A Director of AI in Microsoft was among the recent people the tech giant fired in its recent reorganization. Yes, a huge irony when big tech is breaking profit records, and yet big tech is laying off workers with reckless abandon. Klarna just cut 40% of its workers: “Klarna, the Swedish fintech giant known for its buy-now-pay-later services, has drastically cut its workforce by nearly 40%—a move the company attributes to a combination of artificial intelligence integration and natural attrition.”
But it should not surprise us when you remember the Stage which was one of the most politically lethal adverts created by Obama against Mitt Romney for US Presidency. In that ad, men built a stage to host a town hall meeting for a new owner, and Romney walked on that stage to fire them. They never forgot how they prepared, worked hard, to build that stage, only to be fired on that stage!
As we make AI better, AI will create job dislocations in many companies even AI opens new vistas of opportunities. And those who actually execute their AI projects well will actually have to lose their jobs if indeed they were successful. You cannot make this up: your job is to improve the AI system so that your job will go!
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So what do we do to thrive? It comes down to KNOWLEDGE. Indeed, knowledge because the best AI can do is the “artificial” version of intelligence. What that means is operating at a level where you set a new basis that makes AI lost. Indeed, we need natural wisdom at work because AI is commoditizing intelligence!
How do you contribute at work? Are you self-driven? Do you have that natural energy to get things done? Do you compound what that employer pays you over just becoming a Labourer at work?
Labour-level factor of production will go even as Knowledge-level factor will become extremely valuable. Machines like robots and AI will do Labour-level work. So, we need to evolve to become the knowledge species
Good People, the nature of work is changing. In Nov 2024, we invested in a company with 6 staff . In 4 months of launch, the company has generated $10m revenue purely by creating AI agents as new roles are needed.
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