🏝️ World without Jobs, 🎭 eThots and Unfair advantages in Creator Economy, 🧑🎓 AI-Learning
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Welcome!
Today we’re going to cover:
How to thrive and prepare for a worlf without jobs 🏝️
The rise of e-Thots and unfair advantages in the creator economy 🎭
Wasted time at work 🗑️
How AI is going to change Learning 🧑🎓
Let’s dive right in! 🤿
🏝️Building a World Without Jobs
In one of the recent articles by my favorite workforce futurist, Andy Spence, you can enjoy a great run of the history of work and his predictions on how we will need to build a world that…doesn’t need jobs. It made me think of Jeremy Rifkin’s “The End of Work” and “Zero Marginal Cost Society”, where it’s argued that we are on the brink of a post-capitalist era, where automation, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things will create a near-zero marginal cost society, in which goods and services are nearly free and abundant. What I like about Andy’s arguement is that he argues about practical possibilities, like:
Blurried lines between employees and contractors - this is enabled by more and better ways to do sourcing of talent, whether full-time or fractional/’bounty’ project-based.
Career Polygamy - (couldn’t find a better way to name it, sorry) where some form of basic income, plus democratization of technology is breaking down barriers to entry for many people to try out their way into the ‘Passion Economy’ and multiple projects/career-switching.
Technology - we already discussed how blockchain is a foundational layer that can empower data ownership, better credentialing and many more things around the world of work.
Plus, you get a 20-minute keynote speech that he did at the Future.Works 2022 conference in Lisbon, which gives even more color to the above. Check it out here.
🎭 The Rise of e-Thots, and Unfair advantages in the Creator Economy
What you see right here in the photo (or if you prefer, check-out these videos) is an army of Chinese ‘e-Thots’ livestriming from the street. "E-thots" is a term that refers to people who use the internet, particularly social media platforms, to share sexually suggestive or provocative content in exchange for attention, validation, and sometimes money from their followers - and probably taking on a larger definition at this point.
Now, why would they all try to do this from a specific location, such as the one you’re seeing?
Sure, they are also ‘collaborating’ in some sort of wya, but mainly because “They are gaming the location feature. Streaming platforms allow users to search locally- wealthier neighborhoods mean much higher donations because of the perceived availability of the streamer”.
Very scary.
🗑️ Work, the Wasted Years
A recent article by the Economist, covers a study that shows that white-collar workers waste a significant amount of time during their working lives on pointless activities such as typos, logging into things, closing things, tidying up, formatting tasks, and redoing work. These activities, such as correcting typos and entering passwords, can waste up to 180 days or half a year of a 45-year career. Technology can be used to help with these tasks, but ultimately years of workers' lives are wasted on these activities. This raises some interesting questions, like:
How can technology help to reduce wasted time in the workplace?
What other types of activities take up a significant amount of time in the workplace?
Are there any other ways to save time, besides using technology?
Another thing I’d like to thow in this topic, is focus. Considering open-space settings, or general intrusions - one of the stats that has blown my mind a few years ago, and I still remind myself of is how long it takes for the brain to refocus once you’ve had a distraction. I’ll put it in graphic so it stands out better:
Obviously this means that if you’re thinking of ‘efficiency’ or productivity at work, this is a huge loss / leakage that goes completely under the radar and isn’t properly addressed by companies. Only individuals who try to time-box their agendas, can try to combat this - but it’s an incredibly hard fight if it’s not made mandatory or regulated at a wider level.
🧑🎓 5 Predictions for the Future of Learning in the Age of AI
AI is transforming learning, knowledge and education by providing personalized and adaptive learning experiences, new tools for teachers and students, and better assessment and credentialing processes. It can also provide access to experts and historical figures, and help with fact-checking information. a16z (Andreesen Horowitz), one of the largest VC funds, has just taken a stab in summarizing some of these trends - which of course are going to be closely linked with the future of work (we often don’t remember that learning → work):
1-1 Learning Model - Getting one-on-one support for services like tutoring, coaching, mentorship, and even therapy was once only available to the well-off. AI will help democratize these services for wider audiences. Some cool examples:
Historical Figures lets users converse with important historical figures like Abraham Lincoln, Plato, and Benjamin Franklin
Character AI lets anyone create “characters,” real or imaginary, to have conversations with.
Individualized Learning - With AI, it will become possible to personalize everything from learning modalities and needs (e.g., visual versus text versus audio) to content types (e.g., easily bring in a kid or adult’s favorite character or favorite hobby / genre) to curriculum. It will also be possible to teach one’s skill level and gaps more precisely: software can track your knowledge, test your progress, and repeat or reformat customized content for you based on your knowledge and gaps.
AI-first Tools for Students and Teachers - Today, teachers spend a significant amount of time grading, creating lesson plans, and preparing for their classes. AI, having learned from millions of earlier educational materials, can reduce teachers’ workloads by, among other things, creating drafts of their plans and syllabi. Watch out for educators going on TikTok to talk about how they use ChatGPT for example. Students, use tools such as Photomath and Numerade, have popped up and are helping students solve and understand complex math and science problems.
Credentialing and Assessments - If you’ve been following Work3 for a while, you may be aware of my fixation with this topic already, so feel free to skip (For those who haven’t, I’ve covered it widely in the article on The Internet of Careers, or Employee Recognition on the Blockchain). New assessment tools will be necessary too, to adjust to this new technology and paradigms shifts (much like it happened with the calculator, wikipedia, etc).
Fact Checking - We all know AI is great, but also sometimes full of…mistakes and biases. Gmail’s sentence completion AI assumes an investor must be male, and tens of other examples of how using historic data and information will spit out things we don’t need it to, are a big problem. But also incorrect information is, and with the boom of fake news, this will become a huge area / problem to be solved (not just for education, but this could be even more delicate).
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That’s it for this issue, but as always please make sure to comment, share or reply to this email to suggest any particular topic you’d like to see covered - it helps (and makes me happy to connect!).
Career polygamy is a fun way of putting it. I have used "portfolio career" in my writing.