< PreviousACCESS TO ALL THE WORLD’S SKILLS ? ONCE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AUTOMATES JOBS AND SKILLS IT DEMOCRATISES ACCESS TO THOSE JOBS AND SKILLS FOR EVERYONE TO USE .AND THE ABILITY TO BRING WHATEVER YOU IMAGINE TO LIFE ? TECHNOLOGY MAGNIFIES THE POWER OF INDIVIDUALS TO IDEATE AND DEVELOP NEW PRODUCTS AND SERVICES, AND TO EXECUTE AT DIGITAL SPEED AND GLOBAL SCALE . ADULTS ON UNCREATIVE AUTO PILOT AI Art. Generated by MidJourney AIA S YOU’LL read about in greater detail later in this Codex it’s going to be increasingly important that we all exercise our creative muscles now and in the future, especially since we face a future where Artificial Intelligence (AI) will automate more jobs faster, and where swathes of society are forced to switch career tracks faster than they’re comfortable with, but also as AI automates Right Brain tasks and, most importantly helps democratise access to knowledge and skills which, in turn will help us unlock human potential on a level noone has ever seen before. CREATIVE KIDS UNCREATIVE ADULTS As children it’s recognised that we have almost limitless creative potential, and that as we age this potential diminishes until we get to the point where the only creativity most adults exercise is which new meal recipe to try out. And, when we look at who or what is to blame for this sorry state of affairs there are many culprits. On the one hand there is the education system itself which, as we move through it, eventually forces us to choose just a single path and focus on a single academic field to the exclusion of almost everything else - including expanding our minds and exploring the many other wondrous experiences our world has to offer. We can also probably blame human nature. As we get older and enter the next stages of our lives we unsurprisingly prioritise work and family activities, and we just don’t think about being creative or get the opportunity to be as creative as we were when we were children. With the inevitable result being that we de-prioritise it and under invest in it as a vital future skill. WORKERS ON AUTO PILOT There’s another silent culprit though that many of us don’t give any thought to - our day jobs and the companies we work for. When you bake it down every company irrespective of their sector is trying to achieve one thing - something the industry calls “Scalable Efficiency.” Ultimately all companies are trying to operate and do whatever it is they do as efficiently as possible and, if you want to be efficient, then you want all of the different units of the business - including your employees - to understand the tasks to be done and then do them as 63311institute.comefficiently and as quickly as possible. Think about it. When was the last time that you as an employee had to use your imagination or creativity at work - you get assigned a task, you are required to complete that task as quickly and efficiently as possible, and then move onto the next one. And then you repeat this process until you retire. To all intents and purposes as much as we all like to think we are valued and special when it comes to our jobs we are all cogs in the machine - human automatons with little to no creativity required. Unless, of course, you are lucky enough to work in a creative role such as marketing or R&D, of course. But even these roles roughly follow the same role - albeit they require employees to flex their creative muscles more than those people in other roles. Look across job roles and the pattern is the same. Programmers ... sit down, write code, debug it, test it, document it, repeat. Sales ... sit down, pick up the phone, call people, qualify leads, close deals, repeat. Teachers ... sit down, settle students, teach students, grade and assess students, support students, complete the admin, repeat. And the lists could go on. Where’s the need for genuine creativity or creative expression? Now look at your own job and ask yourself: When was the last time you got to be creative, when was the last time you had flex your creative muscle, and when was was the last time your company let you “go off script?” If the answer is never, or very little, then you likely see the point I’m making. In the pursuit of scalable efficiency, and via our job descriptions, the companies we work for tell us what we need to do, why we need to do it, and when it needs to be done by - everything is laid out on a plate for us and at no point do we really need to think too hard about anything outside of our job remit, or flex that creative muscle. Andf, let’s face it anyway the vast majority of jobs don’t require you to be creative, your bosses just need you to get on with the job description and complete the tasks you’re assigned. Whirr. Click. Repeat. And that latter statement, get on with the job description has another implication as well which just adds ironic fuel to the ironic fire of automation. Notes: 64311institute.comAUTOMATING THE JOB DESCRIPTION Whenever anyone says that their job can’t be automated ironically it’s this very job description that gives AI researchers almost all the information they need to automate your job. After all, most jobs are a series of definable goals and targets, and tasks and workflows: “Do ABC in this order to get XYZ out.” And, once you can define understand these steps then it’s not hard to turn them into algorithmic steps in an AI machine learning model and automate someone’s job. In short, therefore, anything that is made up of steps - which is every process on Earth - can be automated with the only wrinkle being how complex each step is and how complex the overall task is. Even innovation is a series of steps which is why that too is already