Why ‘human agency’ is the new AI buzzword
Hello and welcome to Working It.
I talk a lot about curiosity, and how we need more of it in workplaces. But how do you actually go about being curious, day to day 🤔? Here’s a recent example: I’ve been trying to understand the differences between generative AI and artificial general intelligence (AGI) — and the world of quantum computing. After lengthy ChatGPT conversations, I picked up one small but useful trick: say “classical” 🏛️ when you mean non-quantum computing and AI. I’m also, slowly, getting to grips with “qubits”.
And I’ve been reading around the subject — for example, Brian Lenahan’s Quantum’s Business newsletter, which underlines the eye-watering sums pouring into quantum investment 💰.
What are you curious about at the moment? I’d love to hear where your thinking is taking you at this extraordinary time, in work and beyond: [email protected]
Read on for news of a large-scale tool that predicts AI’s impact on jobs — and how much “agency” humans will retain.
PS: A slightly shorter newsletter today as I’ve been away 😎.
Is AI going to augment — and actually improve — your job?
What if you could see at a glance how AI and automation is going to impact all the jobs in your organisation, so you could plan for it, and reskill or redeploy staff 🔮? A start up called TechWolf believes it’s got a way to do that. Its team has just launched the Workforce Intelligence Index, based on 2bn publicly available job postings over the past decade, allowing anyone to have a look at the potential impact of AI on jobs inside our own organisations* — and our competitors.
TechWolf is an AI-powered application that gathers data within a client company — it tracks tasks and the skills workers are actually using and then maps that into skills profiles for new and existing jobs 📊. Because TechWolf follows the “live” work being performed by staff, it can stay up to date, rather than relying on old data.
For the publicly available Workforce Intelligence index, co-founder Mikaël Wornoo told me: “We’ve used the Stanford Human Agency Scale (HAS) and applied that to every job. We’ve essentially broken down the job or jobs you see in a few desks and then we make a prediction for every desk, how that work is going to change.”
Stanford University’s human agency research is fascinating for anyone interested in the future of work. It measures the level of automation that workers want from AI, versus the human agency they want to preserve. Here’s an explanation from Project Flux: The “Human Agency Scale (H1 — H5) [is] measuring the degree of human involvement workers believe should be preserved, from full automation (H1) to full human control (H5). Most picked the middle: H3 — shared control.”
Jeroen Van Hautte, another TechWolf co-founder, said the most surprising finding had been the impact of AI in unexpected places. “In the hospitality industry, in a job like a chef 👨🏼🍳, you see there’s actually a reasonable percentage of augmentation that can happen there, for example in recipe creation, management and inventory.” We have to get past the idea, Jeroen said, that AI augmentation will only apply to software engineers and people in finance.
Mikaël said one of the biggest insights from the index had been that “surprisingly few tasks can be fully automated but most of them can be augmented” — meaning that AI can help humans work better. The next step for employers, he said, was to find out “what work can be augmented — and how do we train our workforce”.
To take an example from the index, I looked at the UK’s Royal Mail. It suggests that a lot of upskilling is needed there.
*The FT does not feature in this database. But if you work, for example, at Accenture, BP or several UK government departments — you’re in luck 👀.
In a nutshell: “Human agency” is the new buzzword in workplace AI. The TechWolf project is mapping AI’s impact on jobs, but with a measure of “agency” built in. If employers take agency as their start point — rather than just unleashing AI to its fullest capacity — the outlook may be less devastating for jobs than we had previously imagined. (Perhaps.)
Want more? The full Stanford paper on human agency: “Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the US Workforce”.
Five top stories from the world of work
The US workers escaping for a career overseas: Stephanie Stacey talks to US professionals who are contemplating a move, and to some who have already left. All have to face the reality of much lower salaries outside their home country.
Welders, engineers and data scientists: your country needs you The defence industry in Europe is hiring at record rates, but there are skills gaps and the industry has lost thousands of experienced engineers to retirement in recent years, Sylvia Pfeifer reports.
Goldman Sachs bankers explore limits of AI: ‘The risk is over-reliance’ As part of an FT series on how jobs are changing, Joshua Franklin talks to GS partner Kerry Blum about how she and her team are using AI — “doing more with the same people”, as she puts it.
PwC UK cuts jobs as revenue growth slows sharply: The Big Four accounting firm hasn’t said how many jobs have gone, but PwC’s figures show it employed about 33,700 staff in the year to June, down from 36,000 the previous year. By Ellesheva Kissin.
Me+Em seduced the Princess of Wales: now it’s taking America. I enjoyed this HTSI interview by Kate Finnigan with Clare Hornby, founder of the highly successful brand (I often see women speaking at conferences in its suits and dresses) that is now expanding in the US.
One more thing . . .
I often recommend the Garbage Day newsletter by Ryan Broderick to friends and colleagues: if you are curious about internet culture or want to understand the memes and trends your children consume, then this is a must-read. Since the murder of Charlie Kirk, however, Garbage Day has been offering serious commentary on the complex and nihilistic “terminally online” world, and its devastating real-world impact. It is both illuminating and terrifying for those of us who dwell in the mainstream.
Is ‘old school’ hiring just part of being human 🤷♀️?
Last week’s newsletter flagged a return to old school hiring practices based on “who you know” — mainly as a response to hiring managers being overwhelmed by vast numbers of AI-powered job applications. The story prompted this response from Michael Gentle:
“The idea of a circle of contacts based on people we know and trust is as old as humanity itself 🤝. Finding candidates for a job through one’s network has always been, and always will be, part of recruiting. The only difference between an Old Boys’ Network and LinkedIn is one of scale, enabled by technology.”
I agree with Michael’s point about humanity always seeking a trusted circle of contacts. “Dunbar’s number”, the maximum number of people we can really know, aka our “tribe” in modern life, is 150, with five being close friends. But I also believe that many leaders do still want to recruit and build truly diverse workforces, that are representative of our clients and communities. More thoughts and opinions? [email protected]
A view from the Working It community 📸
To Athens this week, and Lemonia Kathariou’s splendid view. “You can spot the Acropolis under the blue Athenian sky. We will soon move out and transfer to another office (where I mostly go these days). But this view will remain unbeatable.”
Lemonia will receive a package of management and career books — do send in your views: we love to see them: [email protected].
And finally . . .
Are you in the mood for reading about “the death of the corporate job” 😦? Try this newsletter by Alex McCann (he’s also on LinkedIn): “The corporate role isn’t dying in some dramatic collapse. It’s dying like religion died for many people — slowly, through diminishing belief rather than disappearing churches.” Alex’s post sums up what a lot of younger people feel about the broken world of work. He’s done some interesting follow ups, too.
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