Editor’s note: Daniel Susskind, expert on the future of work and co-author of the best-selling book, “The Future of the Professions,” will be the opening keynote speaker at ISACA’s 2020 EuroCACS conference, to be conducted virtually from 28-30 October. Susskind visited with ISACA Now to discuss how AI will impact the professional landscape, how COVID-19 factors in and more. The following is a transcript of the conversation, edited for length and clarity.
ISACA Now: Which aspects of how AI will reshape the workforce in the coming years do you find most compelling?
In my view, the most important trend underway at the moment is the increasing capability of new technologies, and AI in particular. Every day we hear of systems and machines that are taking on tasks we thought only human beings alone could ever do – driving cars and making medical diagnoses, drafting legal contracts and designing beautiful buildings, composing music and writing news reports. What does this progress mean for the future of work? This is one of the greatest questions of our time.
ISACA Now: How does the COVID-19 pandemic factor into the future of work?
Many of the challenges I wrote about in A World Without Work, that I thought we would face in the coming decades because of automation, we face right now because of COVID-19. The robots haven’t taken all the jobs, but this virus has decimated the demand that so many jobs rely upon. And so it has accelerated many of the most challenging trends that were already underway in the world of work.
ISACA Now: You have strong ties to academia. How must universities evolve to better prepare students for the careers of the future?
By reforming what we teach, how we teach, and when we teach. We spend a lot of time on the what, discussing what skills and capabilities are likely to be valuable and important in the future. But we spend far less time on the latter two dimensions. The how we teach has not changed much over the decades: a traditional classroom or lecture hall, at least until the pandemic created the need for more e-learning. And the when we teach is much the same as well: education is still viewed by most people as something you do once, at the start of your life, and then it is done with. Both those aspects of education will need to change, too.
ISACA Now: What are the most prevalent reactions or follow-up questions you’ve received to your book, The Future of the Professions?
The most pressing question I have received is the relationship between the arguments in The Future of the Professions and the COVID-19 pandemic. In this crisis, for instance, white-collar workers have been using technology in ways that would have seemed barely imaginable until recently. Doctors see their patients online. Teachers provide virtual lessons. Court work is conducted over the internet. Understanding what this massive unplanned pilot scheme in the use of technology is likely to mean for the future of the professions is critically important – and will be addressed in an updated edition of The Future of the Professions, to be published soon.