- We're all doomed!
Robots are coming for our jobs!
Every job, the blue collar, the white collar,
the accountant's, the lawyer's, the candlestick makers.
Did I get your attention?
There are two pervasive narratives right now
in the headlines in the world of work.
One, AI is magic.
We'll cover that in a second.
And two, all jobs are doomed.
Both of these headlines are wrong,
and frankly, just plain boring and played out.
The job story has been particularly emotional.
Of course, we should worry about wide scale unemployment
and a disruption to our livelihoods,
but the fact is that's not what we're seeing.
The US unemployment rate is the lowest
it's been in 50 years, and at time at filming,
the jobless rate is at its lowest since 1969.
Companies in the US are struggling
to find the talent they need to fuel their growth.
My own personal experience is that
the automation projects performed today
are truly giving hours back to the business,
freeing up the existing staff to do more valuable work.
And while hiring of new positions may slow,
there are very few cases in which wide scale layoffs
are a byproduct of automation.
And the research of others is also proving this out.
For instance, the World Economic Forum
has suggested that there could be 58 million
net new jobs created in the next five years
as a result of automation.
Deloitte has concluded that while technology
has potentially contributed to the loss
of over 800,000 lower-skilled jobs,
there is equally strong evidence
to suggest that it's helped to create nearly 3.5 million
new higher-skilled ones in their place.
And finally, Gartner has estimated
that by 2020, artificial intelligence
will create more jobs than it eliminates.
While this is certainly a more positive outlook,
there is inevitable change coming.
As Deloitte suggested, certain job types
may no longer need people doing them.
And so as leaders in your organizations,
you need to prepare for this.
You'll want to begin recruiting people
with a combination of logic and technical skills,
coupled with soft skills, like empathy,
creativity, and communications.
Authors like Wayne Eckerson and Tom Davenport
use the concept of purple people
to describe employees like this:
purple people have both technical and business skills,
enabling them to bridge the two worlds
and ensure that technology is applied properly.
As for some of those new jobs
of the future, prepare yourself.
You soon may be hiring AI algorithm trainers,
digital process designers,
data scientists, always important,
automation engineers,
and of particular importance,
there will be teams across the business
managing, monitoring, and supporting
the growing digital labor force
with roles like digital labor stewards
and robotic operating center specialists.
While there are is no question
some job types will disappear,
the efficiencies created will allow you
to reallocate existing staff to higher value work
and there will be countless opportunities
to upscale and retrain for the jobs of the future.
So as it relates to a future
of mass robo-induced unemployment, fear not.