Skill up
Dr. Paine Schofield is a
Senior Research Fellow at
Hult Ashridge Executive
Education. Visit
hult.edu/executive-education
to register at a reduced
rate for Open Programs
at Ashridge.
14
Over the coming years technological advancement will affect all sectors
of the workforce, and humans will face a new competitor when it comes
to seeking employment. Robots do not need downtime or leadership: they
are completely loyal to their employers, generating relentless and con-
sistent output.
The impact of this level of technology on employment has been pre-
dicted by many, with the message alternating from quite alarmist and pes-
simistic (“the machines will take all of the jobs”) to the more cautious and
optimistic (“new jobs will emerge”). The truth is somewhere in between
these two extremes.
A recent Hult research project, “Visions of the Future: Hopes and Fears
in an Age of Automation,” by me, Stefania Cassar, and Grace Brown, stud-
ied the views of around 400 undergraduate students across the UK and
US to explore their visions of their futures; their hopes and fears and how
they plan to prepare themselves for the coming changes. These students
Faculty
How intelligent is the
future going to be?
You can read more on
Dr. Paine Schofield’s
research on this topic by
visiting hult.edu/blog and
searching “AI revolution”.
occupy a unique place in history. They are about to enter a workplace that
will be transformed by emerging technologies, yet have been educated in
a system which is only just beginning to wake up to the implications of au-
tomation for the workforce: studying in mostly traditional classrooms and
following largely conservative curricula that have arguably not prepared
them for this future.
The key findings from this research revealed that all the students felt
that AI and automation would impact their careers to some degree. They
expressed a mixture of confidence and anxiety about their future in a work-
place dominated by AI. However, most felt unprepared for this future and
this contributed to a sense of fearfulness. Some students described how
universities need to adapt to remain relevant for the future of work and how
it is the responsibility of the educational institutes to prepare them. At the
same time, many students also described how it was their own responsibility
to prepare themselves to adapt to changes and to remain relevant.
Faculty
15