AI and People: Thinking Critically About Our Future – Part One

If you were to Google information about leading or managing people in an AI-driven world, what you will find are a bunch of softball articles that encourage you to invest money in upskilling your people. What is not surprising, but sad nonetheless, is that many of the articles I viewed had the telltale signs of being written using AI, as in odd word choices, circular reasoning, spouting out 2,000 words without really saying anything new or providing answers derived from critical thinking. Naturally, I don’t expect critical thinking from an AI-derived article, but I do expect fellow writers to at least read through what AI generates and make some effort by adding their own thoughts, instead of being content to phone it in, but I digress. In today’s blog, we’re going to explore some real fears about AI in an honest, transparent and albeit sometimes cynical way, but it’s important for us humans to talk about this subject. If we are to successfully surf the big waves of changes AI is making, we must first face our fears of sharks, drowning, and wiping out.

What’s Wrong With Upskilling?

So the problem with providing an easy answer to AI world dominance, like “upskilling” or “reskilling,” is that most of the blogs that endorse this solution are terribly vague about what exactly these new employable skills are that people need to gain. One LinkedIn article on this subject, recommends that the number one way companies can prepare to lead their people in an AI-driven world is to endorse role reversal. “Expect a paradigm shift from machines assisting humans to humans assisting machines in the next decade,” says Vidhi Agrawal, the LinkedIn author. I don’t know about you, but I’m not excited by the prospects of becoming some android’s lackey. Science fiction writer, Joanna Maciejewska captured the heartache of the threat of this paradigm shift beautifully when she stated, “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.“

Big Companies and Billion-Dollar Benevolence

Corporate training company, Correlation One recommends “ensuring workers have skills in essential areas like IT, data analytics, coding, or software development.” They shared that AT&T has invested $1 billion in upskilling part of its workforce in cyber security, software engineering, and data science. Now, there are stories of other major companies, like Google and Amazon investing billions in reskilling their employees, but what is unclear is what has happened to all of these people with their shiny new skills? All of this corporate benevolence may sound promising, but it’s important to remember that while Microsoft launched an initiative to help 25 million people worldwide acquire the digital skills needed to thrive in today’s economy — and made headline-grabbing projections that 150 million new jobs would be created by 2025 in “critical areas” like data science and software development — they’ve also laid off thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands of skilled tech people every year since making that statement in 2020. If you want to get fully freaked out, stop by Tech Crunch for a comprehensive list of all the tech jobs lost so far in 2024.

Job Predictions and Job Fictions

Most business publications like to sidestep the issue of choosing AI over people, but despite the promising projections about future tech jobs — made by companies that can afford both people and AI, it becomes easy to see why upskilling is not viable for the vast majority of companies. After all, why would any company invest money in upskilling people, when the main draw of AI is to remain competitive by streamlining? Anyone who’s ever survived a round of layoffs knows that in the corporate world “streamlining” is all about doing more with less, which ultimately means eliminating jobs to save money. Whether you call it downsizing, right-sizing, or restructuring, all are simply nice ways of saying we’re laying off real live humans, with real bills to pay, in favor of AI. One could make the argument that our collective cellphone culture and preference for texting rather speaking to others, let alone making eye contact groomed us well to be able to choose tech over people. According to the McKinsey report, Generative AI and the Future of Work in America:

• The U.S. will see 12 million occupational “transitions” by 2030.
• Middle income workers are ~14 times more likely to need to change occupations than those in highest-wage positions, and most will need additional skills to do so successfully.
• Women are 1.5 times more likely to need to move into new occupations than men.

Goldman Sachs predicts AI will replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs worldwide by 2030. To put that in perspective, there are currently 333 million people in America. Imagine everyone here, save three percent of the population, reskilling at once. Faithful harbingers of doom and gloom, The World Economic Forum predicts much speedier losses with AI replacing 85 million jobs worldwide by 2025.

The Spirit of Revolution

Some pundits downplay these losses by referring to AI as the next (or fourth) industrial revolution. The problem with equating AI as just another industrial revolution is that the first revolution replaced assembly line jobs, which require skill, but little thought. What this round of revolution proposes is to do a lot of our thinking for us. Where does that leave us? I would venture to say in the beginning stages of a self-made (and AI-driven) idiocracy. However, all is not lost — yet. Despite claims of AI becoming sentient (see creepy news story about scientists making Hannibal Lecter-style living robot skin from human cells), AI will never have our resilient human spirit. Speaking of spirit, in next week’s blog we’ll take a spirited look at overcoming our fears, seeing our value as humans, and exploring some possible ways we can enjoy coworking with AI.

Stay Tuned

Here at Sureshot, we take a hybrid tech approach. Yes, we love and use AI, but we also employ an amazing team of people who are skilled in helping you and your team use AI to do more with your data. If you’d like to see what our people + AI approach can do for you, start by taking our free Martech Assessment.