Shoots: My five insights on AI and work

[00:00:24.410] – Paul Miller

Welcome to Rewilding Work. I’m Paul Miller. So far I’ve been talking to senior leaders who are transforming the world of work in their organizations, hearing how they did this inside the IMF and Cisco, for example, so you can plant those seeds inside your workplace. Today I have something a little different. No guests, just me.

[00:00:47.770] – Paul Miller

And I’ll be offering five reflections on a topic of the day that we’re going to call shoots, in line with the Rewilding Work concept of three seeds. So here are my first five shoots about the topic of the day. And it’s got to be AI and work.

[00:01:07.750] – Paul Miller

Shoot number one. AI is not new. It’s been 70 years in the making, so don’t rush to judgment. Artificial intelligence didn’t start in November 2022, when ChatGPT was released as a web app by San Francisco-based firm OpenAI. The earliest successful AI program was actually written in 1951, even before I was born by Christopher Strachey, who became Director of the Programming Research Group at the University of Oxford. But something did happen in November 2022, and that was because when ChatGPT launched, we all discovered an experience we could play with.

[00:01:53.190] – Paul Miller

It was no longer just a concept, and ChatGPT became the fastest-growing internet service ever, reaching 100 million users in just two months after launch. Through OpenAI’s $10 billion deal with Microsoft, this AI tech is now being built into the Office software and the Bing search engine. Google then started fast tracking its own rollout of its Chatbot LaMDA. So while we are being told to react fast now on AI, we need as employers and societies to take the time to think carefully about this new power tool. Rapid, reactive decision making does not produce good outcomes.

[00:02:42.450] – Paul Miller

Shoot number two. AI is not good or bad, but it is significant. Think of it more like a weather system. There’s some weather we like, some we don’t, but weather affects us all. Or you can think of it more like the arrival of money into a barter economy. Just imagine that.

[00:03:02.330] – Paul Miller

Would it be good, bad, indifferent? So approach it with respect, maybe some fear, but don’t state your colors to a mast. Don’t fall into the trap of being either a tech utopian or a tech luddite. Stay open. And by the way, there is not one AI, but many AIs.

[00:03:23.470] – Paul Miller

And there will be lots of AIs focused on different fields, like for example, healthcare or medicine or we could think about releasing AI inside the workplace of Vodafone. That’s really different to it being used by a family at home. Or consider what happened when Samsung let ChatGPT have a free rein inside the company and in turn suffered some painful lessons. That’s as silly as shutting the door and pretending the AI issue will evaporate. Treat it with respect, explore and stay open.

[00:03:59.710] – Paul Miller

Shoot number three. Inside the workplace, adopt AI, but within an ethical and principled corporate framework. Large companies must use AI, or generative AI as it is more accurately called, but they need to do so within a framework. Inside my own company, the Digital Workplace Group, we’re using ChatGPT, but we would never let it crawl through our research reports, which often contain confidential material as while that might be useful in terms of outputs, we would never expose confidential information to ChatGPT.

[00:04:39.050] – Paul Miller

So ethical and principal playbooks need to be developed that act as guardrails. For example, if the marketing division of a retail leader is deploying a Microsoft AI, the employees deserve and need to know what the implications are. Will this make their own work obsolete? And if so, what’s in it for them? This is not a luddite approach, but a human nature one.

[00:05:06.920] – Paul Miller

For work, this is more like the arrival of steam into an agricultural society. Roles, tasks, industries will change, but work evolves. And most people do work today that barely even existed 30 years ago. Most parents don’t understand the work their kids do at all. Give employees the security to experiment, but explain what the ethical model and principles of your company are.

[00:05:37.550] – Paul Miller

Shoot number four. Time for universal basic income and an AI tax. This is a more societal and political point. Let’s assume that Goldman Sachs is right-ish that by 2030 and 300 million jobs will disappear. They actually said the equivalent of 300 million full time jobs. But let’s agree that work roles, tasks and jobs will disappear for large numbers of people.

[00:06:06.470] – Paul Miller

We need a universal basic income for affected societies. That’s a set amount of money into the accounts of those affected. UBI is growing, and there are now more than 100 UBI pilots happening around the world, providing a cushion or safety net to help soften the changes that are coming. And we have already had a successful dry run of a similar approach through the COVID furlough system. That was money paid to people each month, and it worked well, helping many people during a period of upheaval.

[00:06:44.600] – Paul Miller

But how do we fund the UBI? I would advocate an AI or robot tax. So when AI takes out a third of the workforce of IBM, as they have predicted, IBM doesn’t just bank the efficiency and the overhead savings, but pays a modest tax for the AI that is deployed. If I work for IBM and get exited due to AI, then my tax doesn’t reach the government coffers. But the government still needs that money.

[00:07:15.740] – Paul Miller

So we devise a system to tax the tech that replaced the people. Just because this is a hard problem to solve, doesn’t mean it can’t be addressed. Bill Gates was talking about a robot tax a decade ago when we all got very heated up about robots and self-service checkouts.

[00:07:36.210] – Paul Miller

Shoot number five. You are a natural system, not a machine. All the better to apply AI. Natural systems can adapt and evolve much better than mechanistic and rigid ones. Think of your company more like a forest than a factory. More like an organism than an organization. When we experience significant changes in our own lives, we cope better when we remain fluid, adaptable and responsive, as circumstances require.

[00:08:08.470] – Paul Miller

We can all agree on the power and importance of this latest AI wave. But the companies who will handle these technologies best will be those that see themselves more like natural systems than rigid machines. Like a tree swaying in a storm shedding leaves in winter to enhance its flexibility. That’s how we need to think and behave as companies, as waves of AI flow into the world of work and society. I hope the five shoots were useful and do subscribe to the DWG channel for Rewilding Work episodes so they arrive automatically and see you next time.