The World Economic Forum jobs report is out and there is a lot of food for thought wrapped up in these numbers. As always, there's a level of guessing involved in making these predictions, but as someone who has contributed to many WEF reports, the guessers are usually pretty expert. Not shockingly, it found that the most "on rails" work (dealing with numbers and data) was going to be done by AI, while the least "on rails" work (dealing with human emotions and relationships) will still be done by humans, because most humans are definitely off the rails. And like Cathy Hackl found in her work around AI relationships, a GPT partner is great in that they are always on and never mean, but they can't cuddle you on the sofa either.
So the shift we're going to see is a move towards valuing human skills like listening, empathy, and creativity. And transparently, those are skills many people struggle with. They're certainly not taught to many people in any organized way -- while students have to prove they have reading, writing and math skills to advance in school (theoretically, anyway), there is not really coursework on active listening and managing others. And these will be the currency of the future, so we need to start thinking about how we upskill everyone now.
Paradoxically, AI can part of the solution. For the last few years I've been working on projects where learners use AI-powered human avatars to practice communication, and the results have been astonishing. The best part is that these simulations can be created with simple prompts and built and shared at scale. Human trainers are great, but they have time and location constraints, not to mention an inability to create very specific and difficult scenarios. One person I was working with last year was having a hard time managing someone on his team whose English proficiency was limited, was living in her car because of an eviction, and raising two kids solo. That's a hard headspace for a trainer to embody, but an AI-powered avatar was able to ingest all that and come up with something pretty realistic. The manager was able to practice that hard conversation several times, so when it came to the real chat he was comfortable and prepared and could offer empathy and real solutions.
This isn't just for work. I know people using AI to practice talking to partners and friends and parents about hard topics, and it generally works out for the best. You should absolutely NOT break up with your boyfriend using a ChatGPT generated text, but you absolutely should do some role plays and ask for feedback before you sit down to talk it out in person.
AI has limitless potential, and is going to change the way we live and work. If we can harness it for good and use it to make each other kinder, that's a net win.