HBR: 5 Ways to Develop Talent for an Unpredictable Future
Excerpt from Harvard Business Review article by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
Despite the many clickbaity headlines and apocalyptic fearmongering around AI and job automation, the data are rather clear: As I highlight in my latest book, I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique, you are less likely to lose your job to AI than to another human using AI, especially if you don’t use AI yourself. In that sense, there’s nothing new about the AI age; just like previous disruptive technologies, AI is eliminating some jobs but creating many more new jobs in turn, which desperately require humans.
As illustrated in our recent ManpowerGroup report, 58% of employers see AI as a net creator of new jobs. The problem is that people who are displaced by job automation (for example, brick-and-mortar store managers) don’t automatically have access to all the new jobs that are created by technology (for example, cybersecurity analyst, digital marketer, or AI ethicist). According to the World Economic Forum, half of employees will need reskilling by 2025 to keep up with new technologies, and this figure predates the current generative AI boom…
This will also increase diversity and inclusion. As Harvard’s Joseph Fuller and Christina Langer and Burning Glass Institute’s Matt Sigelman point out: “The shift to skills-based hiring will open opportunities to a large population of potential employees who in recent years have often been excluded from consideration because of degree inflation.” If organizations complain about their inability to find diverse and creative talent, they should stop looking for talent in the same old places and ways.