< PreviousTHE PROBLEM TO SOLVEI N THIS Codex I am going to dedicate more time to proposing future education solutions rather than highlighting the challenges we all face from the rise of automation and more general disruption. The reason for this is simple. On the one hand as the spectre of technology driven automation casts its long shadow over every industry many of us are already seeing the composition of today’s workforce change and the pressure on individual job categories ratchet up, so I believe finding a solution to this thorny issue is vital. Meanwhile, on the other hand the potential impact of automation on human jobs is already well debated and documented, so for now I feel sticking my own oar into the mix will simply add more unnecessary noise. THE PROBLEM TO SOLVE Technology has always been both a destroyer of jobs, and a creator, this was true in the 1700’s and it’s just as true today. Today, however, just as in times gone by, it’s also true to say that the majority of people have a better understanding about the professions technology will automate and eliminate in the next couple of decades than the ones it will help create. While there has been, and will continue to be, much debate and speculation about the scope and scale of professions that future technology will help eliminate our problem, and your children’s future problem, in my mind at least, boils down to the following burning question: AS DIFFERENT careers dead-end how do we help those affected move between different professions quickly, and with minimal friction? This simple question also belies two challenges, both vast in scope. The first challenge concerns the education system we need to put in place in order to support life long learning, and the second challenge, which is arguably the more difficult of the two to solve, concerns the creation of the right corporate and societal cultures that we need in place to support frictionless job mobility between different professions and industries. At its most basic this is the equivalent of helping a tractor driver in the agricultural industry, for example, whose job was automated by the emergence of fully autonomous tractors in the 2020’s, re- train and then gain gainful employment as a digital campaign manager in the advertising industry. Or as a cyber security expert in the technology 31311institute.comMATTHEW GRIFFIN 311INSTITUTE.com MINDSET MATTERS . AI IS THE TRACTOR . THE LOOM AND THE PRINTING PRESS . . . YOU CAN EITHER BE THE OUT OF WORK FARM HAND OR THE CEO OF JOHN DEERE . . .industry, and a million examples besides. PREDICTING THE JOBS OF THE FUTURE While there has been much talk about the professions that technology will help automate and dead-end, something I discussed in an earlier chapter, along with the challenges we all have even when faced with perfect knowledge of the future in the Time Travellers Dilemma, there has been much less chatter and clarity about the new careers and jobs it could help create. In one respect at least there’s a train of thought that one of the reasons why we focus more on the threats than the opportunities is that evolution has honed our survival instincts over time to focus more on the threats, the things that in the past might kill or harm us, than on new opportunities. The other reason of course is that we could just, frankly, be really bad at forecasting, out the box thinking, and seeing over the horizon. When trying to create a future fit education system knowing what professions could fall by the wayside is important but it’s arguably much less valuable than knowing the ones that could be created, and to date I haven’t seen any reports, or anything that convinces me we know what’s coming. That said though there are a number of things we can be certain about, for example, that binary coding will increasingly give way to coding chemistry and the code of life itself, that security experts, albeit with new talent sets, will be in increasing demand, and more, and I’ll be focusing on this topic and delving into the future of jobs in more detail in my next complimentary Codex. Notes: “As the trends of automation and change affect more professions, and as their pace accelerates, we need to discover new ways to help people switch professions quickly, and stay gainfully employed throughout their working lifetimes.” 33311institute.comPREDICTING WHO’S AT RISK Surprisingly there are a couple of fairly simple rules of thumb we can use to determine whether a specific profession or group of professions could be automated, and despite their critics they work fairly well, and these are: If your profession can be described in a single sentence, or the group of tasks you and your colleagues perform can be broken down into a series of simple individual steps, then you could all be prime candidates for automation. No where is this more stark than in the financial services sector, for example, where even the people running and managing Initial Public Offerings, in this case at Goldman Sachs, are beginning to be automated. As it turns out most IPO’s have over 164 individual steps, which when evaluated and understood, can then all be individually automated, and then sewn together to create, in this case, the world’s first fully automated IPO platform. And if something as complex as an IPO can be automated, and all the people with it, then as you’ll probably be able to figure out, it’s not that difficult to automate other things too. Like claims adjusters, professional drivers, radiologists, wealth advisors, or in some cases entire companies. Notes: 34311institute.comNotes: 35311institute.comSYNTHETIC CONTENT GENERATED BY CREATIVE MACHINES As the capabilities of Creative Machines improve more and more companies and individuals will use them to push the boundaries of synthetic content creation and use them to generate everything from simple adverts and art, all the way through to using them to generate books, games, movies, and even digital humans. GOOGLE used synthetic audio generators to create Duplex, an AI assistant whose voice blew past uncanny valley. OPENAI used synthetic text generators to create the world’s first procedural text based games, which one day will include graphics. NVIDIA used synthetic simulation generators to create the world’s first computer game intro made by an AI. SPRINGER used a synthetic text generator to create the world’s first research book written completely by an AI.PRODUCTS DESIGNED BY CREATIVE MACHINES As the capabilities of Creative Machines improve more and more companies are starting to experiment with them to create new product concepts, so here are some examples. And I could have also included Amazon and General Motors who are using creative machines to help them design fashion lines and cars - the floodgates are opening. AIRBUS are using creative machines to design and innovate new ultra-lightweight components for their A330NEO and A380 aircraft. NASA are using creative machines to help them design new ultra-lightweight interplanetary landers and martian habitats. INSILICO MEDICINE are used an early example a Robo-Scientist and it designed 30,000 new drugs in 21 days, some of which were winners. UNDER ARMOUR are using creative machines to design new trainers and sports apparel which are then 3D printed in shops.THE CASE FOR EDUCATIONAL CHANGE AI Art. Generated by MidJourney AIT HE TIME to change and evolve today’s education and examination systems was arguably decades ago - and that’s the view of the leaders of some of the world’s most awarded and lauded educational establishments and regulators, as well as my own view. However, trying to change national curriculums and a system which is as institutionalised as industrial age education is hard which is why many of those trying to make a difference in the end have resorted to building their own separate education platforms that compliment formal education. THE ERA OF SCI-FACT We already live in a world where science fiction is science fact - a fact that is lost on many of us because it’s a matter of perspective and exposure. Step back in time two millennia and the ancient Greeks would have marvelled at the electric scooters we use today that would have easily beaten their fastest Olympians. Step back two centuries and people would have marvelled at the artificial suns in our homes and offices, our lights. And step back just two decades and people would have marvelled at our contactless payment systems and online banking, our ultra thin TV’s and our wearable gadgets, our ability to video chat with people on the other side of the world for free, our talking computers and virtual worlds, and much much more. However, while all these advances are revolutionary in their own ways today we live in a world where even all these pale into near insignificance with what’s here, let alone what’s emerging. After all, we already live in a world where we can 3D print human organs and other products on demand, a world where AI and robots design, evolve, and spawn new versions of themselves at digital speed, a world where autonomous companies operate and scale themselves, a world where genetically engineered designer humans and in vivo gene editing are a reality, and where quantum computers that are billions of times faster than the world’s fastest supercomputers can be accessed from the cloud for free by anyone. And, as anyone who follows my work will know, I’m only lightly skimming the surface still. A FRONT ROW SEAT TO THE FUTURE As a futurist I have a front row seat to the future we are building and as 39311institute.comNext >