socio-technical evolution of the very human experience driven by the ongoing technological evolution, the following will see rapid, frequent, and constant changes over the next few decades foreseeably, starting as early as 2024:
The Evolution of Work
Oh wait, the above pretty much encompasses everything in business or enterprise, doesn’t it? Oh yes, for anyone who needs it spelt out, it does. It certainly does. And what it means for enterprises, in terms of work and labor is:
The New Meaning of "Talent"
Moving forth, there will four broad categories of “Talent” in the world of work and enterprises:
The Implications for HRM
Now, given all of the above, the rules for the following cannot remain the same:
Oh yes, the above happens to be the whole of HR. Pretty much, because somewhere in there, Compensation & Benefits gets struck as collateral as well. It is a war I tell! A bloody war!
Companies that will Define Business over the Next Decade: 2024-2034
The following is likely an unsurprisingly list of companies that will predominantly define the conditions and environment for business over the next decade, from a credible Futures Studies view:
The above is by no means a list of companies necessarily projected to be the most profitable, or projected to be the biggest brand names, or projected to sell highest volumes of products.
The above list is of the companies that are projected to most like drive and define Socio-Technical landscape for business, and therefore the rules and conditions for business in every aspect, for everyone else over the period between 2024-2034. Unsurprisingly, they are all tech companies, given that we are in a transition phase, heading into the X Reality era.
About Harish Shah
Harish Shah is Singapore's first local born Professional Futurist and a Management Strategy Consultant. Endearingly known as "The Singapore Futurist", he runs Stratserv Consultancy. His areas of consulting and Keynote Topics include EmTech, Industry 5.0, HR, Digital Transformation, Product Development, X Reality, Marketing, Strategic Foresight, Systems Thinking and Organisational Future Proofing. In an Open Letter in 2019, Harish has called on his fellow Futurists around the world to raise the emphasis upon the need for Environmental Salvation, in the course of their work.
In 2022, Harish released his first Futurist eBook titled: Life in Techtopia (available for free reading, download or request in PDF format)