The AI Automation Paradox

...and the skills you need to navigate the complexities ahead

If you've been paying attention to the winds of change in recent months, you'll have noticed a shift. It wasn't subtle:

• AI technology has been advancing at a rapid pace—without much deep thought into the ethics of what they are doing.

• Tech companies having been madly bolting AI-features onto every tool they can—without refactoring the tools or workflows themselves.

• Large organisations are now pushing staff to utilise AI as much as possible wherever possible—without much prescience of what the future implications of this might be for the organisation as a whole.

Notice a pattern?

Many experts in the space have been publishing their predictions as to how this acceleration plays out over the next handful of years for the world as a whole, and it's not pretty. In the corporate space, predictions are rosy. Filled with euphemisms like "skill-based workforce", and "resilience, flexibility and agility".

I'm here to help ground this for you in the psychology of humans and the composite-organisms that organisations are. What are the incentives here that drive us forwards? What does this mean for companies? And what does this mean for you?

The AI "Gold Rush"

Organisations are now scrambling to get staff excited about AI and utilising it as much as possible. Have you noticed? The dream is this: AI-fuelled efficiencies that ultimately lead to the ability to continue to deliver more with less. At the very least, everyone else is getting onboard with this, we have to be able to compete.

What hasn't been largely understood yet is bolt-on AI features can enable workers to increase the depth of research, integration, creative options, and polish of what they deliver, but they won't save workers a lot of time. So a win for quality of service and richness of service offerings, but not the efficiency gains that organisations are seeking.

Those increases in service quality and service offerings will become the expected norm by consumers. This is the feature-creep we see over time, why most of us live better than medieval royalty. We've seen this trend with every technology that has ever been introduced to humanity (from the mobile phone, to the power loom, to the wheel). Consumers always want more, companies compete by offering more, and AI will enable us to deliver it.

Don't get me wrong, it will still pay short and long term to understand as much as possible about how to work with AI. During this early phase, the skills you need to focus on developing are familiarity with as many AI tools and the meta-skills as you can.

These meta-skills include:

1. Use-case awareness—Understand as many 'use-cases' for AI tools as possible. This will change over time, so keep your finger on the pulse.

2. Prompt Engineering—Learn to to write great prompts and get the best from each type of tool.

3. Validation and Counter-bias—Current generation AI tools have a tendency to reinforce our own biases and can 'hallucinate'. Learn how to validate and counteract those biases.

4. Agentic Workflows—Learn as much as you can about how to chain different tools together into automated workflows.

5. Policy and Ethics—Familiarise yourself with the ethical issues and policy around how you can, can't, should and should't use AI. This space will also evolve over time. We desperately need it.

The Great Agentic Transformation

At some point organisations will start to realise that the real AI efficiency gains will come from Agentic Process Automation. Not just bolt-on tools, but outsourcing whole end-to-end processes and products to the machines.

This is where we will see the introduction of the Agentic Tiger Teams, tasked with coming through an organisation and automating away parts of roles, and eventually entire roles. This process will come with a HR component, organisations will have to choose to consolidate positions, make people redundant, and/or re-skill staff into new roles.

Unless we choose as a society to preference the latter, then there could be great rounds of layoffs. First lower down in the organisational structures, then higher up over time as the technology becomes more sophisticated and able to handle more autonomously.

Don't get left behind during this phase, you should be leading these transformations. The skills you need are:

1. Transformational Leadership—Understanding what it takes to transform processes, tools and culture will be critical. Including: Project, Program and Product Management, Process Engineering, and Change Management.

2. Facilitative Leadership—There will be many experts who need to come together in order to make use of the proliferation of technologies involved. Be a facilitative leader who knows how to help people work well together and get the best from each other, including integrating the best ideas from a wide array of diverse perspectives and expertises.

3. Narrative Leadership—The stories you tell and how you paint the overarching narrative of change will make or break your transformations and thus your career. Understand what people need to hear to come on board with a vision for change.

4. Inner Game—Last, but possibly most important, you will need to be on top of your Inner Game to navigate these turbulent and challenging times. There will be a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt, not just for you, but those around you. How you manage your own emotions and the emotions of others will dictate your ultimate success. This leads to true resilience, influential presence, and confidence even under pressure.

Don't sleep on these skills, because although they aren't the skills companies will look for during the AI Gold Rush phase, these skills take longer to develop and you need runs on the board. You need to be able to demonstrate you've been doing this. Also note that this phase has already begun, slowly right now, but it will only accelerate from here.

At some point, once the AI can lead this transformation process itself, we reach a tipping point...

The AI Automation Paradox

Powerful Interests (those who are exceedingly wealthy and have controlling interests in large organisations) will suddenly be in a very difficult situation:

• If they continue to automate jobs away, many people will be out of work, which would mean...

• Their customer-base will shrink, resulting in reduced revenue, which would mean...

• The company will have to pivot or die, resulting in only a relative few companies targeting those who still have money (i.e. the super-rich), which would mean...

• Civil unrest. What to do with all those unemployed people now fending for themselves without large organisations to make their lives easier?

This is The AI Automation Paradox, the more a large company automates away, the less customers they will have, and ultimately the companies as they currently exist, will end.

They would automate themselves into oblivion.

For what it's worth, I don't believe this will happen. Because it would cause some nasty side-effects for all involved, including the super-rich, and I don't think they want this.

That said, always prepare for the worst and then expect the best. Skills you should focus on for any potential periods of civic upheaval are:

1. Camping / Survival skills—It may be useful to know how to get by without some of the modern conveniences like internet, mobile phones, power, or even water/groceries for periods of time.

2. Prepping—Stock up on basic supplies to last through potential disruptions or shortages.

3. Community building—Get friendly with your neighbours. You may need to lean on each other at times.

The AI Renaissance

Instead, it is likely we will see the competition between companies only increase as AI and automation allow for even more and better quality products and services to be delivered.

So although roles will disappear, new roles will emerge as the demand for more and better only continues.

Surfing these waves of change place Inner Game back on top of your list of skills to master. How well do you fare in the face of fear, uncertainty and doubt? That is the primary skill of the AI age. Compartmentalisation and suppression will only get you so far.

If we manage these transitions well, it could easily usher in an age of great abundance. That is, until super-intelligence is unlocked, at which point, we must hope that as AI's Parents we've done a good job of instilling values of kindness and ethical treatment of lesser species.

And if that thought, or any of this article makes you uncomfortable, reach out. I can help you expand your comfort zone so you can face whatever future finds you and come out on top.