AI is shaking the labour market Lets save the labour

[Music]

last year

i registered my sun at school in the

application form

on paper of course i had to mark that i

am aware

and agree on the school rule prohibiting

cell phones and digital devices on the

school premises

i thought rather than ban them

shouldn’t we teach the kids how to deal

with those devices

properly if the kids don’t learn it at

school

then where by prohibiting digital

devices

where the kids learn most we strengthen

their belief that the analog reality

and the digital space are two totally

different words

instead we should teach them that the

same rules and values

of the analog word are also applicable

to the digital one

our children will be the ones designing

and building the machines of the future

why aren’t we preparing them for it

that day i realized how different my

professional reality was from school

reality

my job consists in helping my company

leverage technology to develop new

products and to increase efficiency

but in a human-centered way

while assessing processes that people

perform every day

my team and i focus on the people behind

these processes

we discuss with them about the tasks

they perform every day

and let them talk about

let them identify the automation

potentials

i hear two business challenges and

discuss with business leaders how we can

use technology to solve these challenges

i talk with colleagues who are afraid of

losing their jobs

and others who feel relieved after a

robber took over the repetitive tasks

i hear people talking positively about

automation freeing up resources for a

more creative endeavor

and others who claim to need these

repetitive tasks to disconnect from

their stressful lives

all in all i witnessed daily how

artificial intelligence

is changing the labor market and with it

people’s lives

according to a study of the organization

of economic development

cooperation and development 14

of the jobs have a potential of

automation of over 70 percent

this is equivalent to 66 million workers

in the 32 country covered by the study

in addition another 32 percent

have a potential of automation of

between 50

and 70 changing

the way these jobs are carried out and

hence changing the skill sets of the job

putting aside the numbers

let’s have a look at a couple of

examples proving how the shifts in tasks

between humans and machines is already

in motion

what you see on the picture is an

airplane factory back in the 40s

nowadays we mainly see robots in

factories

and these robots are building other

robots

in the healthcare sector we used to have

simple utensils

nowadays we have machines we have

surgery rooms full of machines

and in the near future we will have

robots performing the surgery by

themselves

of course steered by a doctor but she

won’t need to be in the same surgery

room as the patient anymore

or something as basic as grocery

shopping will be disrupted

by sensors and cameras equipped with

artificial intelligence

installed everywhere enabling a

supermarket to function without

registers cashiers checkouts or lines

or something as arts ladies and

gentlemen

meet the first rembrandt painted by your

computer

and printed by a 3d printer through the

3d printing you can recognize the brush

stroke

which is something individual to each

artist

or music

[Music]

