Humans Are Underrated

I enjoyed reading Geoff Colvin’s previous book Talent is Overrated. He argues exceptional talent is not something we are born with. It is a function of “deliberate practice” done over years. Anything and everything from complex mathematics to drawing is a result of gaining knowledge and then practicing away for the fabled ten thousand hours till you succeed.This time he take a swipe at the growing fear that robots and advances in Artificial Intelligence are nudging us slowly but surely towards a jobless future. Robots can now do the jobs that were once considered possible to be done only by human beings. The US Army will have 10 robots for every human soldier by 2023. After all smart, safe and cheap robots are already here. A company like Affectiva analyzes human emotions in “media, content, products and experiences”.Already computers are able to provide more accurate diagnosis of cancer than any physician and provide better legal advice than any lawyer. Robots will start outsmarting us in every sphere. So why would we need humans to do anything? The Second Machine Age says that the future belongs to those who can keep learning and reinventing themselves. But learning what? For that you need to read “Humans Are Underrated”.Geoff Colvin’s book talks about the importance of what he calls the “Relationship Worker” who has a greater advantage in the new economy. Much more than the Knowledge Workers. While the machines will pull up information and data faster than any lawyer can, they cannot fulfill our need for social interaction. “Understanding an irrational client, forming the emotional bonds needed to persuade the client” will be the differentiators in the future.In the past we have defined top performance in machine like terms. We will now need to define them in human terms – the ability to understand human feelings and emotions and respond on that basis. Even now the great leaders are those who touch our lives based on their humane approach. This will become perhaps the only reason to have a human colleague in future.We learn to read human emotions through in-person interactions with parents, siblings and peers. However as each one of us spends more and more time with our devices, we are missing out on the opportunity to learn these skills. Americans aged 16-45 who have access to at least two devices report seven and a half hours of screen time daily. Indonesians and Filipinos spend almost nine hours of screen time. An average child spends about four and half hours staring at screens. So it is not surprising to figure out that while the demand for these skills will rise, there is an acute shortage brewing with people becoming less adept at reading others non-verbal cues and being able to empathize.If all it takes to build a non-existent skill is 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, then this may be a wake-up call for us to spend those ten thousand hours building our empathy for fellow human beings. The secret of remaining gainfully employed may lie in doing precisely what we all despise – dealing with irrational friends, family and colleagues. You may be spending your future doing just that.Here is a short video about the bookhttps://youtu.be/1WP8yivj2y4---------------------Join me on Twitter @AbhijitBhaduriThe Second Machine Age talks about a different solution <click here>