Who will robots leave out of work?
We are afraid that robots will soon replace us in the workplace and all processes will be automated. It means that millions of people around the world may be out of work. According to economists Michael Osborne and Carl Frey, 47% of our jobs will disappear in 2033. In China, the situation is even more sad — according to the World Bank, 77% of jobs may disappear there. The forecast of the McKinsey analytical company is also not encouraging: if Europeans do not want to become victims of unemployment, they will have to say goodbye to the usual “one life — one profession” scenario and learn new skills, since, by 2030, this problem will affect more than 90 million workers. In Russia, about 20 million workers may be replaced by robots by 2030. And the coronavirus has only made the problem worse.
What should you do? How to stay in demand?
Only those who will not just try to compete with Artificial Intelligence, but those who will have a competitive advantage will remain in demand.
And preferably more than one. In other words, these are people who have knowledge and skills that are not subject to automation, cannot be mastered and imitated by algorithms. Futurologist Gerd Leonhard introduces the concept of “androrithms”(the opposite of “algorithms”), that is, some non-computable attributes that make a human a human. These attributes are unique to humans and can never be assigned by a machine. To androrithms, Leonhard himself refers empathy, intuition, compassion, emotional intelligence, imagination, and Martin Heidegger, Dasein. I will name another non — calculable attribute that is a competitive advantage of a person-this is integrative thinking. Today, there is no struggle between a machine and a person — there is a struggle between two types of thinking: algorithmic thinking and integrative thinking.
What is integrative thinking, and how to develop it?
Most people are used to thinking in the “either-or” mode; it is difficult for them to keep two mutually exclusive ideas in their head simultaneously and, without discarding any of them, generate a new one. It is also difficult for them to create a synthesis of knowledge and skills from different disciplines. Integrative thinking is the ability to perceive two opposing ideas in such a way as to create through them a new image that contains elements of both, but at the same time surpasses each separately.
I want to emphasize that this is not just about one type of thinking. It is a critical meta-skill that is a human advantage and will never be mastered by a machine, no matter what stage of development Artificial Intelligence will soon reach.
The world is too complicated, and the challenges we face today require a comprehensive and multifaceted approach. We can no longer limit ourselves to narrow specialization. Today, only integrative thinking and interdisciplinary skills can become key to solving the 21st century’s issues.
You may ask how to develop an integrative mindset. Unfortunately, this is not taught anywhere. The entire modern educational model is focused on forming a specialist of a narrow profile who has passed the “school of skills and competencies,” but not the “school of knowledge.” The result is obvious: today’s skills and competencies will become obsolete tomorrow and need to be upgraded immediately. A person is involved in an endless race, replacing one worn-out part with another. Without fundamental knowledge, he has nowhere to string the skills he has learned. As a result, we do not get a person who has realized his potential, but a “one-button specialist” — not with a holistic worldview, but with a “passport of competencies” and a nervous shiver at the thought that tomorrow he will have nowhere to work. And, of course, he knows nothing about the history of world civilizations, structural linguistics, world culture, classical and modern art, philosophy, anthropology, and so on.
We are afraid that the machine will surpass the man in his abilities. It will definitely surpass — if we are talking about the abilities of a narrow specialist. But it will never surpass the polymath, who has the ability to create atypical combinations of skills, to combine and synthesize knowledge from different disciplines. Only polymaths are able to comprehend and respond to the challenges facing humans in the twenty-first century.
Today, precisely because of the threat of AI, there is a tendency to move from specialization to universalization. We live in a very interesting time, it is fraught with enormous opportunities. This is an Interregnum, an intermediate stage when the old paradigm has already been destroyed, but the new one has not yet emerged. The time for polymaths has come. I am very well aware of this, and therefore, creating the interdisciplinary project Janus Academy, I set myself a big task — to form a new educational paradigm, which is centered on the idea of a polymath. I accept the challenge of time. If you do not want to be on the periphery of world processes, if you do not want your children to leave the walls of educational institutions in the future completely unprepared for the fundamental changes that await them, accept the challenge of time.
