Speaker 1: Hello, habit Mechanics.
It's Dr John Finn here.
I hope you're well Just recording a walking pod.
Over the last probably seven days, there has been a lot of
discussion about just how devastating AI is potentially
going to be to human jobs is potentially going to be to human
jobs, and some commentators completely buy into this.
On the other end, some people say this is all hype.
It's not real, and I thought a really interesting resource that
I wanted to point out to people is the BBC Reef Lecture Series.
The BBC do Christmas Reef Lecture Series and in I think it
was 2021, december 2021, so before we had the release and
the discussions around things like chat, gtp, these new
generative AI systems, the lecturer if that's the right
word for the Reef Lecture Series was Professor Stuart Russell,
and Professor Stuart Russell is let me get this right he is the
founder of the Centre of Human Compatible Artificial
Intelligence at University of California, berkeley, and I
listened to that lecture series.
I think there's there's at least four one hour lectures and he
he goes.
He starts from covering ai at a very high level and he goes
into these different kind of verticals, if you like, for how
ai is going to impact humans in different sectors, and there's
nothing hype around what he's saying.
He's coming out almost from a cold clinical academic
perspective.
So he's actually he's English, but, yeah, he's a professor at
Berkeley, california and he has a very measured way of talking
about this stuff.
And what surprised me is how much of what he he's not really
seen.
He's not really.
You don't really hear about him , stuart Russell.
You hear more about the godfathers of AI, like, I think,
geoffrey Hinton, who's another English guy, and there's a
couple of I think it's two of the godfathers, isn't there One
French and I think one maybe Canadian?
You don't really hear much about Stuart Russell, but if
you're thinking, is this stuff real that I'm hearing about?
Listen to those lecture series because he's almost predicted
the future, um, without the hype , just in real terms, and it's
really interesting.
One of the things he talks about, because he's pretty
dangerous, is the use of things like drones and and you know,
just this week we saw this almost like SS-style operation
from the Ukrainian armed forces against the Russian armed forces
using these drone technologies.
That wouldn't have been thought about probably even 12, 24
months ago, if that even possible.
And all this is being driven by AI and I think, ultimately,
what Stuart Russell is saying, which completely dovetails with
the most extreme.
What people might find the most extreme impact that AI is going
to have, is that just slowly but surely, um, ai is gonna get
better and better at being able to do every single role, every
single task that humans currently do, and that doesn't
just right now.
We're seeing roles like HR.
I think Microsoft just laid off not Microsoft IBM just laid off
8,000 people from their HR departments.
We're seeing, I think, I think in the UK, I think in the UK I
think this is the figure for the last 12 months that graduate
recruitment is down 67% Because companies don't need low-skilled
workers anymore and most of what graduates do is low-skilled
compared to the people that have been doing their jobs for
20 years.
They can just get AI to do that .
Finance is being affected.
Accountants is being affected.
Skilled compared to their, the people that have been doing
their jobs for 20 years right, they can just get ai to do that.
Finance is being affected, accountants is being affected.
So we're seeing right now the emergence of these technologies
and they are disrupting more cognitive skills, but actually
what stuart russell also points out is they're going to move
into the physical skills as well .
So lots of people are moving to sort of the trades, but that
will also be disrupted those sectors by AI.
And, if you, there's a really interesting Amazon TV programme
called Clarkson's Farm and I suppose Jeremy Clarkson's been
like mustard people like him.
I don't like him.
But what I find really interesting, having done quite a
lot of work for John Deere John Deere are, I think, the biggest
manufacturer of agricultural equipment in the world and they
see themselves as a technology company.
So when you go to John Deere HQ in the UK you know they have
boats that are cutting the grass , for example, but they have
algorithms that are predicting you know what.
What's the best way to get the best return on this crop?
What's the best way to promote healthy soil conditions?
And what's really interesting in the jeremy clarkson
documentary for me is actually how technology is being used not
software, hardware to actually do jobs that farmers would have
used to have done, whether that's putting in a post like
just something being hammered down, wrapping a hair bale, the
combine harvesters how clever they are.
I think that's a great demonstration of what the future
is going to start to look like again.
The machines are not doing it by themselves, they're co-working
with humans.
But one thing that stuart russell says is that the last
sort of defendable set of skills for humans are going to be what
I would call human AI performance psychology skills.
It's going to be the skills of humans helping other humans,
because that is going to remain the most difficult thing for AI
to be able to do.
And you know, in my new book, train your Brain for the AI
Revolution, I point towards this in chapter I think 27.
I talk about three roles for the future that I think will emerge
.
There will be, I think, the innovators that are.
Just their job is to solve complex problems.
That's what they're working on every day.
How do we create a vaccine for this?
How do we create buildings that absorb CO2 instead of pump it
out?
How do we build better education systems for our young
people that are going to allow them to thrive in the AI world?
So we're going to have these innovators and then we're going
to have the automators people that build the systems.
So already we're seeing to have the automators people that
build the systems.
So already we're seeing that medium skilled developers have
been pretty much wiped out by ai already.
Let's be real ai is a baby.
It's just a baby.
It's just a beginning and it's already wiping out very skilled
jobs, but we're still going to need humans in the loop on this
stuff.
Um, so we're going to have the automators that are going to
build the software and the hardware and, you know, build
the machines that actually do that.
But then the third role is going to be human ai performance
psychology coaches, because the innovators and the automators
are only going to be as good as their ability to manage their
brain states and consistently get into their high charge brain
states, which is the the type of highly mental, complex
thinking that ai is is least well able to do so.
Human air performance psychology coaches are going to
be working with humans to make it, with innovators and the
automators to help them to do that.
So I'm not trying to paint some dystopian picture of the future.
I think this is real and it's emerging and all the evidence
that we're seeing is all pointing in the same direction.
But if you think it's high, I would really recommend just go
to the BBC or you can google this or use chatGTP or something
.
Look for the Wraith lecture series by professor stewart
russell and I think it's from december 2021 and I think you'll
find it very instructive.
No hype, it's just.
This is how this world leading expert in this technology this
is this is what he was predicting would be unfolding.
Um, you know, in the years ahead, and now we are.
You know, we're four and a half years since those those lecture
series was recorded and it's surprising how much of what he
said is actually coming to fruition.
Um, so I hope that's insightful .
Um, I I see my role here as I want to help people, I want to
educate people, but we need to be realistic.
We can't bury our heads in the sand on this.
We've got to educate ourselves.
We've got to learn about the tech, we've got to learn how to
embed it into our work cultures, into our workflows and our work
cultures into our workflows and , yeah, and our work cultures.
Um, so, yeah, I hope that was interesting.
Remember, we now have our ai era leadership accelerator, where
we are turning up every day and we're supporting people to
become ai era leaders that are future proofed, that are in
demand experts, and that includes becoming a ai era coach
as well.
So if that's of interest to you , um, you can access that via.
I'll put a link actually in this podcast.
Beneath this podcast.
We're running, uh, fourday challenges as part of that
programme.
So it's a monthly challenge programme where there's a new
challenge every month and we have four-day mini challenges in
the middle of that and we just did our first one last week and
the feedback's been excellent.
So I'm really excited about these and the benefits that it's
delivering to people.
So, yeah, if that's of interest , you can check out the link
beneath the podcast or just contact us via our website.
We can give you more details.
It'd be great to see you in there.
Okay, enjoy the rest of the day and remember you're only ever
one brain state habit away.