Al Is The Biggest Work Disruption Of Our Lifetimes

0:00Today on the AI Breakdown, we're looking at the numbers behind the idea that AI represents the biggest disruption to the workforce workforce.

0:30work disruption that we have ever faced. Welcome back to the AI Breakdown. As I'm preparing this show every day, one of the things that I'm doing is basically sifting through pretty much every article that has the words or letters AI in it that's published anywhere. And as one does that for now almost exactly a year, in fact, we might be exactly at a year today, you start to see a number of different patterns. The pattern that we're talking about today is the incredible numbers around what AI means as a disruptive force in the workplace. I, like so many of you, had an experience at the beginning of last year, or perhaps in late 2022, where, whether it was ChatGPT or, in my case, mid-journey, I did something with generative AI that made me feel, first, like an absolute wizard, and second, made me convinced almost instantaneously that this really was going to change everything about how we worked, what we worked on, and frankly, alter the landscape of human creative capacity.

1:25For those of you watching this, the image on your screen is the first mid-journey image that I made that I ever really loved. I was trying to capture the essence of my then four-year-old, and this just really nailed it. But after that experience of feeling like a wizard and starting to believe that everything would change, I started observing the extent to which other people were talking about how everything was going to change as well. What we're going to do today is try to bring together some of the numbers around that disruption and try to figure out what that might mean for the world and what we can do to make this transformation actually work for people.

1:55Here's a wild study. Late last year, edX surveyed 800 different executives. The executives in that survey estimated that 49 % of the skills that existed in their workforce at that time, basically exactly half of the skills, would not be relevant by 2025. Those executives thought that their organizations would eliminate over half, 56 % of entry-level knowledge worker jobs because of AI. 79 % thought that AI would totally transform what entry-level roles look like. Now, lest you think the executives were just thinking that AI was disruptive for the plebs, 56 % also said that their own roles would be either completely or partially replaced by AI.

2:35And importantly, and this is something that we'll come back to, 47 % said that they believed that their workforces were not prepared for the future workplace. At the beginning of this year, we had some even more dramatic numbers from potentially an even more influential source. On the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the International Monetary Fund dropped a report that suggested that in developing nations, AI would impact 40 % of jobs, and in developed markets like the US, that number would rise to 60%. Now, one of the things that was really interesting about this particular study is that the IMF basically threw up its hands when it came to whether that impact would be good or bad.

3:12Ultimately, they landed on the idea that of that 60%, half or around 30 % of jobs would be positively impacted, i.e. they'd see big productivity gains and transformations. And the other half, the other 30%, might just be wiped off the face of the planet. McKinsey has also looked at some numbers around this idea of job replacement. In a report called Generative AI and the Future of Work in America, McKinsey writes,

3:55So basically what McKinsey is arguing here is that 30 % of the things that people do now in the U.S. workforce based on time, 30 % of the things that people spend their time on, could be automated and gone by 2030. Some sectors are above that 30%, like office support, which is nearing 40%. Other sectors, like health professionals and property maintenance, are lower, but still seeing nearly 20 % estimated automation. McKinsey suggested in that report that net-net, that could lead to 12 million fewer jobs. Now, controversially, one of the big questions is whether companies are going to go full steam at AI because they just want to replace people, or whether they're interested in helping their employees adapt.

4:35A report from Beautiful.ai surveyed 3 ,000 managers about AI tools in the workforce and found that 41 % said that they are hoping they can replace employees with AI tools in 2024. 48 % of managers said their businesses would benefit financially if they could replace a large number of employees. 40 % said that multiple employees could be replaced by AI tools and the team would operate well without them. 45 % said that they view AI as an opportunity to lower salaries of employees because less human-powered work is needed. and 12 % said they were hoping to use AI to downsize and save money on worker salaries.

5:06Once again, this isn't just limited to employees. Half of those managers surveyed said that they're worried that AI tools will result in lower pay for them as well. 64 % said that they believed AI's output and productivity were equal or better to experienced human managers. And in terms of the idea of watching what they do, not just what they say, 90 % also said that they were already using AI to increase productivity. And now, a quick word from today's sponsor. I am a huge Notion user. We're talking multiple accounts for multiple projects. I use it for everything from applicant tracking to note-taking to project management to sharing public documents to frantically capturing ideas I have while out hiking or just driving around.

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6:48And when you use our link, you're supporting the show. One more time, that's notion.com slash AI breakdown. Another more recent survey from Swiss staffing firm ADECO polled 2 ,000 executives and once again found that 41 % of them expected to employ fewer people because of AI. Now, this group seemed to be a little bit more focused on helping employees adapt. 46 % said they would redeploy employees internally if their jobs were impacted by AI. And certainly, AI skills are highly in demand. Two-thirds of these 2 ,000 executives that were surveyed said that they planned on recruiting people skilled in AI, and only a third said that they would train their existing workforce in AI.

