5 August 2022
The skills needed for individuals to compete in today’s labour markets are changing rapidly as the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligence augmentation (IA) significantly gathers pace. Roles that involve repetitive tasks requiring only basic cognitive skills are increasingly destined to be filled by machines, while higher-value abilities that are hard to replace with current AI or IA embody the future of human employment.
A fundamental element necessary for participation in the future job market is the willingness and ability to continuously learn and develop autonomously in line with societal and commercial trends. The process of reinventing oneself by regularly redesigning one’s professional identity can lead to more prosperous and successful professional trajectories and rewarding results. Being able throughout one’s professional life to monitor, anticipate and successfully navigate the sometimes tricky evolutions inherent to our rapidly changing society, including the obsolescence of certain skills, is now part of a solid career strategy.
AI has revolutionized people’s lifestyles around the world. In many cases it has facilitated their daily tasks and enhanced their quality of life. On the other hand, AI is continuously modifying and disrupting our perspective and approach to work as well as our definition of success. From the labour-supply side of the equation, there is already an emerging and widespread desire among workers for more “workplace freedom”, resulting from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the ways and places in which work is conducted. More focus on outcomes, awareness of the importance of human interactions, and the erosion of the traditional overfocus on inputs constitute a positive legacy of our predominant, ongoing and otherwise painful global public health crisis.
According to the McKinsey Quarterly of September 2021, employees crave investment in the human aspects of work and will have little tolerance for a return to a status quo they didn’t like before the pandemic. Similarly, a 2022 global survey conducted by Deloitte found that work-life balance, learning and development opportunities, and positive workplace cultures are key factors for members of the so-called “Generation Z” and millennials when choosing a job.
It is not surprising that the most sophisticated use of our brains’ potential generates powerful and valuable returns.
Conceptual and strategic thinking, creativity, problem-solving, empathy, optimism, ethics, emotional intelligence and judgment are the future-proof skills and attributes that machines will not be able to replicate with the same standards and agility as qualified human beings. Deloitte forecasts that so-called “soft skill-intensive occupations” will account for two thirds of all jobs by 2030. The difficulty and challenge of properly developing these kinds of skills at scale are real, but immersive learning opportunities delivered through such technologies as virtual reality could offer a way forward.
Interestingly, many of these skills are linked to ones necessary to preserve and nurture democratic societies in the context of massive, globalized information flows through the Internet and social media, as well as the pressure and potential threat posed by disinformation. It is not surprising that the most sophisticated use of our brains’ potential generates powerful and valuable returns. Nobel laureate, psychologist, and best-selling author Daniel Kahneman characterized judgment as being driven by cognitive thinking that is slow and effortful, and involves reasoning, as opposed to the more common thinking, which is hasty, intuitive and “short-termist”.
The abilities of discernment and nuance, the aptitude to dissect the complexities of disinformation, and skills for understanding bias and the broad psychological processes behind false publicity or misleading lobbying are increasingly considered necessary for the protection of collective freedoms and values in a democratic society. The development of these abilities and skills is not necessarily guaranteed by traditional educational systems, which may have not yet integrated adequate responses to the ever-changing global information landscape. Initiatives in the United States, including the MIT Center for Constructive Communication and the News Literacy Project , Indian organizations such as Boom and Newschecker, the Indonesian outlet Mafindo, the Africa-based Dubawa and Africa Check programmes, and the Latin American Aos Fatos and Chequeado services are valuable sources of inspiration for the way ahead.
Frustrations and disagreements, fierce rivalries and animosities, and conflicts between individuals, States, and enterprises have ultimately found their optimal solutions in the rule of law and its underlying principles. This was the culmination of the long road of human history, which included the scourges of barbarism, arbitrariness, inquisition, enslavement, massive destruction, genocide and other horrors. Sustained awareness and a deep understanding of what human nature is capable of producing in terms of thought and behaviour, from the mundane matters of everyday life to the most complex problems of existence, cannot be a privilege of the few.
A grasp of the ambivalence of human nature, which includes the potential for self-destruction, should be combined with learning systems that integrate a rigorous scientific methodology to circumvent deceptive intellectual information traps, avoid cognitive errors and reach the truth based on evidence as a way of life. This set of essential skills should not just be a feature of specialized professions but a strict, general, societal prerequisite, at least at a certain realistic level, shared by the maximum number of citizens for societal stability, cohesion and unity in the context of unregulated, globalized social media. The task seems daunting, but accompanied by substantial and ethical regulations of social media and the Internet, while ensuring full preservation of the spirit of freedom of expression, concrete and expeditious progress can be achieved.
Such proposals correlate well with the affordability and accessibility of quality education, and force all stakeholders to revisit the definition of equity embedded in conventional economic thinking. The privatization of education, along with interconnected issues such as the privatization of health and excessively high flexible labour markets, are at every crisis exposed as generators of acute societal inequality, disunity and despair. This perspective challenges us to dig further intellectually to redefine individualism in terms that are more positive for the larger society.
Individualism can be reassessed positively by adopting a long-term dimension, which implies, among other things, rendering quality education free to all as the best societal insurance policy. The socioeconomic model in place in many present-day democracies relies on a short-term mindset, which increasingly resembles a kind of magical thinking; it has been factually discredited over and over again in the last decade or so but remains stubbornly resilient. Future-proof skills are highly competitive, and are highly valued in business and society at large. They are not easily gained or developed but are certainly worth the difficulty, given the potential long-term costs of not embracing them.
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