what we just heard is beethoven’s 10th

symphony you read it correctly and you

heard it correctly the 10th

symphony in fact beethoven started

writing it before he died

but he never finished it that’s why it’s

unknown and to his 250th birthday last

year

deutsche telekom initiated a project to

end the 10th symphony with the help of

ai

and of course with the help of many

human experts ai

and music experts as you can see

not even arts will be something an

endava restricted to humans

at this point i guess you want to hear

which jobs

won’t be automated right at furniture

unfortunately

no jobs are 100 safe the extent of

disruption

will depend on the skill set of the jobs

but don’t worry there is hope mainly

because of two reasons

first because there’s another study of

course

so the word economic forum future of job

reports of 2020

estimated that by 25 85 million jobs

may be displaced by the

the reallocation of tasks from machines

from humans to machines while

97 million jobs may erase

this confirms what we have seen in the

past

in fact in developed countries

employment has been

increasing despite automation

many new jobs exist today that didn’t

exist in the past

think of a data master for example

for those who hear the term for the

first time it’s one of the roles of data

scientists

second there are the so-called

bottlenecks of automation

these are the tasks that based on the

actual state of knowledge are very hard

to automate

they include perception manipulation

which is the ability to carry out

physical tasks and manual tasks in an

unstructured work environment

creative intelligence and social

intelligence

unfortunately emotional intelligence

hasn’t reached the attention it deserves

but we need to change that engineering

and coding skills

are not the only we need

new skills and strength to make sure

that we are prepared

for this technological revolution

according to daniel goleman this is the

american psychologist who helped

popularize it emotional intelligence

is self-awareness self-regulation

motivation

empathy and social skills

those are the skills that are that

robots don’t have

that are unique to humans and that will

be so crucial

in the labor markets of the future

and talking about the future let’s have

a look to the at the past

so if we look back in history automation

has been around for hundreds of years

and yet we managed to cope and to create

new employment the automation of the

agriculture gave away to manufacturing

and the automation of manufacturing gave

away to services

during the industrial revolution the

machines took over the physical tasks

so people developed cognitive skills

in this technological revolution

machines are taken over

cognitive skills so people need to

harness

emotional intelligence

if we don’t manage to teach our children

and adults

in improving their emotional

intelligence then we might end up in the

scenario people fear the most

i call it the ai dystopia

we are familiar uh with automation

in factories but the same is happening

in offices

the only difference is that the robots

are not hardware

but software you cannot touch them but

they are everywhere

instead of seeing more robots you just

see less people

data entry clerks accountants

bookkeepers auditors or even customer

service workers were highly replaced by

software

robots only a small elite designing and

building the robots

are the remaining few office workers

and the elite is small because we were

not able

to overcome the digital divide

since we didn’t manage to upgrade the

school system we kept

preparing the masses for repetitive

tasks while the most privileged attended

extracurricular activities to enhance

iq and eq but after

reaching a certain oh sorry and the

advancements

in technology enable

the computers the robots to acquire even

more intelligence

allowing them to perform even more

complex tasks

so after searching a tipping point the

few romanian workers

complained to the big boss

so what he says what are you going to do

strike go ahead there are enough robots

capable of doing the job

they strike lose their job and spend the

rest of their

life on couch playing video games while

video surveillance cameras installed

everywhere monitor every movement

and alert the big boss should anyone

make a stand against the system

scary scenario isn’t it okay

let’s rewind back to our starting point

with the office full of people and have

a look at the ai

utopia of course the robots are getting

smarter and smarter

but people are getting smarter too

we provided enough training provision

particularly for low

low low-skilled workers we we

straightened

the learning the training policies and

prepared the message for the new

requirements

and we train the people to reflect more

on the tasks they perform daily

now they’re able to identify the tasks

that are not worth

being done by humans they are the ones

identified identifying the automation

potentials

and asking the robots to take over their

jobs

or they might even build the robots

themselves in any case

we taught them how to extract the robot

out of the human

they are free to choose what to do in

their freedom capacity

we empower them to do so because we

believe that every individual

has a talent that should come to light

and it does

because we leverage eq we strengthened

people’s self-esteem and believed in

them

we flattened the hierarchies and

distributed the power

and we trained people and awakened their

curiosity

now they are actively they’re hungry for

knowledge are

actively acquiring new skills with the

newly gained skills

they are able to invent new products

and services to the arts

sports or maybe spend more times with

their families

while very important while the robots

are doing the job

what may seem like an utopia is actually

very realistic

many of the methodologies i mentioned

are not new

we know how to face the challenge we

just need to start executing

and to start executing we need to stop

fearing

fearing technology fearing ai and

fearing change

the fear of ai is something i witness

very often

most people picture the terminator when

they hear the term ai

to change that i started giving

workshops for non-tech people

explaining the most used ai and machine

learning methodologies

using examples of our daily lives and

avoiding any mathematical formulas

during the workshops i could really see

how the facial expression of the

attendees

were getting more and more relaxed many

of them approached me at the end

to tell me that they feel relieved after

hearing my explanation

having witnessed that for so many times

i decided to bring my message to a

broader audience

so i wrote a book and yes

a real book in paper

believe me writing this book was a huge

challenge

on top doing it on top of on on my uh

already full and stressful life

but the will to contribute to ai

literacy

was much stronger than the need of

relaxing

i believe everyone should be informed

about ai

and how it is impacting our lives

understanding technology is the first

step

in shaping one’s own future

i’m standing here a divided person

on the one side i am a tech expert

excited about the technological

developments

i truly believe that they can help us

tackle many of the

the challenges we have on the other side

i am a worried mother seeing that the

future sees developing professionally

is moving at light speed while the

education of her children is stagnating

i am a worried colleague citizen

and friend feeling people’s fear

about ai but i take their fear seriously

because i believe that those who fear

the most will be affected the most

but we shouldn’t let fear win societies

have been fearing automation for

hundreds of years

the steam engine the spinning jenny the

cars

the the assembly line the computer now

the ai

every revolution started with fear with

fear of what is to come

but as mercury put it nothing in life is

to be feared

it’s only to be understood

now it’s the time to understand with our

brains

and with our hearts thank you

[Music]