Feel the fear and do AI anyway No time to read?
If you’ve seen the film Don’t Look Up you will know its underlying theme is that of collective denial of impending doom, and the inability to act because of it. I’m leaning quite heavily into this theme today so buckle up, and perhaps have a drink of choice close at hand. 🍸
Quick Hits
- Tech Forecast: AI researchers paint a concerning picture of AI's trajectory by 2027.
- Work Revolution: The robot workforce is coming but will be slow to scale. Knowledge workers on the other hand, don’t need a robot to replace them.
- AI Career Impact: How to benchmark and redefine your value at work
- Future Trends: My attempt to not only talk about AI in this issue! A Twitter thread on societal trends that will reshape our world as much as tech developments.Thanks for reading Look Up! We need all women to be adapting to the new future so feel free to share it.Share
🌐 AI Scenarios (warning - don’t read this one before bedtime)
AI 2027 is this years issue of annual research done by the team at the AI Futures Project. It is just ‘the opinion of five men’ but they’ve proven rather good at forecasting up until now. The Summary is here and may either make you want to dig in deeper or… not look up.
If I had to pull out the key challenges which underpin the mostly unpleasant outcomes the report forecasts it would be:
- AI alignment — which ensures AI’s work is aligned with human existence. That may sound obvious, but the right guard rails are not in place and humans are seen as an impediment to the AI’s work, or competition - that would be an alignment issue.
“AI becomes adversarially misaligned. As the capabilities have improved, without significant human understanding of what’s happening, the models have developed misaligned long-term goals. Previous AIs would lie to humans, but they weren’t systematically plotting to gain power over the humans. Now they are.” - That it is not AI that is the threat in itself, but one large entity or state having total control of it.
“After seizing control, the new ruler(s) could rely on fully loyal ASIs to maintain their power, without having to listen to the law, the public, or even their previous allies.” - The lack of awareness by the general public to AI developments.
”The public is months behind internal capabilities today, and once AIs are automating AI R&D a few months time will translate to a huge capabilities gap. Increased secrecy may further increase the gap. This will lead to little oversight over pivotal decisions made by a small group of AI company leadership and government officials.”
If you want to dig into AI 2027 deeper, but don’t want to read their whole report, I recommend this issue of Memia, by
Ben Reid. It provides quotes alongside his excellent context and some hope of alternative outcomes too!
🤖 The Robot Workforce Cometh - slowly for now
The challenge in getting that robot butler we all want, isn’t the technology but the ability to build them fast enough.
So, jobs involving manual labour have got a reprieve for sometime, however….for those working in what are now being coined KVM roles - roles that can be done with a keyboard, video and a mouse - no robot is required to replace them. Dan forecasts almost total automation of these by 2030. It’s worth reading his whole post to see the jobs he does see having a 'moat’ to protect them. eg. where a human is needed for liability and he also has suggestions for upskilling.
The different timelines of job losses may make finding the new way of rewarding people challenging, although humans need to consume to drive our economies so a government solution such as Universal Basic Income is a scenario many think will become inevitable.
💼 The Great Job Transformation
So, about those ‘KVM’ roles which probably apply to the large number of Look Up subscribers. What to do to buy yourself more time? This is a great read: Yes you will lose your job to AI.
The reality is:
Silicon Valley is selling human augmentation with AI, but CEOs and CFOs are buying human replacement.
Most CFOs won’t blink at 30% lower quality outputs in exchange for 1,000x productivity.
The “you won’t lose your job to AI” line became popular because it quells our anxieties and strokes our egos (“Yes, some people will be affected … but not me.”)
The author suggests this playbook for rethinking your value (more detail under each one in the full newsletter linked above):
Every six months, take an hour and do a really honest check-in. What is the primary value you currently offer the marketplace (or your workplace), and how good is AI at doing it?
1. Benchmark AI to your most valuable output
2. Assume 2x acceleration from AI in 2 years
3. If AI is 50% as good as you, start redefining your role immediately
4. Run the output benchmark test again every 3-6 months
In connection with this, a gem amongst the rubble in the AI2027 report was this:
“In 2026 … people who know how to manage and quality-control teams of AIs are making a killing”.
🔮 Other Trends to Watch
Not tech, but I thought you might need a palate cleanser for your brain!
This is US centric but also has global trends across infrastructure, drone delivery, extreme weather and more. If you like charts you’ll love this.
🎯 Final Thought
Perhaps the most important skill we can develop isn't technical at all - it's adaptability. The ability to pivot, reskill, and reimagine our contributions will likely determine how well we navigate this rapidly changing landscape.
But no one will do this adapting for us. We can make better decisions about where to invest our time, attention, and resources in order to be prepared, or we can ‘hope for the best’. Now, where’s that 🍸?
