Transcript

The future of skills in the age of AI | David Timis | TEDxLuxembourgCity

[Music] science fiction is full of stories about machines versus humans and probably many of you grew up watching movies just like this one The Terminator or perhaps iRobot but is this the sort of world we will live in in a few years think about this new forms of automation or radically transforming our society advanced robotics artificial intelligence or increasing productivity and improving lives however what will happen to our jobs in the future and what sort of skills will we need to perform them these are the key questions for my talk today but before I actually tackle them before I speak about them let me take a step back and look at what caused this disruption the first place and what tech experts think the impact of these technologies would be probably one of the most talked-about innovations in recent times and they're already I think mentioned it is AI experts believe it's going to be one of the main drivers of the fourth Industrial Revolution and that it has the potential to not just transform the tech sector but the way we live our lives so there's obviously a lot of debate about its impact whether it's going to be a force for good that will help us that will free us from mundane repetitive work or rather if it's going to be the advancement that brings an end to the human race so what do you think do you think AI will be a force for good by show of hands okay we have some positive people here I would say or do you think it's actually going to be a force for bad things for for the end of the human race are you more pessimistic so you're a very diverse crowd is usually for Ted and your response is quite mixed and what I have to say is that the tech community and the world at large is also confused about this topic they don't know what's the right answer what will the impact of AI be so on the one side of the debate we have among other people Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page the founders of technology companies that are at the forefront of artificial intelligence they are quite optimistic about the impact of AI Zuckerberg was quoted saying a few years ago that AI will help humanity reach its full potential he also added that AI and other such technologies will help us to spend more times on the task we really matter that really mattered for us to spend more time with our families and the other side is populated by people like Bill Gates Ellen Musk also tech giants in a way their views are pessimistic to say the least they warned against the potential of AI to replace humans in the workplace and Ella masks even went as far as to claim that AI is the biggest existential threat to mankind who this was tough for me to hear because Alan musk is somebody I really look up to somebody I admire and such a claim I think has the unintended consequence of spreading fear amongst people especially people who might not understand this technology and I believe that obviously it's good to take the pros and cons of any new technology but if you start from a foundation of fear that never ends to good results another thing I have with this claim from Ellen is the fact that it's not backed by history or data look back at history go back a bit in time with me please every generation before ours has feared massive technological changes in the 18th century with the advent of the first Industrial Revolution people were afraid of technologies like the steam engine or machines that can cut and shape metal tools but exactly these inventions enabled people at that time to increase their standard of living to live better longer lives similarly other generations moving a few hundred years forward in the 1900s farm employment starts to drop in the 1950s jobs in manufacturing fell but with all these let's say lapses all these negative situations were actually in the end they resulted in new jobs being created people living better lives more fulfilled lives having safer workplaces so history doesn't support this claim but now if you look at the data according to research conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute less than 5% of our jobs can be entirely automated using technology so let me say this again less than 5% of our jobs can be automated at least in the foreseeable future so our jobs are safe but this study also found something a bit more intriguing I would say it's that 60% of our occupation have at least the third if not more of their tasks that can be automated so in other words to translate the mid this result or jobs are safe at least for the foreseeable future but the way we perform the jobs the sort of tasks we will do this is most likely going to change most likely and hopefully for the better I believe that the technological revolution we're going through doesn't have to be a race between machines and humans but rather an opportunity for us to work together for example how many of you work with numbers on a daily basis okay I knew I'm in Luxembourg so it's gonna be probably quite a big number given the banking and finance industry here so yeah plenty of you work with numbers now work with me bit a bit here and imagine a scenario in which you'll have to do your job without the use of Excel or Google sheets how would that world look like especially for the younger people in the audience I guess probably grew up with these technologies it's hard to imagine such a world and this is just a really basic instrument Excel why I gave you this example is because whilst we cannot compete with machines when it comes to highly repetitive high-volume tasks tasks that require the collection interpretation of data machines are no match for our dexterity for our senses another area where machines made little progress is in tackling new situations the way AI and machine learning works is based on data large volumes of data so if there's no data many of these machines cannot function cannot take any action or decision humans us on the other hand thanks to thousands of years of evolution we are able to think on our feet and solve ever more complex problems that we haven't seen before so consequently in the future there will still be humans behind the best marketing campaigns or the business strategy of our firms so we should be quite certain of that to sum up this first part of the talk these are the three main takeaways AI is not morally good or bad in itself it's what we make of it like with any new technology second widespread automation is unavoidable it's happening as we speak we cannot stop it it's on your phones it's in our lives but we shouldn't be afraid of it because this will not displace humans from the workplace but as I previously said it will rather transform their jobs and likely for the better to