Brains Wanted: Machines Hungry
Can the work part of your brain be emulated?
I’m very happy that peak “zombie apocalypse” entertainment is behind us. You know, there was a time not so long ago when you could not avoid running into episodes of “Walking Dead” and shows/movies like it. These things were everywhere.
People in these shows were scared. Some were running. Some were fighting back. Some were getting their brains eaten.
Turns out we are living in the beginning stages of what some people might describe as the dawn of a real zombie apocalypse.
Your brain really is delicious to these creatures and these creatures happen to be machines hungering to take our jobs. All our jobs. Oh yeah, and many of them are hiding in clouds.
Literally? Like really?
People really are getting replaced by machines.
Yeah, this is real. As in machines learning to do what you do so you don’t get paid to do it anymore.
Politicians talk about it, sometimes offering ideas; billionaires are quoted offering either gloomy future-scape scenarios or insights into how this could eventually become a good thing. One thing is clear, more and more jobs are getting automated and not just by simple machines. And in the meantime, if your job is given to an app it sucks to be you.
Whatever your job, someone is daydreaming a future where a machine can do that job for less cost or better or both.
How?
Bear with me a short moment while we get a little bit technical.
Even if you are not one of those “computer people”, I promise this next paragraph is as deep as the technology babble gets here. It sets the stage for what we will talk about; but, if you don’t understand the words don’t worry about it …
In the fall of 2018, a former colleague and technology book/course author, Madhu Siddalingaiah, told an audience about what he referred to as “programming 2.0”. My summary: in “programming 1.0” we determine the rules to produce a solution and then we create software that implements those rules. In “2.0” we throw our hands up on figuring out and writing down all the rules and instead turn to crafty machine-learning/artificial-intelligence algorithms that learn the rules on their own as we feed them training data. His point, and it was a good presentation and the point seemed sound to me, is that there are many situations where the “2.0” approach is better than the traditional “1.0” approach.
The “2.0” machines are coming for our jobs.
We are already witnessing the introduction of machines into roles that at one time, not long ago, were exclusively held by people.
Machines are taking on manual-labor roles and also thinking roles. Think complex factory assembly, retail checkout, vehicle piloting, insurance and loan risk assessment, and so on. Next to be replaced? Lawyers? Doctors? Teachers? Heaven forbid: Software developers?
If your job is to do roughly the same thing today that you did yesterday, that job is particularly ripe for machine-learning algorithms to jump in and compete with you directly. Machines are pretty good at doing what they have already done before.
During his “2.0” presentation, Madhu shared with the audience that Google has studied what makes some groups more effective than other groups within their organization.
Studies like these find that a magic ingredient in high productivity and effectiveness of groups is something that is not machine based at all — the magic ingredient is trust between people in the group.
Let’s come back to trust in a bit.
First, what jobs are machine proof?
None. The “2.0” machines are getting pretty good at solving well defined problems. Today. Right now. Getting better every day. I see this happening. Many people are seeing this happen real-time too.
Machines are getting better at tackling sophisticated work and will continue to get better.
However, this technological advancement does take some time. And machines are not yet very good at working their way into jobs where the work is “hard to define” and/or very “creative.”
I have a job description and I’m not creative so all is lost!?
Don’t believe the lie that you are most valuable when you do exactly what you are told when you are told.
Meeting minimum expectations is like failing, and staying inside the lines leads to the exit doors. That’s observation number one. Memorize it and grow your boundaries if you are interested in turning your work role, whatever your job, into a creative-hard-to-define-magical-golden-egg-producing wonder. You might like it.
Important observation number two: Today, right now, your brain is able to think in ways that no one has yet discovered how to emulate competitively with known computer technology.
Don’t believe anyone, including the little voice in your head, that suggests your mind is not capable of the amazing. It is. Scribble this fact on the back of your hand. There will be a test later.
Can we use these observations to stave off being replaced by a downloadable app?
Maybe. And maybe it’s easier to get the magic going when we are part of a special type of team where these potentials just seem to come out of us almost on their own. Sustainably.
Special Teams
What is harder to define and replicate: the processes of a competent individual or what a dynamic team does?
Is it possible to form teams that are so adaptive and agile at defining and tackling new opportunities that current families of technology cannot keep up? Can people protect their marketable relevance by becoming part of groups that are doing something today very different from yesterday and their clients trust they can effectively navigate tomorrow’s surprises too?
Trust
Stephen M.R. Covey shares in “The Speed of Trust” some powerful insights on the effects of low/high-trust relationships and I strongly recommend anyone interested in creating meaningful teams and in this subject to read it. Low-trust environments are expensive and slow to adapt; high-trust environments are the opposite. What creates trust between people? Each person needs to feel the following is true about each other:
- The person has INTEGRITY. We believe this person is honest in their communications and they are not different in nature from day to day. We would recognize them from their behavior any day of the week.
- The person has good INTENTIONS toward us and our interests. We have a good “vibe” that this person is not seeking gain at our expense.
- The person is CAPABLE of doing what we need. We believe they have the ability to do what needs to be done.
- The person produces RESULTS. Not only are they capable of producing results, they actually do produce results!
What does a high-trust environment look like? It looks like a place where you want to be and when you are there you have room to do what you want to do.
People in it want to do what needs to be done.
Fixed roles are replaced by relevant skills needed in the moment.
Instead of regular internal roadblocks to progress there are team collaborations to clear them out as they come up.
Policy in such environments does not impede creative problem solving; policy is to solve problems creatively!
A high-trust work environment can adapt as quickly as the capabilities of its teams can adapt — and people are remarkably adaptable souls. People when fully engaged are much more adaptable than any machine just around the corner. Trust draws that engagement into the mix.
Be Special Together
The brain-hungry zombie machines are coming. Don’t try to become a machine or align yourself with machine-like thinking to compete with machines; be more sophisticated than they can be.
Keep ahead of them by building and contributing to high-trust environments with people.
Earn the trust of others and work with others that earn your trust. The sustainable efficiencies of people working together in high-trust relationships create agilities that no machine currently in the rack or in the cloud can replace.
Bring your unique self and encourage the unique creative contributions of others in a space that replaces delays with trust in each other. Be part of something that is too complex to completely document and too hard to turn into a program. Be more than a cog in a machine.
Be all that you can be, together, and that is enough.
Some Useful References
