Human cyborg relations.
My country, Italy, is facing hard times due to the Covid-19 epidemiological emergency. Our government, taking on responsibility, has decided to adopt several measures to fight this new threat to human lives. Those measures have dramatically changed our personal and working habits, limiting the circulation and grouping of people.
Since Covid-19 has become a global issue, many countries are adopting similar measures, and depending on local risk assessment C-suites, academic environments and consulting firms are asking themselves how this experience will fundamentally change the way we work, we learn, we shop and ultimately the way we build and maintain relations with others.
I don’t have an answer to that complex question, but I’d like to share some thoughts I’ve made during these days of strict restrictions to the movement of people.
#1 Imagination and Creativity are deep and irreplaceable human skills.
I don’t think that digitalization will change the future of work. I believe it has already done so. With AI, logical thinking and rule-based decision-making is no longer exclusive to humans. Those processes can be translated into algorithms, allowing machines to perform them much faster than us, given their computing power.
#2 Work shouldn’t be a race between humans and machines (Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum).
The digital era is not a zero-sum game, in which machines advance and humans retreat. Rather, we are racing alongside each other. Machine Learning enables robots to perform a growing number of tasks, but humans are improving too, creating new activities and inventing new jobs.
Since the industrial revolution technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed. Internet, automation and now AI have made our lives easier.
What it has changed compared to the past is the speed of change. The stagecoach drivers had more than 150 years to transform themselves into train drivers and almost a century to become pilots for transport aircraft, or taxi drivers, but only few decades to become engineers that design and build computer-controlled means of transportation.
At this speed, ability to reskill and upskill is an unprecedented factor of success (if not of professional survival) for individuals. Of course, there’s an ecosystem here that plays a role, starting from schools, through universities to employers, but nothing can be done without the commitment of each individual to a lifelong learning.
#3 I feel. I’m human.
Emotional Intelligence is a deeply human type of intelligence. It is about recognizing our emotions and those of others and using that emotional information to guide our thinking and behaviors.
Humans are social beings. Technology has not changed this. Again, technology has simply enhanced one of our characteristics making us “super-social”.
Though our social need is not fulfilled by simply “staying in contact”. We need to develop real friendships.
In a workplace that means fostering an environment of trust and honesty, where each one is acknowledged and works together with diverse others (and bots), because a collective performance delivers far better results than the sum of many individual performances.
#4 Hello, I’m C-3PO human cyborg relations.
Humans have a complicated emotional connection with robots. We are fascinated by machines built in our own image, but we are also threat by the idea they can take control over us.
In the end, one of the most important question a CHRO should ask today is “Does This Action Increase Human Connection?“ since “anything that brings us closer together fosters our humanity” (Douglas Rushkoff).