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AI has finally arrived, leaping from the pages of Isaac Asimov and Michael Crichton. For a select few, it has come as a much-awaited breeze and for the larger mass, it’s a hailstorm. It has already started to destroy the creations in its path, stuff that was painstakingly cultivated with a lot of labour and love. We often forget the gales of creative destruction that characterize the paradigm shift that we are in the middle of. We are in the transitory phase of man-over-machines, to man-and-machines, to machines-over-man continuum. And it’s felt the most in the suffocating white collars sitting beside the terminals.
By the turn of the 20th century, technology and automation promised to reduce the labor and release precious human talent from the drudgery of repetitive, routine tasks. Ergo, factories got mechanized, robots galore and people started graduating from applying muscles to applying mind. Such knowledge workers found aid and refuge in computers, ushering yet another wave of computer-operators and tech workers. The Indian IT industry and foreign exchange is a testimony to what happens when computers travel faster than books and broadband is laid at a more rapid pace than roads. And then came automation of the white-collar jobs and general-purpose artificial intelligence.
The irony that can’t be escaped is that AI managed to replace white-collar jobs with blue-collar, exactly contrarian to the original intent. A telling case is the bank, where the hapless teller was eased out by the security guard, at comparable salaries, except that the bloke is utterly wasted. The signs of this transference are all around us—from the food delivery boys to cab drivers, quick commerce army and private security, which is almost five times India’s security forces. If gig-workforce is the new format, the blue-collars have the last laugh. If office is the existing format, remote working and flexible working is gaining currency, and the good old nine-to-five is getting old and tired. The regular office goer from banks to manufacturing to services and healthcare is feeling the heat—from below owing to displacement of labor, from above owing to economic and technological vagaries, and from across thanks to rapid and cheap automation.
If you are reading this article at your office, you are in a more precarious situation than the caterer at the canteen. If you are seated at your drawing room, your next road grocery shop owner has more career fungibility than you, for he can quite easily go down the value chain, unlike you. The real tragedy of AI is that it’s easing out the very people that created it. The cute Frankenstein, which helps you draft emails, beautify your presentations, and even write full blown press releases is learning at your expense, yearning to surprise you in the most unpleasant fashion. If not, why do you still rely on Google Maps to reach your office the hundredth time?
How to make yourself outlive the Moore’s Law that has dutifully propelled computers to its current avatar? Three tips. Firstly, get back to basics. Instead of drawing juices and inspiration from the volume of your transactions or how busy your calendar looks, start measuring your worth basis a few important activities. Try to solve highly critical problems each day, instead of poking your head onto several. ‘You get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions,’ notes Jeff Bezos. For most decisions, push them down (delegate), out (outsource) or away (eliminate).
Secondly, get back into the reading habit. ‘I still believe that sitting down and reading a book is the best way to really learn something,’ opines Eric Schmidt, Google’s former chief. Instead of hopping from one unfinished certificate course to another, or worst still brandishing them over social media, get real and deep into subjects so that you can solve higher order problems. It’s never too late to change your tracks, provided you take a disciplined approach. Which again warrants you stealing time from mundane work.
Lastly, change your immediate surroundings, both in terms of people and routine. You can’t escape the current level of thinking without escaping the gravity of the present realty, which is, by the way, of your own making. Go about it unapologetically. You don’t owe anyone an explanation when you stop showing up for smoke or tea breaks, or if you choose to carry a book to the cafeteria instead of hanging out with the usual suspects. You can’t succeed in a new career with old philosophies.
In summary, AI is here to stay and so are you, and better that both evolve, in a symbiotic manner. Get selective, read books, and change your surroundings. See you around.
Author bio
Dr Pavan Soni is the best-selling author of the books, Design Your Thinking and Design Your Career.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.