Generative AI & the Workforce of the Future
Do you ever feel like you are witnessing a unique moment in time?
We’re in one right now.
Generative AI is coming at a time of convergence that will ultimately have a huge impact on the future of the workforce. Technology is taking a leap forward, and the people who are most poised to help advance it suddenly find themselves with extra time. In 2022, tech companies laid off more than 95,000 employees. In Q1 of 2023 alone, 135,000 tech workers lost their jobs. Just as GPT 4 launched. While this is a challenging time for many workers, it has also created an opportunity for many laid off to dive into the many Generative AI use cases and opportunities.
Photo by Christina Morillo
We’ve seen technological advances combined with available labor propel growth before.
The Industrial Revolution: In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the invention of new machines and manufacturing processes led to a huge demand for labor, not a decline! Workers migrated from rural areas to cities, and factory owners were able to hire many workers at relatively low wages. This surplus of labor helped to drive the rapid growth of the textile, iron, and coal industries and fueled the Industrial Revolution.
The Space Race: In the mid-20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union competed to be the first country to put a human in space and on the moon. The massive investment in resources and talent led to the development of new technologies such as rockets, space suits, and computer systems. Many talented scientists and engineers were hired to work on the project, leading to significant advancements in a relatively short time.
The Internet Tech Boom: During the 1990s, the rise of the internet and the proliferation of personal computers led to a huge demand for skilled tech workers. Many startups were able to hire talented programmers and engineers, and the excess of human capital fueled the growth of the industry. This period saw the rapid development of new technologies such as search engines, e-commerce platforms, and social media platforms.
Change is coming. But it doesn’t have to be scary. In each of these cases, advances in science and technology drove increased demand for skilled talent.
Preparing employees for change
We’re in a perfect storm for organizational adoption of Generative AI. With the weight of multiple people's duties on top of their own, employees who have survived layoffs are struggling to keep up with their workload. In response, generative AI is becoming an increasingly attractive solution for getting more done. But are they doing it safely and mitigating risk along the way? Are they considering ethics as part of their exploration? Company leaders need to get out in front of this and create safe spaces for employees to play and explore while ensuring company IP and customer data remain walled off from potential threats.
The use of AI in the workforce is not a new concept, though companies have struggled to significantly transform their organizations to reap the benefits of it. But the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated its adoption. "The pandemic has acted as an accelerant, with organizations adopting technology much faster than before" - George Zarkadakis, author of In Our Own Image: Savior or Destroyer? The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence. McKinsey predicts that the adoption of automation and AI will be accelerated by 10 years due to the pandemic.
But Generative AI presents a whole different opportunity. There’s no longer a barrier between most users and the AI itself. We don’t have to rely on a developer every time to help us automate our workflows or program complex solutions. Any employee who wants to understand and implement Generative AI will find ways to automate tasks, streamline operations, and reduce costs.
According to Sarah Burnett, Executive Vice President at Everest Group, "We are seeing companies using automation and AI technologies to maintain business continuity and stay operational during the pandemic. This trend is likely to continue, and we will see a significant impact on the workforce in the future."
This trend has not gone unnoticed by industry leaders. The record adoption of generative AI is also creating new opportunities for the workforce. In its first 5 days, ChatGPT acquired 1M users and now boasts 100M active users.
We can already see the impact of technology talent as new AI startups come out of stealth mode daily. As more strategists and language lovers jump into the generative AI space, models and prompts are getting stronger, and responses are far more nuanced, and specific, and offer deeper insights.
The market of employees who have this deeper connection to how Generative AI will shape the future is growing exponentially, and this is an opportunity that companies should not miss. Recruiters predict that the market will pick back up by Q3, and companies need to be ready for this new workforce phenomenon.
Building an augmented workforce
Most cannot predict what roles they will need six months from now because they have not yet tested AI internally. They don't know where the opportunities are, nor can they imagine how to get there. So the first step is to start testing AI internally, identifying use cases, and creating an implementation roadmap. The more companies use AI to automate tasks, the more efficient and productive their existing workforce will become. This, in turn, will free up employees to focus on higher-value tasks that require human intervention and creativity. But until we test some of these pilots and use cases, and discover new ones, we won’t necessarily know where to deploy this skilled workforce.
Photo by Christina Morillo
While AI will automate some tasks, it will also create new roles and opportunities for employees to develop new skills and expertise. These initial tests should point to where companies should make their next investments. What type of upskilling their existing workforce will need to effectively leverage Generative AI.
If predictions are correct and hiring ramps up quickly in late 2023, we are going to have another wave of candidate-driven job markets. HR expert Josh Bersin says, “The companies that will win the war for talent are those that prioritize employee growth and development, and offer clear paths for career advancement." So employers need to figure out now how they will retain existing talent and attract new candidates.
Like with most company-wide transformations, leadership needs to give talent a vision for the future and an active role in navigating toward it.
