Introduction

Hello, everybody. My name is Sonia, as you can see.

This is the last talk. It's a theoretical talk. It's about AI and the future of work.

So please be open-minded. And I really would like to talk to you guys about this topic. So hopefully it will be more interactive sessions.

And a few words about me. I'm director in the foundation Lubie Poniedziałki, it's in Polish, in English it's I Like Mondays. So in that foundation we try to help people to gain new skills to find the job they actually really like to do. So that's our goal.

and we have job coaches who works with us and that's what I really like to do. But nevertheless, I'm also a lawyer Yes, I specialize in new technologies and AI, and I do it for quite some time. And I'm also a lecturer, and I am also a co-owner of a fashion company.

And I'm not telling you to, I don't know, brag. No, it's not about it. here when I will be talking about learning new skills upskilling rescaling and finding new jobs and finding your new passions you will know that I talk from experience so that's the main goal okay and to start oh maybe I should sit okay to start our oh

The Future of Work and AI

our talk, which is AI and the job market of the future, I would like to start with a question.

And the question is, what factors actually shape the labor market? And we have, a lot of different factors, like social factors, including access to education, development of medicine, we have politics, we have economy, and the environmental factors, like, for example, climate changes. And there's also, obviously, technology.

I think it doesn't work. And among all of those factors, there's one that probably will impact... Oh, it's okay. Thank you.

Do you guys hear me well? Yeah, okay.

So this one, I will try to... Will probably impact the job market the most. And there's no surprise that this factor will be technology, probably. And I will get back to it. So why is that?

Data and Predictions on Future Jobs

And let's start with some data. According to the World Economic Forum, by 2025, which is next year, up to 85 million jobs could be replaced by machine and automated processes, while 97 million new roles will be created.

According to OECD, up to 65% of children entering education today will have jobs that don't even exist yet. McKinsey Global Institute says that nearly half of current jobs could be automated by 2055.

And let's end with Oxford researchers. And they predict that by 2061, artificial intelligence will dominate the job market. But don't worry, it will not fully replace humans until 2136. So that's to comfort you guys.

Key Questions Surrounding AI's Impact on Employment

So there's obviously a lot of different questions and important questions that we need to address when we think about the job market, but about our jobs, about our future and the future of our kids. And those questions are, will AI and technology replace humans at the job market? Or maybe the people using AI will, that's the very, very popular sentence lately. Or maybe AI will create more jobs than it will replace.

And those are very important questions, and not only from the employee's perspective, but also from the employers. And employers, organizations, institutions, other countries. And that is the reason why all of those organizations, institutions, try to make prognosis, they analyze data, they try to prepare some hypothetical scenarios of how the future job market would look like just because they need to prepare for such changes to come.

Hypothetical Scenarios of AI in the Job Market

But I found three three hypothetical scenarios. And I would like to show it to you. Keep open mind.

But before I do that, I would like to ask you, what are your thoughts about it? And maybe you would like to share. Maybe you have opinion already. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's based on ideas that don't exist yet. So the future is created by ideas that don't exist yet. It's created by unknown unknowns. So it's not just difficult to predict, but impossible to predict, because one idea could

Yeah, I could have thought this through better because you spoiled my ending. But yeah, I think that is very true. That is very true.

And the scenarios I would like to show you, I think they will... they will prove that you're right, and it's my personal opinion too, that there will be so many variables that we just cannot predict what the future actually holds and there's no certainty in that.

But there are some reports and one of them says that robot will take over most of our tasks and we as humans will just there will be just no need to work for us you know and if we work it would be just because we find it enjoyable and we really like it Obviously there's a basic income issue in that scenario and the potential professions of the future, meaning of life consultant, because if you don't have to work, maybe you need to identify with your profession, maybe you need some professional help with that.

So there's another scenarios. There's a scenarios that says that actually AI and technology will let us keep our jobs. We will still be working, still have jobs, but the recruitment process would change and the process will look that that people, not people will be looking for recruiters, but maybe AI, maybe algorithms, et cetera, et cetera. So they'll be looking for people for very specific competencies, very specific personality, as well as their very specific medical data.

And yeah, in that scenario, they say that people will be, And on one hand, very happy because they have a job that is suitable for them, that is tailored for them, for the needs. But also there's a risk that employers will have total control over those employees at the workplace.

And the last scenario, but keep in mind that there are just A lot of them. I just picked a few. This scenario says that AI will help develop medicine to such a level that we will live that long that we will need to work longer. So it's not that we will not work, we will work longer even. And the 20-year-olds entering the job market will begin to compete for positions, even 120-year-olds will compete with 120-year-olds. And the people will need to change professions a few times in their lifetime.

Public Perception and Media Narratives on AI

so yeah coming to a conclusion there's a lot of theories there's a lot of doubts and i think i don't know what are your experiences but in my experience um every day i read news there's a different news about ai and one day or even few few years in one day it's like ai will take your job okay And no, no, the other news is like, no, you can keep your job. It would be just easier for you. And other news is like, AI is a hype and don't worry about it.

So yeah, it's hard to make conscious decisions about our careers, about our jobs, about our future and our future of our kids. if the only certain thing is that the job market will change, but we just don't know how.

Conclusion

You know, all of those reports I was talking about, all of those predictions, they were obviously different. One of them maybe were making us laugh. One of them maybe scared us a little. But if you read them really closely, really close, they have some common ground, some common ground.

The Skills of the Future

And the common ground is that The skills that we might need in the future are not only digital skills or digital skills or technological skills, because that might be just not enough. The skills that might be crucial in the future, and we see it right now in the job market that they are becoming more and more important, There are transformative competencies, like ability to adapt to new conditions, taking responsibility for undertaken tasks, reconciling tensions, solving dilemma, et cetera, et cetera.

But why is it? And I would like you to think about about it from the company's perspective. And we all know that technology is changing really fast.

We know that. And technology is changing really fast. And for companies to adapt all those technologies, sometimes they need people to do that. They need employees to do that.

And finding specialists in a very specific field might be hard. If you don't have employees that specialize in that field, maybe you will look outside your company, but it might not be that easy. And we see what companies actually starting to do it right now. they're starting to look for talents and look for people inside their own companies and people who are open to changes, open to learn new skills, risk to reskill, to upskill, who are creative and just invest in them to learn all those new things just to perform all the tasks that are needed.

And it is not because Only because they cannot find the right person right now because they might find it. I know next week next month but it's also it's also because 1Because the dynamic of that changes in the technology when you find that person the technology might change again and again and again and again and Finding that person and find a person, learn that person about all your organization is just not cheap.

So actually what we see is that the skills of the future are not only the digital skills, not only technological skills, but employers want and need the soft skills and the skills like lifelong learning because the world around us is constantly changing. Ability to learn actively, creativity, ability to share knowledge, communication is a very important one. problem-solving attitude, critical thinking, negotiation skills.

So that are the skills that will be highly needed. And I don't know if any one of you were at the conference Perspective Women in Tech. There was a panel about skills of the future and there were some, one of the biggest Polish companies in there and international companies, and they said basically the same, that we see those soft skills in our employees because we assume that they have knowledge, but we need to know knowledge about technology, but we need to know that they can adapt.

Final Thoughts

So I would like to leave you with that thought that in the job market of the future, we need not only digital and technological skills, but also soft skills, especially because the world is constantly changing. And as colleague said, we just cannot predict how the future will actually, look like so thank you very much stay in touch and i will be available at the networking