"Reimagining Our Future of Work"

"Reimagining our future of work in a changing landscape."

?How things were

The future of AI is unwritten, and it's not going away.

Since joining the technology industry in the late 90s, NT/NT3.x, NetWare, Unix and Mainframes were the IT operating systems that surrounded my world, helping to solve technical support issues amongst security and storage software solutions, flying the FPP (full packaged product) flag before software licensing took off.?

Learning all things enterprise tech 101, thanks to 7 am daily starts learning and whiteboarding with really cool enterprise solution architects who were so generous with their time teaching and showing me how to navigate enterprise infrastructures, from systems, networks, and storage to security and the early stages of automating the back-end of IT with SOA (service-oriented architecture).?These teachable moments were well and truly before the extraordinary world of apps, cloud, data, big data, IoT and AI.?Eventually, I was trusted enough to be the first point of contact on the IT help desk, troubleshooting first-level customer technical support calls.?My life-long learning and hunger for technology remain.

Fun and fond memories of loud barks from across the office for holding up the phone lines, using the fax machine.?Finalising sales orders and using the EDI (electronic data interface) to communicate with industry-specific customers connected to our company EDI.?I still giggle today when I look back at how far we have come as a human race-co-existing with technology.

I quickly learned that my skills were better suited to being on the front line, building relationships and influencing business, helping customers solve challenges, connecting the dots to build teams, and driving ecosystems that bring solutions together.

Thankfully, the internet happened, and at the time, everyone questioned what this meant, asking many questions: how does it all work??What happens to our information??What about our jobs??How do we manage customers in this new way of doing business, taking our laptops/computers home from work for the first time using dial-up??Is it secure for business, Y2K – will all machines stop??

The shift

This monumental technological shift and human connectivity amplification in the late 20th century presented new business opportunities at speed and scale.?We needed to upskill and learn new things in many ways.?Eventually, as history proves, humans adapted and welcomed the efficiencies in business and life, advancing our careers at the same time.?This shift required change management in both mindset and company (no different to the landscape we find ourselves in today's AI world), albeit on a different scale relative to 'lightning speed'.?Today the internet is like breathing.?

Fast-forward to the beginning of the Cloud era, Cloud vendors were optimistic about this new frontier.?The lack of clarity about data sovereignty, the ramifications of moving information to the Cloud, and the overall impact on businesses led to hesitant adoption.?As the fog cleared, enterprises began to see the Cloud for what it was – an avenue for increased productivity, innovation, and cost efficiency.?As the technology evolved, competition increased, and more Cloud literacy and questions on data sovereignty loomed as they still do, but on a much smaller scale today.?Mainstream customer adoption became more evident as customers realised the overall benefits of Cloud adoption.

As Cloud has evolved, data lakes exploded, initially led by FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google).?Other powerhouses are joining the data race (Tesla, Apple, Uber and most recently ChatGPT, Claud and others, no doubt), including organisations, data centres and consortiums embracing private cloud data lakes, essential for the future of AI, all in their quest to change the world, innovate new solutions and commercialise data, paving the way into the next digital era of AI (artificial intelligence), IoT (internet of things), Digital Twins, VR (virtual reality), and AR (augmented reality).

Reimagining new possibilities in AI

Imagine the first half of the 20th century, the golden era of science fiction.??Tinman in The Wizard of Oz inspired dreams and possibilities of a dystopian science fiction world with artificial intelligence, by machines that can think and possibly act like humans.?It sounded impossible, then.?Fast forward to today, and it's a reality.?We are living at the dawn of a new era, where the future of AI is not an abstract concept but a fact that we exist in, and it's continuously unfolding around us.

Our journey into this AI-powered reality started with a question from a genius mind, Alan Turing, who asked, "Can computers think?" During Turing's era, computers could execute commands but not store them – computers could not remember.?Fast-forward to the 2nd half of the 20th century, and we saw AI transitioning from being a mere university research project to becoming the subject of influential mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers.?Today, AI is at the forefront of leading technology corporations, fueling the growth of transformative technologies.

Computer Science and AI expert in Berlin - Raúl Rojas explains: "Consider this, it took 100 years for telephones to proliferate in the US, 70 years for half the population to own cars and another century for an electrical network to spread across the nation.?Yet, it took merely a decade for smartphones to equal and surpass the human population, and just two weeks for Generative AI like ChatGPT to gather more than 10 million users."