being automated as you’ll see later in this Codex and in the complimentary Future of Innovation and Creativity Codex in the Codex of the Future Series. In the business world a good example is the IPO process - once Goldman Sachs understood all 160 steps of the process of taking a company public they were able to create an AI model that automated their IPO teams. And that’s an example of how even a very complex set of jobs can be automated. TEST YOUR CREATIVITY So, it seems that as an adult and to earn a wage you don’t need to be creative to survive or thrive, you just need to be an efficient and effective employee - a good automaton. So, in our pursuit to spark your creative muscle again here’s a test you can do to see just how creative you really are and, in almost all cases, show you just how much your creativity has diminished over the years. First sign into a platform like MidJourney, a simple Text-to-Image Artificial Intelligence system, then using nothing more than natural language text prompts ask it to generate some images, like some of the ones in this Codex. Based on my observations my guess is that after roughly five prompts you’re going to start struggling to think of what images to ask it to generate next and if that’s the case then you have some work to do to re-ignite your create spark. Notes: 65311institute.comTHE CREATIVE RIGHT BRAIN MYTH AI Art. Generated by MidJourney AIT ODAY THERE are an increasing number of prominent voices around the world who advocate that the education system of tomorrow helps foster student’s inner creativity, or in other words right brain thinking. The main reason for this being the fact that today many of the cognitive roles that are already buckling under the pressure of the first wave of automation are more left brain tasks than right brain ones. Our brains are amazing, so much so in fact that some people say they’re one of the miracles of the universe, something that, as grand a statement as it seems, is actually hard to refute, and they’re split into two distinct hemispheres. The left side of our brain is great for analytical and logical thinking, language, and reasoning, while the right hand side is great at managing abstract and creative thinking, emotion, intuition and spatial awareness - things that many analysts say machines will never be able to master, replicate or conquer. But, unfortunately they’re already being proved wrong. As a result those among you who are hoping that our right brains will be our saviours and help us fight back against the rising tide of automation might have to re-think things, but that said, things aren’t a complete loss - provided we understand our strengths and have ways to harness them. FLIGHT TO THE RIGHT At first glance this “flight to the right” as I call it makes sense. After all Artificial Intelligence and computers in general are much better at performing analytical and logic based tasks than they are at abstract thinking or being creative. But if we think taking flight from left brain professions over time and embracing right brain ones is a solid long term strategy then unfortunately we’re lulling ourselves into a false sense of security. The reason for this is quite simple, because, you see, right brain skills aren’t as hard as we think they are to replicate. THE AUTOMATION OF CREATIVITY To highlight the issue we face I’m going to show you how today we’re automating the process of creativity, ironically thanks to our own creativity - I know, it’s nuts when you think of it in that way, but that is the beauty, and curse, of human ingenuity. The first real world example I’m going to use involves using AI’s that are 67311institute.comincreasingly being referred to as Creative Machines to create “professional and unique music content in seconds,” everything from classical music to funk, as well as, hang on while I cringe, pop songs. Pop songs that are so catchy they’ve already racked up hundreds of millions of hits on YouTube and charted - something that’s not lost on Sony who recently signed a couple of them and used them to create the world’s first ever AI music album. Take that X Factor. Elsewhere though other creative machines are also in on the act but this time they’re tackling another challenge - innovation. And here again they’re getting quite good at designing and innovating new products, products as diverse as aircraft parts, chairs and drones, and clothes, sneakers and even “self-evolving robots,” without the need for any human intervention, for companies as diverse as Airbus, Amazon, DJI and Under Armour. In the former’s case they used what’s known in the business as a Generative Adversarial Network, or GAN for short, to design new light weight components for the Airbus A380 to help reduce its fuel consumption, while in the latter’s they were used to design new a new range of sneakers called Architect, a “Futuristic marvel of design” according to Under Armour that can be 3D printed and bought online for a mere $300. While it has to be said many of these creative machines are still only capable of iterative innovation, and not primary innovation, I can already see evidence that it won’t be long before we begin to see that, as some people say “most human of traits” become just another one of these amazing machine’s skills. And if you think that these creative machines will just start and stop with traditional products then think again, they’re also starting to innovate new chemicals, gene sequences, materials, and software. Notes: 68311institute.comMATTHEW GRIFFIN 311INSTITUTE.com MORE COMPANIES VALUE SCALABLE EFFICIENCY OVER EMPLOYEE CREATIVITY . IF CREATIVITY SETS US APART FROM MACHINES WHEN DID YOU LAST USE YOUR GIFT ?Next >