Are you a ChatGBT devotee? It’s not hard to be fascinated by its capabilities. My college-aged children have already adopted it into their zeitgeist with an odd mix of excitement and nonchalance. They, like so others, refuse to envision the writing on the wall, the career writing that is.
Generative AI stands to wreak havoc on careers as we know them thanks to its ability to displace jobs.
I know, I know. How can I possibly know how this will all shake out? Suffice it to say that my work in transition – particularly in careers and organization transformation – has me listening in new ways.
Let’s take a minute to set a baseline for what it means to be technologically displaced. This topic is nothing new. Technological displacement happens when we build new factories that use robots instead of humans along the manufacturing line. It also happens when a software program allows us to close the monthly books for a business with a click of a button instead of with a small posse of staff accountants.
This type of displacement is happening in plain sight. According to the New York Times, the amount of jobs lost to automation in the last twenty years is 600% more than the amount of jobs lost to off-shoring – even though the latter gets all the press.
The real culprit here is not automation itself. It is the amount of job growth that occurs to off-set the loss. For example, we may lose 100 jobs due to new robotics on the shop floor, but a new industry, like green tech, comes along and creates 80 new jobs out of thin air.
The net impact of the losses and gains is what matters. Career opportunities in the future won’t be about the number of jobs lost to AI, per se, but the growth rate of net new industries, including AI, that can compensate for the losses by creating new jobs. It’s never 1:1.
AI’s influence doesn’t end there because generative AI has the ability to change the profile of the jobs it displaces. I’ve always loved New York Times columnist Tom Friedman’s 3-tier employment model which was featured in his great book, That Used to Be Us. In this model, the first tier of jobs is comprised of non-routine highly skilled jobs, like scientist or business leader; the second tier is made up of routine middle skills jobs, like blue or white collar number crunchers; and the final tier is all about the non-routine low skilled jobs, like firefighter or day care worker.
Over the past twenty years, most of the technological displacement has influenced employment in the middle and final tier. Generative AI, however, has the capacity to influence employment in all tiers, including the once-thought-untouchable first tier.
AI-inspired career musical chairs feels inevitable. The great news is that you can take 3 steps now to ensure that you are not the last one standing.
#1 Begin. Wade into the pond. Don’t feel as if the bus has already left the station. There are very few who are in the know about this technology. While that is good news, get learning. Be disciplined. Pick a handful of experts in the AI arena and stay current on what they are saying. Join the AI conversation at your workplace, school, professional association, or other community to which you belong. If a conversation isn’t happening, offer to start one. The most powerful way to navigate major shifts is to engage. Don’t wait until the dust settles or until the potential impact is more clear. Begin.
#2. Practice Seeing Differently. Wait. What? I know this one sounds lofty. Imagine that we are in the late 1800s and we ask a farmer what she needs to make her life easier. “I need a bigger horse,” is close to what we would likely hear. We would never hear the word, tractor. Seeing differently is all about spotting tractors. Does this sound impossible? It does not need to be. The real requirement to seeing something differently is allowing yourself to disengage from fitting AI into existing models. Ask simple questions. Leading with, “What might be different?” may give you more runway than, “How does this fit into our current business model?”
#3. Own A Slice of the Pie. Pick an area of AI that interests you and go large. There are loads of options, from regulation to governance, and first mover industries or its influence on social equity. It does not matter which you topic choose, that you choose matters enormously.
Taken together these steps can reduce the risk that you are not the only one standing at the inevitable game of AI-inspired career musical chairs. Acting now can guarantee there will be a chair left for you.
For more information on my research and work on change, transition, and transformative growth, please read my most recent book, Dancing with Disruption.
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