The evolution of work in AI

The swift pace of AI's growth raises an essential question: How is AI shaping the jobs of tomorrow??As stated by Jürgen Schmidhuber: “Two centuries ago, 60% of people worked in agriculture; today, this has dwindled to a mere 1.5%.”?The World Economic Forum estimates that by 2025, while 83 million jobs will disappear, 69 million new ones will emerge, leading to a net disruption of 14 million jobs, replaced by AI and automation.?This job disruption will primarily affect repetitive, mundane non-interesting tasks that humans prefer not to do.?This transformation indicates a crucial need for acquiring new skills, much like the shift from the agricultural era to the industrial revolution.

While we anticipate job losses in repetitive mundane administrative, traditional security, factory, and operational roles, the future is bright.?According to the World Economic Forum, over the next 2 to 3 years, the IT sector is forecasted to experience a net job loss effect.?Other industries, like education, agriculture, and health, to name a few, are likely to witness a surge in job creation as technology transforms these roles into higher-value jobs.?It would be insensitive not to acknowledge the jobs and industries impacted with no recovery plan.?Acknowledging and accepting change can be a very challenging human experience.?Resilience, a growth mindset and seeking support from our network and community are essential to embracing change.

Consider healthcare, where AI algorithms can analyse medical images with remarkable speed and accuracy.?Yet, it's the doctors, with their experience, intuition, and empathetic communication, who interpret these findings, explain them to patients, and plan the treatment.?It's a symbiotic relationship where AI and doctors each play to their strengths.

Or take education, where AI can provide personalised learning resources, track students' progress and adapt content to suit their needs.?Yet, teachers remain crucial, fostering curiosity, creativity, encouraging social interaction, and providing emotional support and motivation, elements that AI cannot provide.

In these scenarios, AI isn't replacing us; it's augmenting our abilities, allowing us to focus on inherently human tasks.?It's about achieving harmony where each plays their part.

For every displaced job, a new job emerges, and we need to get curious and become AI literate and figure out how we can co-exist with AI and our AI teammates.?We have been using live online chatbots for a while now to improve on-demand customer service experiences 24x7, leaving customers more satisfied to chat with 'someone', to solve their problem vs not having the service available at all.

?Looking forward

We must put humans first!?I am no deep technical expert on AI.?Building on my 25+ years of experience in technology and industry, I have immersed myself in AI literacy to understand the vast opportunities and the potential downside, studying the work of computer scientists, AI technology experts, professors and philosophers.?Incredible optimism and possibilities lie ahead of us.?The opportunities outweigh the downside 10:1.?

So, what skills do we need to thrive in an AI-driven future??In addition to T-Shaped Skills (horizontal and specialist skill(s), Deep AI technical and industry skills:

AI literacy:?Understanding how to lead the way and co-exist with an AI assistant or co-pilot, in addition to appreciating change and how far we have come since the 1st industrial revolution in the mid to late 1700s.

Human skills:?In a digital era, humans will always lead the way with creativity, complex judgement, empathy, and collaboration, essential skills in life and business.?Our novel brains thrive in the strategic grey zones and can perceive judgement and persuasion without rules.?These skills will become increasingly valuable as AI takes over rules-based and mundane, repetitive analytical tasks.

Preparing for the reality of working alongside AI, embracing it as a teammate that enhances our productivity and overall well-being, is an excellent possibility to look forward to.?AI is already an extension of us in many ways, including our smartphones, voice speakers, and wearables.?

The accessibility and rapid adoption of Generative AI has up-levelled both opportunities and concerns.?The impact of Generative AI on my productivity as a business owner is monumental.?I can now spend four out of five days building new personalised customer relationships and less than 1-day doing high-value customer segmentation and personalising prospecting communication on a large scale, giving me a greater probability to help more customers purposefully, compared to 4 days of administration before Chat GPT.

The AI-human confluence

The ascent of AI has raised concerns about job displacement.?Will machines replace us??We have already witnessed this across many industries; however, this trend is unrelated to AI alone.?Many macroeconomic factors affect businesses, such as post unforeseen pandemic recovery and rising costs due to inflation, and, in some instances, AI and automation can help companies mitigate these risks with the right business and people strategy and technology plan in place.

