Myths about AI and jobs - a dinner symposium

Thanks to all those that came to the fabulous night we hosted with Loud Whispers at Supernormal in Melbourne on Thursday 23rd May. We were lucky to have Nick Kennedy of the Workplace Planning Insitute and Domenic Brasacchio of Cloudera, convene a thought provoking conversation about their experiences on the myths about AI and jobs.

The key takeaways from the evening were:

• Many large organisations are looking to employ AI to displace routine and repetitive tasks, not jobs, and improve staff engagement by providing the space for more creative and meaningful work.
  

• When we consider exponential growth of technology it's hard to predict exactly where we're heading with regards to the potential of AI but it's clear workforce needs will shift to AI development, maintenance and oversight. There will also be a need to develop skills at all levels, as Nick stated: "AI might not take your job, but someone who knows how to use it will!"
  

• The productivity gains that some large organisations are banking on will also mean there could be unemployment. We're already seeing most mining operations now operate in fully automated contexts, but this has resulted in a shift of capabilities, not a shift in numbers. However, is everyone capable of retraining and what happens to those left behind? As we talk about a just-transition in climate contexts for sustainable energy solutions, we should also be talking about just-transitions for AI workforces. There is also a need for sector specific strategies.
  

• There are still some workplaces where people have not even heard of ChatGPT. Is it the reponsibility of employers to make sure their staff do not become digitally excluded from society? It seems clear that at the very least policies might be required to ensure equitable access to AI and the new opportunities it creates.
  

• Australia is most certainly behind the eight ball on AI developments, but if you're interested in wanting to know more, you could start by checking international patents to see what we need to prepare for with regards to innovation.
  

• Education is responding to the need to prepare for a society with a lot more AI use, by improving the building of critical thinking skills from primary school up.
  

• There is a need for all organisations to embrace ethical guidelines for AI use and to make sure governance frameworks are in place to manage impacts. Making sure a sound data strategy is in place is a good first step.
  

• AI is still predominately seen as an augmentation to human capabilities. The human-AI collaboration shift will likely force organisational redesigns and a need to understand new ways of decision making. Building trust and accountability in AI models will be key.
  

• On a positive note, in seeing utopian future possibilities, AI's integration into the workforce might lead to a reevaluation of work-life balance and the concept of work itself.

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As always the food at Supernormal was delicious with the following delicious menu enjoyed (with dietary options offered to those with alternate needs):

House-made kimchi, garlic chive & mussels

Nori cracker, seared tuna, bonito

Korean rice cakes, sesame, sweet chilli

Butter lettuce, toasted sunflower, candied hijiki & shiso

Prawn & chicken dumplings, chilli & vinegar

Slow-cooked lamb shoulder, truss tomato, Yuxiang sauce

served with

Steamed Japanese short grain rice

Shredded cabbage, cumin seeds, ginger & mint

Peanut butter parfait, salted caramel & soft chocolate

Paired wines -

NV Mainegra Cava Peñedes Esp

2023 Torzi Matthews 'Frost Dodger' Riesling, Eden Valley SA

2021 Monte Guelfo Chianti Sangiovese, Tuscany Ita

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Worldviews and why they matter

by Chris Ingold, member of the Loops of Learning community

Worldviews are important because however systems thinking, and systemic actions are pursued, there is no such thing as an objective model. 

Appreciating and acknowledging the differing worldviews and lenses on reality can be a powerful tool to mitigate subjectivity, and arguably exploit it to seek fresh perspectives and opportunities for change. 

From a practical perspective, acknowledging worldview allows us to simplify individual models and make our insights more digestible. 

From a human perspective it can allow us to be more appreciative and empathetic. 

From both perspectives, appreciating worldview allows us to become better change agents, and be more impactful as a result.

Worldviews provide different perspectives to model the same system and all views bring valuable insights.

Organisational actors less invested in systems thinking theory will bring more grounded and often divergent worldviews to the table. For example “efficiency improvement requires job security for those involved” or alternatively “efficiency can be measured by workforce reduction.”

For example, when James Womack and Dan Jones rebranded the Toyota Production System for a western audience (as Lean), they took an approach steeped in the first of the above worldviews and remade it for a culture steeped in the latter. They didn’t attempt to change their audience’s worldview. How might our workplaces be different if they had?

Other worldviews you may have observed include: “compliance always takes precedence” or “the customer always takes precedence”; “protecting my team or boss comes first”; “most projects fail, so protect the status quo”; “if it matters it can be measured”; “it is good to automate as much as possible” and so on.

If you’re working with organisational actors using a systems approach, you may want to start with trying to capture all worldviews together, and show the interactions between them. Perhaps this gets drawn up as a massive image or ‘rich picture’ (using the Soft Systems Methodology perspective) and from that you can then pick out subsystems and start working on those individually. If all the actors are using a similar metaphorical language, such as talking about their organisation as though it were an organic system, culture or machine, but not all of the above jumbled up, it’s possible to capture the worldviews. 

There may also be valuable insights to be gained through applying a worldview that is absent from the room. 

Diverging worldviews are harder to model together. The more worldviews diverge in a group, the greater the importance of psychological safety for those participating, and the greater the likelihood that this divergence holds the key to addressing the problem being investigated.

The challenge for systems thinkers, especially if they’re searching for useful things to change, is whether and how to break up the big picture and identify specific interventions. Taking a smaller system and looking at it from different worldviews, restating the purpose of that system if the worldview requires it, can be a good way to do that. 

Look at each view and you may find a straightforward, predictable, intervention and one that is already tried and failed. Look at both and identify where they collide and that may help identify the core of the ‘sticky’ problem, and possibly new ideas and approaches. 

This is not unlike the ‘6 Hats Thinking’ popularised by Edward de Bono, though it is significantly more focussed and involved. Like that approach however it allows the system thinker, and others new to systems thinking, to step away from the complexity of an all-encompassing model to a series of complementary and far more digestible models which are easier for our brains to absorb and process. 

Appreciating and understanding the impact of worldview is (from the author’s worldview) one of the key skills any systems thinker needs. It is also one that can divide approaches. Choose yours, but leave yourself open to others. 

Further reading

Gareth Morgan - Images of Organisation (1986)

Karl Weick - Sensemaking in Organisations (1995)

Peter Senge - The Fifth Discipline (1990)

Tyson Yunkaporta - SandTalk (2019)

Peter Checkland - Soft Systems Methodology in Action (1990)

Stafford Beer - Brain of the Firm (1972)

James Womack and Dan Jones - Lean Thinking (1996)