Is there room for me in the AI-driven future workplace?

THE world has an estimated 3.3 billion people in the workforce today. According to the World Economic Forum, Gen Z will constitute 27 per cent of the workforce in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development by 2025. (Gen Z is a term generally used to describe those born during the late 1990s and early 2000s.)

Speculation has been rife about artificial intelligence (AI) – large data sets and self-learning language models – augmenting or taking over our work since ChatGPT took the world by storm. What will the future of work look like?

For sure, the disruptions wrought by those technologies will have an impact on the future workforce significantly and fit the criteria for a “wicked” problem – one that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory and changing requirements that are often hard to discern when the problem first manifests itself. It exhibits social complexity, an indeterminate end point, and presents complex interdependencies. Solutions, if any, are not yet properly developed.