GenAI and the Future of Work: Where is Your Job on the Wheel of Fortune?
The more you work with your hands to serve people the better
Deloitte puts a brave face on GenAI’s impact on the workforce, stating that “GenAI’s future success will hinge on a renewed focus on humans.”
They are likely correct, but that is somewhat akin to saying buy stocks because they go up. Which stocks will go up and which humans will have a renewed focus? Isn’t that the more important question?
No one can say exactly which jobs will be saved but it is already clear what types of jobs are at risk.
👉TAKEAWAYS:
The GenAI “Wheel of Fortune”
👍YOU WILL KEEP YOUR JOB:
Physical Jobs: both routine and non-routine need hand skills to accomplish a task and are perfectly safe. So tell your kids to become skilled trade people, and they’ll be bulletproof.
Social Emotional Jobs: Therapists, social workers, and salespeople will all be spared. I confess I’m not sure about salespeople unless they sell products that are emotionally charged.
👎👍YOU MAY KEEP YOUR JOB:
Creative Jobs: Here human creativity is supposed to guide the creative process, but Deloitte seems to turn a blind eye to all the artists, many of whom were gig employees who are out of work due to AI.
Data Analysts: I don’t think that basic level data analysts will survive. No one will work or be responsible for spreadsheet work anymore. So I think job safety is a 50/50 coin toss.
👎FIND NEW WORK:
Routine Cognitive Jobs: This is the hardest hit category, so if you’re in this group reskill immediately. There is no hope for repetitive work that AI does better than humans.
Non-Routine Cognitive Jobs: While Deloitte calls this work safe, I call it “safe for now.” You are behind routine cognitive jobs by about 5 years or more. The handwriting is on the wall as AI only gets smarter!
👊STRAIGHT TALK👊
“The Wheel of Fortune” in ancient Western philosophy is a symbol of the capricious nature of fate and is spun by the goddess Fortuna. Some gain, some lose on every spin.
I think it’s a perfect metaphor for Deloitte’s wheel showing GenAI job impact.
We all know that GenAI will have a big impact on routine office work, frankly, that is a category of work that has declined for years due to digitization.
Where the wheel of fortune becomes more interesting is in the margins. Non-routine jobs, creative work, and data analysts are all riding the fence.
For each of these job categories, there is a certain percentage that does work that can’t possibly be replaced by GenAI and a percentage that will with time.
The problem is that GenAI will get progressively smarter, and the impact on these jobs in the margins will become ever more severe.
Still, this doesn’t mean companies are going to fire everyone. The reality is that the digital boom of the 90’s to the present did not result in massive job losses in most sectors, banking included. What changed was the type of employee.
GenAI will likely have the same impact, changing the type of employee once again and not causing massive drops in headcount.
Still, this means little if you’re the employee being terminated.
Illustration from John Lydgate's Siege of Troy, showing the Wheel of Fortune held/turned by the Quene of Fortune. On the left, Dame Doctryne is accompanied by two male figures, Holy Texte and Scrypture, and two female figures, Glose and Moralyzacion. They are shown helping people rise on Fortune's Wheel because, Lydgate says, scripture is about that which shall fall. Mid 15th-century
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