Conversations are converging.
This week, repeated discussions – always interesting ones – circling around AI use across different sectors, but with many overlapping themes. Happy to admit I’m more intrigued by it all from this viewpoint, rather than simply a technical one. Helicopter views. The effect of innovation on psyche, team morale, social cohesion, democracy,.
And on economics, of course. This morning, another chat on the train raising the difficulties of finding part-time work, or your first job. A less often surfaced topic, one you have to listen out carefully for instead of the brash ubiquity of AI.
The two strands are obviously related, but I’m not convinced it’s as simple as saying “AI is replacing jobs”. This may be true to an extent, in certain clusters, but there is a wider shift here, about People and Power, about the need for humans as capital and as resource. About our entire narrative of skills, careers, working identity, and literally How We Find Value For Ourselves.
I’ve learnt one thing about humans, it’s that they’re quite happy to let things go to shit. If there is a form of distributed depression floating around – what may be described as a malaise (or, in my mind, a lack of joie de vivre) – then this needs to be called out, identified keenly, and rallied against. We need to talk about it more, set it as the context for other discussions, just as we should with climate change and war and politics.
Now does not feel like the time to gloss over things.
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