Think you’ll lose your job to AI? No, you’re being promoted!

By


Contrary to dystopian narratives, artificial intelligence (AI) isn't here to take our jobs. Rather, it is turning us all into managers. And your success in the AI age depends on whether you are willing to step into that new role.

The current AI discourse paints a bleak picture of mass unemployment and identity crises, as AI surpasses our abilities as humans. I disagree. Historically, technological transformations have always yielded a net gain in jobs, albeit amidst disruptive periods and the extinction of certain professions. I don’t see a reason why AI should deviate from this trend, even when accounting for its unprecedented pace of change.

Far from making you less useful or worthy, AI is not replacing you or diminishing the value you bring to the table. On the contrary, AI, like any other technology before, gives you powers you didn't have before. It enhances your existing skills and allows you to do the things you already do – but faster, with higher quality and with bigger impact. And not just that! It allows you to do things that until now were absolutely out of reach for you.

As Ethan Mollick aptly describes, you become 'augmented' and gain 'superpowers'. And with these powers, your role as a knowledge worker evolves. No longer are you a mere task-doer, slogging through a mix of interesting and mundane tasks. Instead, you become the boss, delegating tasks to various AI entities. In this AI-driven world, we're all transitioning into managerial roles. Congratulations, you just got promoted!

In your new role, you will be the producer, creative director, supervisor, and instructor. You will package and assign tasks, monitor work quality, make creative decisions and integrate AI's output into your work. AI has no intent, you have. AI has no motives, values, goals, emotions, experiences, or personal truth. But you do. Thus, you will manage your projects, delegate operational or cognitive tasks to AI, and use the results to for whatever you want to create, achieve or convey.

We haven’t even started to understand the potential boost in human productivity, creativity and impact this will bring. Products and services once deemed too costly or time-consuming will be created using AI. Creatives with a vision but lacking the craft skill or time can harness AI's capabilities, directing it towards their goals. This paradigm shift is nothing short of a revolution, expanding human expression, vision, and creativity. Already now we are seeing a Cambrian explosion of new tools, new application scenarios, new art forms and creative outputs.

Are there risks and downsides? Absolutely, and we must address and mitigate them. However, we are the ones driving AI with our intent. Like previous technologies, AI serves to augment and amplify our goals. If these aims are good, noble, and creative, AI will enhance them. If they're disruptive or malicious, AI will unfortunately amplify those too. In a way, AI perfectly embodies the VUCA world, a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. AI will intensify all these aspects, and we must learn to navigate this landscape.

I am an inherent optimist. I firmly believe that humans are more resilient and also more adaptable than we ourselves give us credit for. And if this age we’re in is about anything, it is about adaptability – our ability to adapt to new realities and living conditions. Embracing your new role as an AI manager is a critical step in this adaptation process.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The “Duh-test”, or what is not a lesson learned

By
I was recently reviewing a number of texts which my organization collected from past projects and initiatives (some through an internal mandatory monitoring tool, others gathered as part of After Action Reviews or Lessons Learned Papers), which all meant to capture ‘lessons learned’ from specific experiences. And while these texts were not wrong per se, I realized that there seems to be a fundamental misconception what constitutes a good lesson, and what doesn’t. Here are a few typical examples of what we often collect as part of such lessons learned exercises: “Ensure that the [Team] Manager has excellent leadership, project and team management skills, understanding of programming and experience working in [the subject matter].” “Project outputs must be compatible towards project goals. Throughout the project there is a need for careful identification of project goals and outputs to ensure that they are compatible with each other. This can be only ensured through a consultativ...
Read more

Going Back to Dave Snowden’s Seven KM Principles

By
Image
In June this year I attended the International Conference on Knowledge Management (ICKM) 2022 which conveniently took place in Potsdam, right around the corner of my current home base Berlin. One of the highlights was the key note speech of David Snowden . David is of course always a treat to listen to, but in his speech intro, he once again summarized so succinctly some of the key aspects of what KM is all about, that I wanted to re-state them for myself. So here are his gold nuggets: 1. Knowledge can only be volunteered, it cannot be conscripted The sharing of knowledge is inherently a human behavior. Yet it only happens when we are intrinsically invested in the positive impact that the sharing of our knowledge has on the receiving end (because we want to help, because we get nice feedback, because we want to build relationship, because it might help ourselves in the future, etc.). If we are told by someone else that we must share a particular knowledge, there is automatically a...
Read more

Why Bitcoin is Integral Money

By
By Johannes Schunter What makes something integral? The term ‘integral’ refers to a worldview in the Spiral Dynamics (SD) model (developed by Don Beck, Chris Cowan and Ken Wilber based on the work of Clare Graves) that looks at various historic ways of seeing the world as each holding an important piece of the puzzle without being sufficient on their own. The tribal worldview thinks primarily in heroic win/lose power relations, the traditional worldview champions collective rules and absolute truth, the modern worldview pursues rational science, competition and personal success, and the post-modern worldview values community, global diversity and inclusion. An integral mindset then tries to integrate the strengths from each of these worldviews into an overarching and balanced whole. To learn more about what the Spiral Dynamics model is about, this website is a good start . In the following, I argue that as far as monetary technologies, financial assets or currencies are concerned, ...
Read more