have more time to spend with their loved ones perhaps and finally humans will need to work alongside robots rather than compete with them and we should start preparing ourselves and our children for such a future in speaking of the future by 2020 so in less than half a year all these technologies brought forth by the fourth Industrial Revolution will come to their first milestone their first inflection point because many of the prediction that predictions that experts made about the technologies and their impact on our jobs were made ten or five years ago so now we'll be able to draw a line and see how for instance AI maybe destroyed jobs or create the new jobs we'll be able to compare and contrast we will also be able to see how AI and such technologies transformed our work and what we'll probably realized based on my assumptions is that there will not be a shortage of jobs we should be worried about but rather a shortage of skills to perform these jobs technology is disrupting among other things education especially the core curriculum of many academic fields according to a report from the World Economic Forum nearly 50% of the subject knowledge acquired in the first year of a four-year technical degree becomes outdated by the time students graduate you would start for instance in September a degree in computing science and in four years potentially half of the knowledge you acquire will be outdated already and I have examples from Google who've been colleagues of mine who've been faced with exactly this issue colleagues of mine who finished computing science in Romania and then had a job at Google in Zurich and some of the program programming languages they learned they were not applicable any more that's again thanks to the outdated system back home for educating people what's even more worrying I would say is the fact that 65% of the jobs were preparing or elementary school students for don't exist yet how can you as a parent as a brother or sister deal with this uncertainty to give you an example not sure if it's reassuring or not 10 or maybe even five years ago who would have thought that uploading videos on YouTube and creating a community around them would become a career for somebody but now we actually have young people maybe even in the room here today which are doing just that uploading content building community on YouTube and other platforms and making a living after this activity other such jobs will appear in the future and we should be quite safe to say that it's going to be hard to predict the type of careers we'll have or the type of skills we will need to perform them but what they will see what certainty is the fact that education will be the key to face these challenges to face this uncertainty and I already hinted with my little comment about the educational system back home in Romania where I come from and it's not just there it's in many parts of the world education needs to be transformed from the ground up it's not enough to make compromises with education we really have to transform it from the ground up and we have to tackle the status quo because according to research there's still too many schools around the world who teach people teach young people using an outdated approach borrowed from a time in which the sole purpose of education was to prepare people for physical jobs jobs in agriculture manufacturing there are exceptions of course there are schools new age schools is like to call them that are changing from this model that are transitioning to something called the project-based approach centered around the needs of each individual such schools set the stage for what educational institutions should represent a place where instead of teaching students to answer questions we should teach them to ask them to ask better questions school should be a place where instead of preparing young people for higher education or for employment we should prepare them to live lives better lives more fulfilled lives because the purpose of education should go beyond just preparing better students or better employees it should be about preparing better leaders better innovators better politicians we all need that one probably doing so will not just transform the future of Education or the future of work it will radically transform the world we live in and I say this with a lot of conviction and this is not just pep talk or fantasy I did my research on this in there are countries that are changing this model perhaps Luxembourg is actually one of them but my research was focused on Finland a country which is famous for its educational system and among other great things that the Finns have done recently is to make a really bold claim a positive one not like the one element they claim that by 2020 they will start replacing their traditional classroom subjects with an approached focus on the four C's the four C's of learning as they like to call them communication collaboration creativity and critical thinking according to the Finns these are the four basic skills we will need to be successful in the 21st century and I couldn't agree more there are a great foundations to start with but based on my research we need three other skills at least to have a complete toolbox to be prepared for the volatility of the future and these three other skills I found our adaptability or the capacity to embrace change resilience the ability to persevere in spite of the challenges that come your way and finally and most importantly continuous learning developing yourself constantly both professionally and personally to sum up again these are the three main takeaways there will not be a shortage of jobs in the future but rather a shortage of skills to perform them education needs to be transformed from the ground up in order to better prepare our young ones for the jobs of the future and finally schools should equip young people with highly transferable skills skills like the ones I previously mentioned to be adaptive and successful in this world we live in because history teaches us from years and years ago that technological change can benefit us all by investing in developing people and I strongly believe that by developing yourself you're it's a life's mission you don't stop when you're 24 and you're finished or higher education learning is for life and I want everybody here to to remember that you never stop learning and if there's one thing I would like you to remember from my talk really sum it all up the technological advancements I briefly touched upon like AI and advanced robotics they shouldn't scare us because if we invest in education and if we invest in lifelong learning we'll be able to adapt pivot and get back on our feet regardless of the challenges we are faced with thank you very much [Applause] [Music]