The future of the professions: How technology will transform the work of human experts (updated edition) by Richard and Daniel Susskind

This book was first published in 2015 and updated in 2022. I’m sure with the speed of technology developments they could probably write another edition already!?

The authors are a father, Richard, who has spent ?more than 30 years working on transforming the way that lawyers and courts work. His co-author son Daniel is an economist.

The book starts by considering the nature of “a profession” and examples of some commonly accepted professions, such as health, law and education. It looks at recent patterns in how those professions have been changing in recent years. Part 2 of the book looks at how information technology has influenced the production and distribution of knowledge. Part three looks at the implications of these changes for the professions, including addressing the main objections and anxieties related to the impact of technology in various professions and society in general.

The authors argue that, in the long run, increasingly capable machines will transform the work of professionals, giving rise to new ways of sharing practical expertise in society. They suggest that in the medium term, during the 2020s, this will not mean unemployment for professionals; however, there will be widespread redeployment and a need for extensive retraining.

They show how increasingly capable non-thinking machines may not function exactly like humans, but can still outperform us in many ways (even in identifying others’ emotions, see the fascinating discussion about affective computing on p.219-223).

The authors express concern that our schools, colleges, universities, and professional institutions are continuing to generate twentieth-century professionals rather than graduates who are equipped for the new millennium. It is troubling that current educational systems around the world continue to focus on teaching our students to undertake many tasks for which machines are already better suited.

This quote from the book really made me sit back and think about the role of conflict resolution practitioners:

“As for trusted advisers, do we honestly believe that their days are numbered? Surely, we are regularly invited to concede, human beings will always hanker after the reassurance that a warm and empathetic person can afford a fellow human being. We do not deny for a second that great comfort can be given from one person to another. Indeed, we identify the ‘empathizer’ as an important future role. However, our experience suggests that many of the recipients of professional service are in fact seeking a trustworthy solution (such as an effective vaccine) or particular outcome (immunity from a virus) rather than a trusted adviser per se. Looking ahead, when the standard of the output of, say, an online service is very high and its branding is unimpeachable, this will offer its own level of comfort and reassurance. In many circumstances, that will be sufficient for users and invariably more affordable than the warm adviser. Recipients of professional service, in summary, may be more focused on securing desired outcomes than on loyalty to traditional working methods. And practitioners should be careful not to conflate the traditional way of solving a particular problem with the problems themselves.”

They suggest that sometimes we are asking the wrong question. To adapt their comments to our field, instead of asking “What is the future of the conflict resolution professional, perhaps we should be asking How in the future will we solve problems to which conflict resolution professionals are currently our best answer?”

“As we progress into a technology-based Internet society, however, we claim that the professions in their current form will no longer be the best answer to those needs. To pick out a few of their shortcomings—we cannot afford them, they are often antiquated, the expertise of the best is enjoyed only by a few, and their workings are not transparent. For these and other reasons, we believe today’s professions should and will be displaced by feasible alternatives.”

The authors pose to questions that are worth considering:

1. Whether future systems will be able to undertake all tasks to a standard higher than the best human experts.
2. Whether there are any tasks that we feel should always be undertaken by human beings, even if they could be carried out to a higher standard by autonomous machines.

This book isn’t a light read, but it will challenge you thinking about the role of humans and technology in the work that we do.