Is AI going to take my job? Maybe?!
Is AI going to take your job? From conversations with some of my friends across the Microsoft community they think not and are saying things like:
“It’s a job changing thing, not a job taking thing.”
“It’s just the evolution of work. People will evolve their up-skilling (and development) to stay current.”
“AI won’t take your job but someone using AI might take your job.”
When I started thinking about these comments, I agreed… to an extent… One of the amazing strengths of humans is that we can learn, and we can evolve, and we can find those glowing opportunities that hide in the darkness that change what we do and how we do it. Many people’s careers are made up of different strands and interests. Those careers often evolve and grow through a lifetime. We’ve also navigated large scale technological changes before in the ‘Industrial Revolutions’…
But when I started to think more broadly about different industries and diverse levels, and capabilities, within organizations and the pace of change that we’re seeing I started to wonder… Is it really that simple in the case of these increasingly rapid technology revolutions? Can people evolve enough from where they are today? And even more importantly can people evolve fast enough to reinvent themselves in the future too? And if so, how long can we sustain that with the accelerating pace of change and disruption?
In some cases, I have no doubt that we can evolve fast enough and grasp the opportunities that come… but does everyone, especially those whose jobs may be most likely to be disrupted, have the foundation to reinvent themselves to the level required at the pace that may be required? I just don’t know.
These thoughts sat in my head and kept floating around. They triggered more questions. They generated some ideas. They prompted me to dig into what’s happened before around technology changes to see if it offered any clues as to who has been previously affected, by how much, and what the impact has been.
It’s this AI future, the concept of ‘Industrial Revolutions’, and accelerating rate of change that made me wonder whether AI will (eventually) take our jobs because the rate of change could be so fast that we don’t have the ability to keep up and evolve, that prompted me to write this paper to share these thoughts, and see what others think.
In this white paper I will investigate previous major technology revolutions and understand any similarities, or trends, between those and what we are starting to see now, to see if there could be some learnings that we could take forward to minimize current, or future, technology changes. I summarize my goals of this document as being:
Looking to the past to learn what it could mean to the future in this world of accelerating technological advancement.
Providing a broader perspective towards potential societal, educational, organizational, and personal, impact from AI.
Provide some ideas for governments, organizations, technology companies, and individuals, on what could or should be done differently to minimize any negative impacts.
In this document we’ll explore these through topics such as Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, the history of the industrial revolutions and what we can learn from them, how AI fits in with the law of accelerating returns, potential impact for redundancies, and what might be done by governments, organizations, IT / Tech, and individuals, to try to combat that impact.
Independent of your background, role, industry, position in an organization, technology experience, I hope you find it interesting, thought provoking, and perhaps even inspirational to get you thinking about your (or your families future generations) role in a ‘5th Industrial Revolution’ and how you might want to act to be able to shape, steer, or react to, this rapidly changing world!
