IEEE Future Directions
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So, let’s continue looking at those skills, sought by companies today, that according to the WEF Future of Jobs 2018 Report will be showing a declining interest (please notice that although the list is taken from the WEF Report, the commentary is mine and may not reflect the WEF position):
- Visual, auditory and speech abilities/reading writing, math and active listening
As for the memory, verbal auditory and spatial abilities mentioned in the previous post here we see the impact of new technologies that are making machines (soft agents as well as robots, thanks to soft agents) better and better in managing these activities.The progress in areas like affective computing, that is starting to find concrete applications in Wellbeing and it is even explored in virtual reality landscapes, is providing more engaging and human like interaction with machines and these are not suffering from distraction and have continuous availability (they can actually multiply themselves to serve thousands of people at the same time – a clear advantage for call centres!). These technologies are not perfect, but the expectation is that within 4 years, by 2022, they will best humans. - Management of personnel/Management of financial, material resources
This is an area that might be surprising to many. Managing people seems to require a sort of empathy that is not what you would associate to a machine. Yet, in a competitive world we are seeing a convergent path: on one side HR that tends to become more and more “neutral”, company focussed rather than employees focussed (I am not taking a stand, I may not like it but I recognise the trend. It has been like that for several companies in the US and it is starting to take roots in European companies as well); on the other side soft agents that can learn a company culture and express it in their activity, thus being able to perform the management of personnel as well (actually cheaper and more effectively) as an HR department.
Similarly there is expectation that by 2022 the capability to manage financial parameters and material resources will be doable by soft agents decreasing the need of having humans taking care of that. - Technology installation and maintenance/Technology use, monitoring and control
Technology has grown more and more complicated (sometimes also complex) in the last 30 years to the point that company needed to hire specialists to take care of what was needed, and operate the underlying technology/infrastructure. Companies still do hire specialist for LANs, Servers, Security… Yet, according to the WEF report these skills needs/appeal for companies will be declining by 2022. One reason, paradoxically, is that technology complexity is starting to exceed the capability of humans, and it is so rapidly evolving that the skills of people taking care of technology would need to evolve at the same pace, reaching the point that people will have to spend their whole time in continuous education with no time left for the actual management of technology. And it might get worse. We have already reached that point if we look at “repair”: for many products it is easier (more practical and economically wiser) to replace them rather than to repair them. On the other hand, technology is getting smarter in auto deployment, auto-configuration, self monitoring and self-fixing. - Coordination and time management/Quality control and safety awareness
Coordination of resources, as the scenario is shifting towards a larger involvement of (soft) machines is becoming more and more complex with profitability depending on how fast can resources be allocated and task distributed among available resources, here and now. This is requiring intelligence that goes beyond the one humans can provide. Complex logistic systems (from the planning of a flight to the delivery of a parcel, from harvesting to replenishing shelves in a department store) are more and more governed by software with artificial intelligence and machine learning having a growing role.
By 2022 according to the WEF report we will see a decreasing interest of companies to rely on humans skills in this area, trusting computer effectiveness much more.
The scenario depicted so far is clearly raising concern for our species and for the possibility of finding jobs. However, in the WEF report there are some good news, the expectation of new skills coming to the fore and demanded by companies in 2022. That’s for a next post.
