In our contemporary economic scene with AI changing the competitive ordinance across industries, new things are happening on how companies see the best framework to combine factors of production to create products and services. The trio of People, Processes and Tools, will remain, but it does appear that when it comes to People, what matters now is experience as Tools like artificial intelligent systems can provide the inexperienced component of the People.
A new survey makes that clear: “A recent survey by Hult International Business School reveals that 37% of employers would rather hire AI robots than recent graduates from Generation Z. This statistic speaks volumes about the challenges younger workers face in the modern job market. This preference highlights a broader trend of AI increasingly taking over roles traditionally occupied by humans.”
Good People, this has a lot of implications in the nature and the future of work. You need an experienced software engineer but instead of surrounding her with entry level coders, you provide her with AI systems which will do what those entry level graduates would have done for her. We’re already seeing that as entry level graduates compete with machines.
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If this trajectory continues, we may have to remove one year of university study and make it industrial attachment or internship, so that students will have at least one year of experience at graduation since companies are not really interested in hiring those they will train!
Sure – that may not be optimal, but note this: when you have Copilot, Gemini and ChatGPT on your laptop, you have a lot of inexperienced colleagues to support whatever you are doing right now. The nature of work is undergoing a revolution and evolution as AI permeates into sectors and markets. Everyone must adjust to remain relevant.
Beyond Youth Jobs, Look At Earning Power
Comment: no technology can replace young people, and AI will come and go like other technologies.
My Response. Let me make an emphatic statement: the future belongs to young people. That said, belonging to the future does not mean owning the future.
Just four years ago, you could be living in Lagos and be working in Microsoft, Cisco, etc, earning $7,000 monthly. When AI came, they paused most of those opportunities. You can discount the redesign in the industry, but that does not mean that the architectural changes in markets, fueled by AI, will not continue.
Without mentioning names, most of the companies feeding US and Western Europe with those young talents in Lagos, Nairobi, etc, have either gone bankrupt or reduced operations. That does not mean that young people cut-out will not find things to do in Lagos, Bombay, etc. Simply, the issue is that they may find new things but there is a punted growth on the accumulation of wealth.
Why? Unlike in the past when the competition was against your classmates or your peers, today, it is really against modern machines which can scale at an unbelievable marginal cost positioning, distorting and displacing entry level young people, to the point companies may not pay them that much, as the machines evolve and mature with more capabilities. That earning power is the risk and not necessarily if those young people will have jobs!
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The same wealth that is concentrated in the hands of few, and we are busy singing AI song to the point of shrinking the number of people that will ever have a share of the wealth. Humans shape evolution and societies, but it seems that this particular generation has surrendered that all important responsibility to machines. Technically, we are being told that wherever the machines dictate we go, there we will go. How this is not embarrassing remains a wonder.
What kind of leadership could save humanity going forward? If we think innovation and technology will sort everything out, then we have not grasped what is coming. If the people earn less and less, will cost of products and services keep going up, meaning that a vast majority will live on credit and crippling debt? There is no cure for greed.
You are about to hear more and more people living below poverty level, with aids as the main means of survival. This is scaling slavery but using AI as cover. Nobody has explained what to do with billions of people roaming on the face of the earth, but yea, all our problems have to do with efficiency and competitiveness. This particular generation is very mean, they are determined to collapse everything before they exit. Fear them.