Future opportunities will lie in the creation of new knowledge either by engaging in work that is original or solving problems that have not been solved before. This means entrepreneurship,' writes professor Arya
What is the outlook that we need in an increasingly uncertain future of work? This is a future with geo-political and economic uncertainty and global warming.
Add to this state of flux an environment in which jobs are increasingly being taken over by automation and machines, with it being clear that Artificial Intelligence-inspired technologies are here to stay and will dramatically change our lives.
This means that any low-skill jobs, be they in manufacturing, software development, and media are soon going to be taken over by machines. Newspaper reports already have stories of copywriters in America losing their jobs and ending up with alternative careers.
Television channels are testing out new anchors that are totally artificially generated. With new programming tools, programmers are becoming more productive, so we need fewer programmers to do the same work. The story goes on to other spheres.
Those who have used ChatGPT and other generative-AI models have discovered the science of “prompt engineering”. Designing better prompts will help us get the solution that we’re looking for. But ChatGPT still depends on human expertise to spot when it “hallucinates” and gives a wrong answer.
Even prompt engineering will eventually be replaced by the skill of articulating a problem to the system for it to solve itself. ChatGPT is still really a glorious search engine that responds based on the existing realms of knowledge that it’s been trained on. Through Google searches, for example, we get thrown many answers that we need to sift through to find the one we’re looking for. However, ChatGPT gives a measured and nuanced response.
AI systems will soon become intelligent to a degree that we need to develop less skills with prompts. So, future opportunities will lie in in the creation of new knowledge either by engaging in work that is original or solving problems that haven’t been solved before.
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In other words, engaging with life in a more entrepreneurial manner to create novel work is going to be crucial. This entrepreneurial spirit could help create products, services, intellectual property or even startups whose purpose is to fulfil as yet unmet market needs.
However, the market for creating new services is limited in the contracting advanced economies of the world. In India, however, there’s a certain optimism. This is because we are a fast-growing economy with a huge appetite for new products and services for an increasingly affluent and demanding population of over 1.4 billion people. Half this population is below the age of 29 years.
If we import future solutions from abroad, we pay 10x the amount required for us to make them locally. There are huge opportunities in building and delivering products and services for our own growing economy where every problem is an opportunity for a startup. The bigger the market, the bigger the opportunity.
But where’s the trained human resource to build these new products and services? Our entire education system is geared towards rote learning and passing exams. Most students are still taught to believe that if they do well in exams, they’ll get a good job.
There is a risk-averse attitude in our society strongly biased against entrepreneurial pursuits. However, the job market today is demanding youngsters with state-of-the-art skills and a host of other abilities.
The school system and higher-education system is hard pressed to deliver young people with such skillsets and the “equipment” to “surf” modern life and its challenges.
