With a news story on job-stealing AI and automation popping up seemingly every week, anxiety about emerging technologies advancing faster than people can keep up with or predict has never been higher. To tackle this fear head-on, RBC hosted the latest edition of FutureMakers event series yesterday aimed at getting people prepared to “future-proof” their careers.
“In the future, the biggest shift is that all careers are tech careers.”
Speakers Inmar Givoni, autonomy engineering manager at Uber; Leithland Thomas, CTO at Ledgly; Arthur Berrill, head of location intelligence at RBC; and Erin Faulkner, senior manager of monitoring and triage at RBC, all shared personal stories about navigating a workplace getting disrupted by technology.
The event was headlined by Crescendo co-founder and CTO Sage Franch, who shared her vision of a Singularity-powered future, and the place humans have within it. At some point, AI will be more intelligent than humans and drive the world forward—while we’re still in control, Franch explained how we can still guide that path to prevent human obsolescence and design an equitable future for everyone.
“We can choose to not believe these AI overlord types of scenarios. We can choose a better future for ourselves and do our part to make it happen,” Franch said. “We used to think, ‘what can machines do that we can’t?’ Then we build the machines and fill the gaps in human capability. But now we have to think, ‘what can we do that machines can’t?’”
Franch anticipates that in the future, there will be three types of beings: fully AI machines that can optimize the world; ‘hybrid’ humans with their brains connected to the internet, doing jobs that require both human traits like compassion and computational prowess to make decisions about solve problems; and organics, or regular humans, who “preserve creativity and compassion.”
“[They’re] ensuring that we’re teaching empathy and building machines that are doing the right thing for the world,” Franch said. “In this ideal Singularity, all three of these have to work in perfect harmony. They can’t be at war with each other, they have to be positively collaborating.”
To get attendees prepared and thinking about their future careers, Franch shared her predictions for emerging jobs in the 2020s and the 2030s. The 2020s include many jobs that are building the foundation of the future, including blockchain developers, quantum programmers, and haptic specialists.
Emerging careers for the 2020 according @theTrendyTechie at the #FutureMakers Talks! pic.twitter.com/ew89FpdzoO
— Palwasha G. (@palwasha_g) June 5, 2018
As humans become more connected to technology, there will be more of a need for people facilitating that transition. In the 2030s, compassion coaches for hybrid humans will be necessary to help them navigate between two worlds, while AI assimilators will help AI integrate into society.
#FutureMakers All careers are going Tobe tech careers pic.twitter.com/nUPIyNEQ5a
— Arpan Sandhir (@can_ah_duh) June 5, 2018
“In the future, the biggest shift is that all careers are tech careers,” Franch said. To prepare for the future, Franch recommends learning decentralization technology like Ethereum, quantum programming, and machine and deep learning skills. On the less technical side, people should look at designing for immersion, conversations and storytelling, and ethical analysis associated with building AI.
What ties a lot of these jobs together, according to Franch, is the need for human emotions to drive the direction of these technologies.
Photos by Hussain Subhani. BetaKit is a FutureMakers media partner.