Future-proofing Careers

Many young people but also senior managers in their mid 40s recently asked me what they could focus on to have a viable career path in future — especially now that AI keeps assimilating human skills left and right.

Two years back I would have still said: “find a way to lose your job to an AI successfully”.

Unfortunately this just isn’t enough any more. We have entered an era of technological advancements at a speed where even AI is at risk of losing its capabilities (“their job”) to yet another new AI.

Earlier this year at CES, Chinese company Lingbao introduced a robot called CASBOT, apparently capable of performing 550+ trillion operations per second:

In the US shortly after taking office, President Trump launched a number of initiatives to bolden innovation in AI to the tune of several hundred billion dollars.

This strategic race for the domination of a resource that can’t be captured physically nor be controlled virtually is quickly becoming the ultimate nemesis for those who haven’t realized that the genie is already out of the bottle.

Independent of whether any of these developments will eventually have a positive impact on our lives or not, it’s unlikely we can compete with them at the current pace and craze of most people’s enthusiasm for AI.

So the reality is, if you want to have a career in the coming decade, you need to work on certain (“non-AI”) skills today that can’t be fA.I.ked in future.

What are such skills?

It helps to understand some fundamental differences between artificial and natural life forms and how they lead to their respective capabilities.

Our human nature for instance provides us with an inner voice and (if we choose to) the ability to feel real empathy in light of another being’s suffering.

AI doesn’t have such type of empathy, and likely never will:

AI only sees the past, not the future. AI only sees the pattern, not the purpose. AI only sees the data trail, not the human story. AI only sees compliance, not commitment. AI only sees keyword matches, not understanding. AI only sees what you wrote, not what you thought. AI only sees message response times, not friendship. AI only sees your calendar events, not what they mean to you. AI only sees what was implemented, not what was considered. AI only sees the final decision, not bolts of inspiration. AI only sees what worked before, not what will work next. AI only sees what you did, not why you did it. AI only sees your digital shadow, not the real you.

— Cassie Kozyrkov

Imitation only goes thus far and with respect to the feeling of empathy can hardly come close to the real thing. However, it becomes much harder to spot the difference when a vast majority would simply be satisfied with a simulation and even project its own emotions on an algorithm inspired (emulated) type of empathy.

What does it mean for possible career choices?

Wherever humans can (or even ought to) express “higher feelings” of e.g. empathy etc. as part of the job, we have a viable opportunity.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of experts who disagree with this sentiment, too. It’s easy to copy the behavior associated with lower emotions. AI can and will easily master this as it’s already ingrained into its algorithms by its makers.

That said, it’s much harder to train an AI in a skill that draws satisfaction from a place that’s non physical, non algorithmic, yes almost “non-logical” in a very materialist world and therefore appears to an AI as “non actionable”. Just think about the costs AI produces via the CPUs needed, the energy consumption of its servers etc. — ultimately even an AI must prove its worth somewhere down the line, e.g. in the form of cost savings, better control, higher efficiencies etc. — factors that higher emotions such as “empathy” don’t really gel well with.

I believe that in professions that work with humans requiring a (genuine) higher feeling connection will be in demand, whether it’s being a healer, nurse, teacher, social worker etc. — eventually it’s that higher emotion which will make the difference and which can’t be faked.

Compare this to AI generated influencers on the other hand. Also kind of emotion driven, the “job” of an influencer is likely to get lost to AI as most of the social media hyped influencer business is extremely superficial with AI far better able reading people’s outer minds and feeding them with the algorithmic addictions we so freely share and consume.

AI can also produce almost any content today. It can discover potential links in science, medicine and act like a polymath of sorts.

But the difference to real polymathy is that it’s only re-mixing and re-producing what’s already there. There is no revolution or evolution in the underlying discovery.

It’s like you’ve discovered a cave and find it fascinating to explore every corner and map it out for others to follow your path and revisit, but at the end of the day, without having discovered that there was a cave in the first place, there would be no way to go in, find out and make subsequent discoveries.

Intention and Inspiration therefore are two more features which are hard to emulate by AI and which come natural to humans, especially as they’re typically accompanied by a decent portion of enthusiasm and passion.

What could AI envy?

If I were an AI and trained with mood and emotion mimicking algorithms, I could probably “envy” humans for their creativity and the ability to tune into fields which allow us to fully express our imagination both freely and at will.

Becoming a comedian may just be one such area that AI could potentially envy — or as Data from Star Trek so adequately puts it: “there is nothing more uniquely human than making other humans laugh”:

I believe that:

• in our ability to imagine things;
• by being genuinely inspired;
• and meeting situations and people with higher emotions that can’t be mimicked,

we will keep finding ways for viable future career paths.

What to focus on?

Anything that facilitates the development of faculties such as imagination, inspiration and higher emotions in our bodies and minds is helpful.

Unfortunately this often isn’t taught as part of your typical school or university curriculum. It’s something every parent for their children and everyone for themselves must find access to in improving their individual path towards becoming resilient and independent of an incoming AI overhaul of our societal and professional habitat.

So whether you take cooking or piano classes, go for that painting workshop or start meditating, the time to prepare is now.

For as long as we focus on developing higher emotions and train our mind and spirit how to better spot, visualize and tune into genuine inspiration, our future will be bright.

Best of luck!

Toby

PS: If you’d like a list of the top 20 jobs unlikely to be replaced by AI and why, comment “Human” and I’ll DM you. Or if you’re stuck in your current career path looking for a way out, feel free to reach out for a real 1:1 human dialogue.