Gotta Beat The Machines!
One of the most profound shifts in society is happening in response to the onset of automation and machine learning. The ripples of this change will affect all of us in ways we can and can't predict. In this episode, we look at what we might do in response to this reality and how we might even increase our personal power as a result.
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Gotta Beat The Machines!
I’d like to thank my new friend, Mary Kate, for inspiring this episode in our stimulating conversation about some of the challenges that face workers as well as the supervisors, managers, and executives responsible for hiring them. We spoke about some of the ways people approach their relationships with their employers. For many, it’s a little more than a paycheck. Priorities in their lives remain outside of work. Usually, it’s around family or building one. That isn’t necessarily wrong. There is however a trap there. The problem is we can fall into the clutches of the working-for-the-weekend mentality. We can feel like we’re biting time, clock watching, enduring meaningless hours while at work to finally at long last, freedom comes when our real lives can begin.
This mentality is tantamount to a self-condemnation to a purgatory. If we’re working a 9:00 to 5:00 Monday through Friday schedule, Sunday night becomes marred by feelings of dread for yet another bland, forgettable work week. This can, of course, happen when we don’t enjoy what we do. It can also happen if the environment in which we work is objectionable in some way, either physically or emotionally. The obvious cost of this is lost time. We can spend our productive hours in a way that doesn’t feel fulfilling. We might feel stuck like days or even years are passing, but we’re not getting anywhere. There are other costs too for us and for others. Some of them are quite precious. An important one is opportunity cost, and that cost is going up.
At the risk of an understatement, we live in interesting times. The accelerating pace of technology-driven change generates pressure. It’s on everybody. It’s of course on employers and employees. As commerce drives so much of the change, authorities and the citizens they govern feel it too. To quote the immortal Jeff Spicoli, “If we don’t get some cool rules ourselves pronto, then we’ll just be bogus too.” Accelerating change also puts pressure on educators and students alike as they attempt to prepare for a moving target future. Pressure isn’t in itself a bad thing. It brings opportunity along with stress. Generally speaking, those who productively react end up in circumstances preferable to those who don’t.
Pressure in itself isn't a bad thing. It brings opportunity along with stress. Those who productively react end up in circumstances preferable to those who don't.
The most prominent feature of the changing landscape of the workplace is this. Automation and artificial intelligence are shifting the value exchange proposition between employers and employees. People bring incredible and dramatic capacities and capabilities to shared enterprises. They’re also complicated, costly, and needy. The reality of the emerging 21st-century workplace is it will be more and more automated.
I’ve seen it estimated that the self-driving vehicle alone will make 25% of current workplace roles obsolete. That sounded like too much to me, but then I thought about the chain of logistics, auto manufacturing, sales and service, and hundreds of ancillary businesses built upon the current order. It’s a big chunk, whatever the percentage works out to be in the end, and that’s just one emergent technology. There are so many more.
Aside from the transportation of people in goods, production and information processes, analysis, medical, financial, and legal industries are all undergoing sweeping changes in the way they operate. That change will continue to accelerate before we reach a new equilibrium. The upshot of this revolution is people will be employable in capacities only where they can add more value than a machine or program. It doesn’t mean there will be no work, just that it will be different and the bar will be higher. Articles often appear that claim the top 10 jobs in 10 years don’t exist now.
All of this is exciting and scary because of that pressure I was just talking about. It means we don’t have the luxury of standing still. We can’t rely on a low bar for a job or any job. If a job is not complex in the way humans are complex, it can and will be automated. This will squeeze an alarming number of people out of the workplace, at least until we can find answers we don’t have now. That squeeze will cause social trouble. The scale and consequences of which is anyone’s guess. The issue has already hit the political landscape. Andrew Yang based his surprisingly notable bid for the Democrat party presidential nominee for 2020 on this issue. A $1,000 universal basic income to ease the plight of those who are and will continue to be displaced from the workforce.
Regardless of how we might feel about this or any other proposed policies, this issue is just beginning. We have seen nothing yet. What can we do as individuals and as leaders about this tectonic change? Might I suggest working to maximize our personal power for starters? Shameless plug, I know. Now, more than ever before, we face a stark choice. We will either create value or we will become dependent. The problem with the second choice is there is little to no lasting deep satisfaction there, so the real choice is this. What am I best suited to create and how am I going to do it?
Machine Learning: Now, more than ever before, we face a stark choice. We will either create value or we will become dependent.
The question is quite a challenge because whatever it is we decide to create, it’s up to other people, whether it’s viable or it’s worth paying you enough so you can support yourself, maybe a family too, in a manner that makes the effort worthwhile over accepting whatever universal basic income options may or may not exist in the future. I’ll say I would not recommend anyone count on that as a good option. If we don’t measure up in value, we’re going to be dependent anyway. It’s not like AI can’t create.
Right now, fictional stories are being created and sold that are developed by writing programs. Most people can’t tell the difference. When we chat with customer service, we’re often interacting with an AI algorithm. If our problem falls into most of the possible problems, we never have to escalate to a person and this bar is another one that continues to move. In light of this, we may wonder how people can meet the special challenges of the future dawning upon us. For individuals seeking work, one answer is this. We must find ways to increase our value. We must commit to continuous learning and development.
The old model, the one where we go to school 9 months out of the year for 12 or 20 years and then we work never to pick up a textbook or take a course again, that’s as good as dead. Now, to be a creative successful employable human means continuous learning. That’s not bad news because learning brings unanticipated rewards and it has never been more accessible. It merely takes a decision to learn. The next crucial step is what to learn. We need to learn disciplines that will continue to hold value for decades to come.
For employers, there’s a correlative responsibility. No matter the particulars of our business or organization, its charter, or its unique value proposition, we’re all also in the same business. We’re all in the people development business. This means that our people strategy, the age-old function of attracting, selecting, developing, and retaining talent must be extra heavy on the development part of the equation. We must develop people for the jobs of the future, not simply the jobs of the present. This is, of course, a challenge, especially when we feel pain about the gap between employees’ capacities and current responsibilities. Yet, if we want to have employable employees down the road, it isn’t optional.
We all need to become learning machines. The way we do that is by doing it. As we do, we further hone our ability to learn and we need to hone the ability to teach. This is another reason that the Eye of Power community is built the way it is. We join. We get assigned a guide, thought partner, and mentor, however the new member wants to picture the relationship. Shortly after that, we are assigned to a newer person and function to help, orient, guide, encourage, and help them stay accountable. We learn and we teach. Together, we get past the obstacles that previously held us back in our development journey. It’s not that new an idea. The one-room schoolhouse of days gone by successfully used this approach.
We all need to become learning machines. The way we do that is by doing it. As we do, we further hone our ability to learn.
Older kids taught the younger ones and they benefited too because if you want to learn something, teach it to somebody else. This is one thing we humans are really good at doing. We can adapt. We can connect. We can encourage. We can do these things better than machines, at least for now. I admit I’m concerned about the division that will continue to widen between those who can add value and those left behind. I’m also excited about the future. I believe the cup is more than half full. Automation will bring down costs. Advancing technologies will render many of the problems we worry about now obsolete. We’ll have new ones of course, hopefully, not a Skynet scenario, but the possibility to expand our personal power will continue to increase if we choose to increase them. Let’s go.