Will AI Be the End of Employees and Workers?
What talent management and leadership should know about AI
"This is the end," one of my friends mumbled to me about a year ago as he showed me a video of a janitorial robot cleaning a restroom. In the video, the robot entered a well-designed bathroom that was organized and already clean. The robot cleaned the sink, toilet and managed to add resources that would continue to be needed. Once the robot finished, it exited the bathroom and moved down the hall to the next bathroom. Anyone who's actually done janitorial work knew that creators made an artificial situation, as restrooms are never that clean nor organized - and that's from someone who hasn't done janitorial work since junior high school. "It's only a matter of time before none of us have jobs and we're replaced by robots," my friend finally said as the video finished.
He echoes what many believe at present: AI will do all or most of our work in the future. While AI will have an impact on work in the future, it will be more limited than the hysteria expects. AI will also increase the value of some overlooked skills. In the same way that all of us must have good information to act appropriately, AI is no different. I start this post with this point because it's missed everywhere. We tend to forget how unpopular truth is (accurate information), but AI must have accurate information in order to succeed.
Before we look at my public predictions related to AI that leadership and talent management should be aware of, let's look at a past prediction I made and how this relates to AI.
Past Healthcare Prediction
While in college almost two decades ago, I researched and made predictions about the Millennial generation, as well as some of what we'd see with the next generation - iGenZ. These predictions have all come to pass. One prediction I made cautioned of significant consequences related to the healthcare field:
The United States almost graduates more lawyers than doctors. It also discourages young men from entering college, who tend to study science. Add a retiring generation that will need more healthcare to this mixture and you can see that we will be facing in the future: A major shortage of healthcare workers while we have a massive need for healthcare along with increased bureaucracy around healthcare.
When people correctly observe that American's life expectancy has been plummeting, I highlight these as the underlying reasons. How this relates to AI involves information. Even if we have accurate information, we have to take action as quickly as possible. But as I discovered when I warned about what I was seeing, accurate information lacks attention or focus.
If talent management and leadership wants a takeaway here, then realize how one piece of accurate information can be easily be drowned out by many pieces of irrelevant or inaccurate information. This is basic human behavior. In the New Paradigm For Financial Markets, George Soros observes that "Americans go to great lengths to deny or forget about reality. Yet if you forget about reality, it's liable to catch up with you." His observation isn't only true for Americans - it applies to people in general. If people can avoid a problem, then they will avoid the problem until they can’t.
Research Becomes Gold
AI requires information. As we just saw, one detail of accurate information can be drowned out by incorrect and irrelevant information. AI will not be able to stop this. In fact, AI will amplify the incorrect information.
Exercise 1
Either type on a blank note application or write out on a paper one of your concerns from a year ago based on events at the time. If you’re unable to think of one of your concerns, either read communications you had at the time, a journal entry, or files you have from that time.
How much of that event consumes your mental energy now? Keep in mind that in a few cases that your answer might be more.
What were your inputs at the time that made you aware of the event or events? How did those inputs amplify the event or events?
How did the event change how you acted and did this align with your vision?
I recommend that you repeat this exercise with multiple concerns from a year ago. As you repeat this exercise multiple times, you will notice a pattern. The information inputs that you had did not remind you of your vision, like I am doing now. They distracted you from your vision. These distractions added costs. One of those costs is who you are now - are you closer to who you want to be and what you want to accomplish? Look at your notes and see how your concerns from inputs affected this.
AI will be no different. AI has input too and that input affects its results. If the input is false, corrupt or distracted, the output will be the same. We cannot forget here that AI is already being used as a replacement for critical thought. People ask AI questions and assume that AI knows the answers or the steps to find the answer. This is not new in the sense that people were using search engines before AI, though the search engines would point to a human answer.
You just completed an exercise (Exercise 1) that required critical thought. You had to stop and think about your answers along with the impact of what you considered. That required focus and reflection. AI cannot do this for you. In fact when we stop and consider focus and reflection, both require a lack of input.
In a recent survey of small business owners, the majority of leadership and talent management at small business found that iGenZ lacked critical thinking skills and common sense. What's completely missing in the media reporting this (as expected) is that this is precisely the effect of search engines. Search engines castrate critical thought. They also castrate research because you assume the information you get is correct. How do you know if it's not? AI will only amplify this problem.
