How might AI impact productivity and work?

For companies and for careers, the rise of AI will float fewer boats. But our everyday experiences will be transformed for the better.

I was talking with a well-known venture capitalist who remarked that “80% of the work in 80% of jobs will be completed by AI within the next ten years.” This wild projection prompted a number of thoughts and questions. Today, so much of every workflow is still “work” beyond the idea or intention of the workflow. Humanity has always just accepted that ideas are ubiquitous and it’s all about the work that follows.

Work is hard, expensive, and risky. Now, as AI changes the equation, will ideas become more important and the work required less of a moat? Consider the cost of customer support for every company (which can surpass 10% in some cases); what happens when these logic-based workflows and decision trees are all automated with AI? What happens when ideas become the differentiator? What are the implications for society? What will people do with all their newfound free time? No doubt this will be an ongoing exploration, but let’s dive into a few thoughts and implications.

Where will the newfound productivity go (and where not)? More of it will go to entertainment, philosophy, and creative projects than we might think.

• Assuming equal access to powerful AI tools, the work we do will become higher order work. Edison’s famous quip, “genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration” was true in a world where the work to pursue ideas was extremely burdensome and expensive. But AI is changing that. The “workflow” to execute ideas and coordinate actions has underpinned organisational design and the core principle of enterprise software for decades. Now, as workflow itself is reduced and optimised by a step-function, we have an opportunity to reimagine what humans do and who we hire to do it.

• As the quantitative is automated, the qualitative is unleashed. As AI does the “thinking,” we can focus more on “feeling". What might we be able to focus on more when our typical workflow becomes automated? I have always been fascinated by consumer psychology and product cycles devoted to how an experience makes customers feel (after all, customers are more likely to rave about a product doing what they DIDN’T expect than what they did expect). However, in classic companies, we lack the time and there are so many low-hanging quantitative opportunities (A/B tests, incremental improvements in copy and pricing, etc, etc) that we seldom have cycles for exploring the philosophy and heart of a product. I foresee a resurgence of intrigue into the softer and more distinguishing elements of brands and products – new ways of telling a brand story, more “small things that make a big difference” impacting how customers feel about a product, and entirely new practices driven by consumer psychology. In such a world, qualitative skills, psychology, hospitality, emotional intelligence (EQ), and other non-scalable talents will not only become more in demand, but a more central part of a company’s secret sauce.

• Non-scalable work that builds relationships. At the top of my list are non-scalable relationship-driven actions that move the needle for our products or customers. Consider the impact of an especially thoughtful salesperson on your retail experience. Imaging having a live onboarding session for new services you are trialling. Consider the sensation of getting a handwritten note in a box of goods you purchased from a new direct-to-consumer brand. Perhaps we’ll spend less time hiding behind screens and orchestrating scalable campaigns (which will be done by AI), and more time driving word-of-mouth marketing?

• Perhaps Einstein was right, “imagination is more important than knowledge.” As knowledge is instantly accessible, tools for imagination and creative skills will become essential. Pardon my bias, but CREATIVE LITERACY is probably 10x more important than knowing calculus or memorising state capitols in a world where all information – and how the dots connect – is instantly accessible to us. How we educate students – and allocate our human brain power – will fundamentally change. What if our extra capacity of energy and brain power went to creativity – both the creation and consumption sides of the equation? Imagine if everyone knew the art of video editing, took up the art of photography, or felt creatively confident enough to paint or conceive wild prompts for generative creativity tools. I can imagine a world with 1000x more movies, music, live artist exhibitions, and new genres of creativity we can only imagine. Perhaps we are entering “the era of storytelling” – where every brand and person’s story is told in extraordinary ways for the rest of us to enjoy?