One of my student jobs was script-checking GCSE papers. We sat in a large hall at desks like we were in an exam. And for each bundle of exam papers, we needed to check that the examiner had marked every page, added up the numbers correctly, transferred the numbers to the front properly and added them up right. If you found an error you could get up from your desk, go to the front and flag it to one of the quality control people. But otherwise, you sat in silence.

One day I was literally bored to tears. I'd checked about 2000 maths papers with no errors. At least if you had English, you could get some entertainment from skim reading the essays. Although the description of a character who "smelled like the p*ss of a thousand cats" will stay with me forever.

When we see a lot of chat talking about AI taking all the jobs, this is exactly the sort of job that could be replaced by a team of agents. And no one would be particularly upset apart from a few students earning minimum wage. Incidentally, that day I was bored to tears, I was offered overtime at time and a half and took it. Somehow it's less boring when you're being paid more. But that's a different newsletter I will probably never write.
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The hot takes on AI taking the jobs seems to revolve around the doom scenario of no one having a job and needing UBI (Universal Basic Income), AI creating more jobs but different jobs which is the way it's always been, everyone needs to learn code and do STEM subjects, people can retrain (although in 2020 UK government suggested a ballet dancer might want to retrain to do cyber which caused an uproar), and something about Luddites and the Industrial Revolution.

My lukewarm take is that the more interesting discussion is to think about AI in the context of careers, not jobs. I coach and mentor leaders and have one cohort a year of young leaders. One of the things that often comes up is making time for their own development. My reflection is, "Developing your career is part of your job. The company's not investing in you just to do this job that you're doing now. Why else would they pay for you to have coaching?" But in an AI-enabled world, what's the shape of those careers?

People seem to think that the junior jobs will disappear. But to me, that doesn't seem to match with the evidence. You can do more tasks faster, more routine work. An entry level worker can now do far more sophisticated tasks thanks to their group of AI agents. A graduate can research 20 x more sales targets to a greater level of detail than before. So, she is still needed but maybe her boss isn't.

In practice, might this mean a de-skilling of some of those jobs in the middle. Instead, this turns them into lower-skilled jobs. And those jobs that don't have careers associated with them. The entry level jobs might disappear but the mid level jobs will turn into entry level jobs. And not necessarily a stepping stone to a senior role.

We say that people are going to free up more time to be creative but the reality is those mid-level jobs don't really have creativity baked into them. They are management roles. The creative roles in a company are senior and niche. So, potentially we have a hollowing out of organisations and no structured career paths into the creative senior roles.

The impact on operating model and talent is potentially huge, and deserving of both imagination and systems thinking. Exactly the work that gets me out of bed in the morning. And it would be remiss of me not to mention that I have two slots up for grabs for organisations wanting support to accelerate their AI thinking - reply to this email.

What I won't be advocating for is giving responsibility for AI Agents to HR as if they are part of the workforce. I'd hear of several companies doing this now. Personally, I think this is a batsh*t move. Agents are still software and need to be governed as such.

And let me know any other batsh*t moves you see organisations doing around AI. I love hearing this stuff. And I always reply to replies.

Until next time,

Helen