As a quick independent study with my group of friends (mostly Millennials and iGenZ), I posed a challenge that involved describing a flower. All of them tried to initially use their phones to show me a picture, but I stopped them and said "Describe it in words, no pictures." Most were not able to do this because they lacked imaginative practice of imagining a flower and describing what they saw in their mind. Yet this practice - imagining something and describing what we're imagining in detail - is one of the most important skills we'll ever develop as humans. This skill inherently involves our creative power: we imagine something that doesn't exist and create it.
The Physical World Returns
Exercise 2
Imagine a world in which AI does most work that reduces the cost of work by 90%. Very little work is done by humans. As a note, this is currently the prediction of most people (and it will be wrong).
Given that few people work, consider how they will be able to obtain resources. If you think AI will give them the resources, ask how AI will be able to distribute limited resources. Also, ask what will happen if AI makes a mistake with a resource that results in a shortage? If people are dependent on AI and it makes a catastrophic mistake, what happens to people?
One consequence to the rise of the digital world has been the misunderstanding of the physical world. When I write that our physical world is managed like a fractional reserve banking system, most readers will not understand what I mean. In simple terms, actual demand is hidden through an electronic demand system where each unit is owned by more than one person. A well known example of this is gold: there are over 24.40 million electronic metric tonnes of gold, but there are only 244,000 metric tonnes of physical gold. This occurs because gold is managed through a fractional reserve contract system where hundreds of people can own and hold contracts on the same ounce of gold.
In other words, AI is happening at the same time that we see maximum financialization. We should be aware that the pendulum is nearing (if not already passed) the maximum point of de-materialization. We're about to see the pendulum swing hard in the other direction for generations (plural). The cocoa industry is getting an early preview of this at the time this writing (January 2024). This is only a preview of what is to come in materials. Returning to the opening story of the janitor robot: since the robot’s release, the price of lease it has tripled. Ironically, it’s no longer cost efficient to use. A big part of this is the resources involved in robotics - they’re not infinite.
AI will make it easy to automate tasks that require little creative power or physical effort. It will begin to need numerous resources as both are required. This is where we start to experience resource limitations. Like the janitorial robot, it’s cheaper until everyone wants it - then the costs skyrocket along with the underlying resources. Why Millennials and iGenZ don’t realize this reality is because neither generation understands how much of their reality requires the physical world. As a fun example of this, ask members of both generations to name 5 elements from the periodic table that make up their phones.
AI Changes Contribution Incentives
One consequence of AI will be input. As of now, people have added information because they have incentive to add information. Every “free” site you see (including this) exists because the person is providing evidence of expertise along with building a relationship with readers. Shortcutting this with AI will mean that people contribute less information (or none) over time. This pattern has already been felt in one industry where I’ve consulted and this pattern will impact other industries.
As the use of AI grows with AI getting the demand for information, people have less incentive to provide information. I won’t dig into the legal challenges here, but I know of many lawsuits in process against AI development. Some AI developers took information which they had no legal authorization to take and fed it to their artificial intelligences. Even if courts don’t protect private property (information), the consequence of these actions will be contributing less over time. AI will be worthless in less than a decade without input. Knowledge changes and if AI doesn’t keep up with those changes, it’s irrelevant.
During private presentations I make other predictions about AI where I see specific positives and cautions. For instance, an unintended prediction of AI can be found in this fictional scene.
That being written, with all the hysteria about AI at present, there's no need to add to the chorus of it solving everything when we'll see problems that few people are anticipating. What I find odd is how few people are concerned about the lack of accurate research from AI. What we find repetitively with people is that they value information. But as I am known to repeat, no data will always be better than inaccurate data. The same applies to information.
Epilogue
I share this story frequently and I advise talent management and leadership to reflect over this story as it has a powerful message.
Over a decade ago while speaking about Millennials related to personal finances, I asked a room full of bankers how many of them would be proud if their sons became plumbers. None raised their hand. I asked about other blue collar work with the same response. I then pointed out that all of them had used the result of plumbing at least several times during their day already. Even with this challenge, this did not change the executives' view of things. Over time, some of these bankers have reached out and expressed regret for sending their children to college.
I cannot stress this point enough: people want to know what they want to know.
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