7:26That's another little nugget to keep in the back of your mind. One of the other dramatic macro numbers came from Goldman Sachs last March, which suggested that over time, automation could replace a quarter of work tasks in the US and Europe, disrupting the equivalent of 300 million jobs. At the same time, that report also suggested that productivity gains from generative AI would raise annual global GDP by 7 % over a 10-year period. As time has gone on, we've started to have a slightly more nuanced conversation, where it's not just about big swaths and numbers of millions of jobs replaced, but instead more about tasks and the impact on wages.

8:00For example, the European Central Bank published a paper that found that during the deep learning boom of the 2010s, opportunities for younger and high-skilled workers increased rather than went down. The ECB suggested that fears of AI ending human labor may, quote, be greatly exaggerated. Now, for workers' part, 72%, according to a CNBC poll, say that AI makes them more productive. So much so, in fact, that that same study found there was a correlation where the more employees used AI, the more worried they were that it could replace them in whole or in part. In other words, when they actually saw what AI could do, they got more, not less worried.

8:34In a different study by Asana, employees said that 29 % of their work tasks were replaceable by AI. A Spokio poll found really mixed perspectives. 66.6 % of the more than 1 ,000 respondents said that AI could carry out their workplace duties, and nearly 75 % said they were concerned about AI's impact on their industry as a whole. But at the same time, 78.1 % said that they believe that AI could reduce some stress on the job, and 76.7 % said that they believe that AI will reduce the number of working days for the average American. But how do we get there? How do we get to that beneficial version of the story?

9:08One of the big obvious gaps is around education and learning. A survey of 2 ,800 director-to-C-level suite executives from Deloitte found that only one in five of them believed that their organization was highly or very highly prepared to address AI skills needs. Only 47 % said that they are sufficiently educating employees about AI. Deloitte's global CEO said, If you're going to look at this as some sort of side initiative, a department of generative AI that's going to come up with all the use cases, it's going to be a massive failure. You need an ecosystem mindset. Employees for their part are concerned as well.

9:37According to Microsoft Research, 65 % of Gen Z employees said that they don't currently have the right skills to meet the demands of the AI era. In a census-wide survey, 68 % said that they don't have enough of an understanding of generative AI for their current roles, and 53 % want more training and guidance. LinkedIn found that 2 in 5 workers in the UK predicted a significant change in their jobs in the next year because of AI, and over a third of them admitted to feeling overwhelmed by the amount there is to learn. A different report from ServiceNow found that 41 % of office workers admit to currently lacking the technical abilities needed to work alongside and use AI systems.

10:11So trying to sum up for a moment, both employers and employees, managers and workers are utterly convinced that generative AI is going to cause major changes in how they work. It's going to automate tasks, it's going to make some skills irrelevant, And of course, it's going to be get an entirely new set of knowledge that needs to be acquired to be useful in the workplace in the era that we're moving into. Now, as I mentioned, I've been collecting these numbers since I began the AI breakdown a year ago. But about six months ago, the sum totality of their implications just finally came home to roost for me in a way that my next moves became obvious.

10:48TLDR, we are nowhere close to the capacity that we need to have when it comes to teaching people how to actually use AI. Sure, there are online courses. All the old school platforms have created them. But they are very old school. They're theoretical. They're only focused on a handful of platforms. They're out of date almost as soon as they're published. And generally, they don't do the thing that people really need to do to actually learn how to use AI tools, which is get people to use AI tools. What came out of this is a new platform that we're announcing today called Superintelligent. If you've been listening to the show, you've heard me talk about the AI education beta.

11:21And this is, of course, what that has turned into. Super Intelligent is a platform that is totally focused on fun, fast, and useful AI learning. Specifically, it's about getting people to actually use AI tools within minutes of starting their learning journey, rather than committing to hours and hours of course content before they ever actually do a thing that makes a difference in their work. We're launching with 300 video tutorials, plus companion step-by-step how-tos that go alongside each of them, and we're going to be adding 30 to 50 new video tutorials each week. The ambition that I and we have for Superintelligent is extremely large.

11:55I believe completely unironically that when it comes to determining how much the AI revolution actually ends up being in the service of real people versus just yet another technological change that happens to them in which they can't exert meaningful agency will be dictated and shaped by the learning resources we create. I've loved having the AI Breakdown audience as part of the way to address this, and this podcast will continue exactly the way that it has in the past. But Superintelligent is going to give me a totally new vector for tackling what I think is one of the biggest problems facing us right now.

12:27You will hear more about this platform, of course, but it will be in highly skippable ad form. But today on this launch day, I wanted to share a little bit of the background of this company and why it's something I'm so excited to now be live in the world. You can find out more about it at besuper.ai. Can't wait to see what you think. For now, I I appreciate you guys listening or watching as always. Until next time, peace.