What will AI-enabled work feel like? 5 predictions to get you thinking.
From full-stack workflows to a messaging superapp and Human Approval gates, the workplace of 2030 will be a very different environment.
AI will not automate away our jobs, but it will certainly disrupt many of them. To paraphrase Hemingway, this disruption will occur “gradually, and then suddenly”.
The “gradual” disruption is a present reality. AI is already ubiquitous, transcribing calls, writing summaries, translating emails, summarising documents, and enhancing writing. Manual text processing is rapidly becoming as outdated as carbon copies and fax machines.
The “sudden” disruption will take a few more years to unfold, as businesses must reach a certain tipping point in their AI adoption. We’ve seen this play out before: from email to video conferencing, the internet enabled new work practices, upending office norms in less than a generation.
What will an AI-enabled workplace feel like? To feed our collective imagination, I bring forward five predictions:
Work will be full-stack and case-based.
Many professionals will be expected to handle entire workflows, from start to finish. For example, an engineer may use a Legal AI to incorporate legal repercussions into their specifications, rather than asking the legal department. As many professions expand their scope of expertise horizontally, workflows will require less domain knowledge and more focus on the case particulars.
We will no longer use dashboards.
AI offers a universal data-to-language converter, which makes dashboards obsolete. Understanding data will always be necessary. Their dashboards’ utility - information visualisation, data manipulation, scenario exploration - will be replaced by narrative-driven reports and natural-language data queries.
AI will facilitate most meetings.
From performance reviews to board reviews, meetings between humans can be optimised. The current transcription assistants will soon expand into full facilitation assistants, keeping time and participants on subject, ticking off agenda points and scheduling follow-ups.
A messaging superapp will emerge.
The battle for the UI of AI is on. Centralised messenger apps will soon evolve, connecting email, chat, voice and search between humans, groups and bots. The focus will shift from the format to the handling: prioritising, filtering, filing and auto-responding.
AI will go through Human Approval gates.
Your AI assistants might create a proposal, but they will not sign it off. They might suggest that a follow-up meeting is a good idea, but will not book one without asking. Many tasks can be automated, but Human Approval Gates will allow us to intercept these flows with slow, strategic thinking.