Futurist versus Futuristic
We tend to overestimate the impact of technology for the near future, all the while grossly underestimating its impact in the long run. That is, we misjudge the complexity of getting technology to not just achieve something better or new, but to scale economically and be adopted. As a result, we look at what we know today as if it could be magically touched upon and transformed overnight, which is not realistic in most cases.
ChatGPT is today's striking illustration.
People played around with ChatGPT and instantly developed simplistic opinions about longer-term outcomes. "XYZ jobs are dead, it will take over ABC, the way ACZ is done will change forever," and so on.
Something similar happened with flying cars at the time planes' ancestors barely took off the ground. Countless sketches of "the year 2000 world" were published, featuring flying personal vehicles. In a way, many could be compared to prospective use-cases asserting the revolutionary nature of that innovation. However, the striking part was the not-so-changed world in the background, with brief descriptions like "It will change the way we move around forever — Enjoy a few minutes flying, not hours walking, to get to the telegraph office."
All is said. Almost. While the initial theory is fair, its less-publicized opposite twin holds equal merit. Think of the many non-believers of their time, for example, that a computer would eventually be found in nearly every home, those viewing the early days of the internet as a fad, etc.
Regardless of the position we adopt, the misconception about the longer-term comes from the fact that we omit that many more minds will have been at work, commonly or not, to exploit the technology in ways that create value for situations foreign to each of us individually.That's why it is critical to develop a vision rather than opinions for future new technology possibilities, but also conceptualize future applications in the context of gradual yet non-linear adoption of the technology.
Meet "AI Skills"
For example, and slightly paraphrasing a recently published blog (The Skills-based organization and AI Skills), the term "AI skills" is not a current term, especially applied to general job skills. It means AI's new leaps won't just impact how companies will manage organizational skills in the future but how organizations need to anticipate the management of both human skills and AI skills in combination.
The theme of new technologies taking over some jobs is nothing new, and it proved true in some cases. With AI, however, it is skills that will initially be replaced, not jobs or tasks representing an intricate combination of skills.
Despite catchy headlines on the entire class of jobs turning "at risk" overnight, that's why AI's impact on skills is where business leaders and the c-suite must focus going forward. For a similar job title or job family, the job (or combination of skills defining the job/task that are required) may vary from one organization to the other. This is true for many different jobs. But many specific skills required to accomplish a job are often comparable between organizations. These common skills could be very efficiently replicated, or dramatically improved, by AI. The impact on the job can be massive without completely replacing it. This is already the promise of AI-fueled automation solutions like Robotics Process Automation (RPA), with virtual robots largely outrunning humans.
Introducing the TI Leader of Tomorrow
Strategically managing future skill requirements across the organization means understanding how they will evolve from both a human and AI perspective. This radically differs from historical workforce strategies. The strategic mission elements of tomorrow include the following:
- Business leaders will need to continuously anticipate how AI skill-like capabilities evolve and mature. These insights will be critical in supporting decisions about the relevance of replacing or augmenting human skills.
- People managers will need to understand how to apply an efficient framework to practically manage human and AI skills in combination. That means accessing information to project how the balance of the two may change over time.
- AI and human skills won't be mutually exclusive but will differ in their structure. They will need to be constantly compared, and their combination simulated. Skill maps of tomorrow will need to be entirely reinvented. For example, what defines and qualifies skills will have to include many more dimensions such as the impact of AI model training, what limits it infers in combination with selected human skills, and much more.
Successfully delivering on that mission will require specific expertise working in concert: the assembly of the right tech capabilities, far-reaching business acumen, and workforce strategy wisdom. That's why centralizing the creation, management, and evolution of all methods and workflows associated with "AI-Human Skills" under TI leadership is necessary.
We are at a defining "business moment" – TI leaders, this is your call.
For CEOs and executive leadership, now is the time to start rethinking organizational skills and take a more strategic approach to better leverage AI skills with the human skills of the organization.
The ubiquitous adoption of AI skills won't happen as quickly as headlines suggest. The mere idea of AI and human skills routinely working hand-in-hand will also take some time to mature. It implies a deep and mandatory mentality shift, or risks the failure to implement meaningfully which would critically impact the entire organization's competitiveness. Building a combined human and AI skills approach is essential now.
As previously stated, the dual challenge-opportunity at hand is not exclusive to the HR sphere but is also not purely business or operations either. While TI groups or functions have historically specialized in HR use-cases, now is the opportunity to creatively engage top-level executives.
TI leaders mean business. Who doubted it?
1 comment
Outstanding blog, and very mature take on an issue which will only become increase in importance as we move into a Generative AI present world, with all that entailing. Although we can not be said to have been known for taking a more holistic view on people and skills, we will simply have to for the future.