As history tells us, change and business disruption are inevitable with any major industry transformation.?We may see job losses in traditional sectors, but new avenues will open in others, like the transition from the agricultural era to the industrial age.?

I recently learned about a new concept: 'Centaur Intelligence,' traditionally used in chess, which is a realm where AI's computational prowess blends seamlessly with human creativity, strategy, intuition, and emotional intelligence.

To help us navigate the shift to AI, we can start by appreciating AI's abilities.?Its computational power and analytical capabilities are unmatched - able to sift through vast datasets, identify patterns, and make predictions in fractions of a second.?It excels at repetitive, labour-intensive tasks that require precision, speed, and consistency.?AI can work 24/7, unaffected by fatigue, bias, or emotion.

Now, let's juxtapose this with our human brilliance.?We possess an innate capacity for empathy, creativity, abstract thinking, and ethical judgement.?We understand nuance and context and can react to unexpected scenarios with agility.?Our minds thrive in grey areas, where rules are less defined.?AI, at least for the foreseeable future, cannot replicate this rich tapestry of uniquely human skills.

Addressing the elephant "in the room."

As we journey into this brave new world, we must also address the ethical implications of AI.?AI will include many tools capable of being used for good or ill.?It's up to us humans – the policymakers, the regulators, and the decision-makers in government- to decide what is ethical, embed these principles into AI programming and impose sanctions for violations.?We need to ensure that technology reflects our values, protecting human rights and privacy of sensitive data, including responsible elimination of jobs (emphasising responsible with care), i.e. helping the jobless upskill and find new jobs, protecting and maintaining our society and safety, with support from the government, corporate and community.?We are already seeing job elimination across so many different industries.?There is still significant debate around the world about the benefits and caution of AI.?Opinions change if you are a technologist, a business entrepreneur, a philosopher, a historian, or a dreamer.?Providing a perspective is the world's human reality; typically, history connects the dots and paves the way forward.

Perspective

Appreciate that AI is creating new and different jobs.?As AI learns, humans can observe and stop an activity that may infringe on ethics, regulation, privacy concerns and human rights, much like policies that govern society and humanity today.?Remembering, humans are far more capable of creating harm.?As stated by Jürgen Schmidhuber, “We need to be far more concerned with humans wiping out our entire human race by thermonuclear activity.”?AI exists because humans feed the AI algorithms, and ultimately AI still needs to be programmed and can also be undone by a human.

To conclude, AI is not a force of nature; it is far from being sentient; it can mimic emotion but not feel it.?According to Prof. Dr Judith Simon, who sits on the German IT Ethics Board in AI, it cannot create from no reference; it relies on pattern recognition to formulate plausible reasoning, not truth.?It's our responsibility to program AI in a way that serves us best.?The key is not resisting AI but understanding, adapting, and using it to our advantage.?Doing so can ensure a thriving world of jobs in an AI-driven future.?AI levels the playing field and uplifts society by giving access to knowledge and education in every corner of the world.?Will we co-exist with robots on our streets like in the movies Robocop and The Matrix??Will we float alongside our digital twin in a virtual world??That is a future that is unknown but possible.?But one thing is sure: AI's future is now, and it's brighter than ever before.

#artificialintelligence #ai #automation #technology #innovation #thefutureofwork #humanity #ethicsinai #data #datalakes #responsibleai #thefutureofwork #careers #ailiteracy #reskilling #upskilling

Source:

World Economic Forum (2019).?Towards a Reskilling Revolution: Industry-Led Action for the Future of Work.

Jürgen Schmidhuber – German Computer Scientist specialising in Artificial Intelligence

Raúl Rojas – Professor of Artificial Intelligence - Berlin

Prof. Dr Judith Simon German Ethics in IT Council

Harvard Business Review (2017).?Lifelong Learning Is Good for Your Health, Wallet, and Social Life.

World Economic Forum (2016).?The ten skills you need to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

McKinsey Global Institute (2018).?Skill shift: Automation and the future of the workforce.

Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (2020).?AI Index 2020 Annual Report.

MIT Sloan Review (2018).?Reskilling Workers for the Age of Automation.

Deloitte Insights (2020).?The adoption of AI in business.

Accenture (2021).?The future of work: More than a machine.