FEED Spring 2024 Web

This is something we can start preparing for. I hope that, by talking about this, we can learn from how reactive we’ve been around AI and start to be proactive around this groundbreaking, game- changing technology that is coming our way faster than a lot of people anticipate. FEED: How should businesses approach the implementation of AI? In 2023, we saw a big focus on these AI models. This year, we are going to have focus on the ingredients that go into these models, which is the data. We talk about how AI is going to take away a lot of jobs, but this is one area where it’s going to create an entirely new industry. The World Economic Forum have projected that, within the next two years, AI could augment or replace 85 million jobs. They predict that it will create 97 million new opportunities, but this means reskilling 40% of the workforce, which is 1.4 billion people over the next three years. For companies, we have to be really aware of the human psychological impact that working with AI has. There are already early studies to show that people who take the most pride in their work are the most negatively impacted by working with AI, because it’s like it takes away a part of their identity or a sense of self, which then has a negative impact on their performance. What this means for leadership is that they need to expand their skills because we’re actually looking at how we can help people cope with really big changes. There’s a lot of fear and resistance right now because people no longer have a clear vision of their trajectory or their career. Managers are also resistant to reskilling and retraining their talent because they’re afraid of losing them. Leadership have to make sure that, as we’re asking people to change, they see this as an opportunity for growth and development, understanding that this is going to increase their value to the company, and that they still have a place in that future. It’s a pretty big task we have moving into this time and I don’t think we can underestimate the resistance we’re going to meet when it comes to integrating these technologies into the future.

crisis, we have to be fully aware of how we are also contributing to it. This leads to another technology that I think we should be talking about right now: quantum computing. I know, when you say quantum, a lot of people’s eyes just glaze over. But you don’t have to understand how it works to understand how game changing it will be. We’re talking about creating massive amounts of data. Quantum is going to be able to crunch this data very fast for instant analysis. This is essentially going to facilitate computing going from 2D to 3D. Quantum computing crunches protons and neutrons and electrons – moving us into multi- dimensional capabilities. This is expected to be with us by the end of this decade. It’s going to be able to help us solve the climate crisis, cure diseases, probably expand our lifespans and make things like holographic technologies come into play. There will also be risks as there are with any technology. The encryption we rely on today means nothing to these computers as they’ll be able to break it. In the industry, we’re already talking about this idea of Q-day, which is a bit like a Y2K kind of panic.

THE BIG PICTURE Specialising in the emerging opportunities in tech, Kallman helps a range of clients stay up to date with the latest developments

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