-: Sophie, Vlad, welcome.
Sophie, if I could start with you,
how is the accessibility of Gen AI impacting the workforce?
What trends are you seeing?
-: I think that's the biggest thing is that
latest research is showing that by 2030,
375 million jobs will need to change
as a result of technological advances.
And we don't yet have a playbook
to prepare the workforce for that.
And I think about the big questions
that I would want to answer
as we're going through that.
Like, one, how do we ensure that we are being equitable,
and that price is not a barrier
for who gets to enter the workforce,
or who gets to win with these changes?
And the second is, how do we keep pace
and actually ensure that we are teaching the right skills,
when, particularly Gen AI,
is evolving much faster than we as humans are able to?
And then I think the third thing is,
how do we know that it's working?
How do we know if we're teaching these new skills,
they're actually being applied
in an appropriate way in the workforce?
And so, like, actually,
there is a word for those three things,
and that is apprenticeships.
And I think that there's a very exciting opportunity
for professional apprenticeships
to work for people of all ages and all stages
of their career, to learn both those technical skills,
but also those durable skills,
in order to keep pace with these changes.
-: And I would add that it's happening.
You cannot hide from it, right?
Everybody's aware of the potential, what can be done.
So everybody's trying to at least think through
what is the impact on their jobs,
either from the scary part, "Will I have a job?"
to, "Hey how do I even get better at my job?" right?
So just totally got people thinking about
what's happening around them,
and how to use this new technology
that's now at their fingertips.
-: Sophie, you mentioned there about skills.
How, given the speed of advancement of AI and tech,
do you make sure that workers
have the right skills to take advantage of that?
-: We are so often focused as a society on hard skills,
discrete skills that you need in order to
be a software engineer, or be a data analyst.
But we so often overlook durable skills,
which are really the skills that enable someone to adapt,
to thrive, to progress.
And so as I think about keeping pace,
and ensuring that our workforce is enduring
and prepared for this next,
really this next stage of the future of work,
it's about striking that balance
between the discrete and the durable,
and actually helping people become
what we call T-shaped individuals,
so that they have a broad set of skills,
but also can go very deep in a specific specialism.
-: Vlad, given all the fears over job losses
as a result of AI and Gen AI, how do you reassure workers
that they still have value in your company?
-: Yeah, so first of all,
it's not gonna happen overnight, right?
It's becoming accessible,
but there is so many rules and changes we need to make
and put in place
for it to actually be relevant in a day-to-day setting.
That being said, everybody should use this
as an opportunity to learn new things, right?
So if you're even a little bit geeky
and wanna learn new things,
there's no better time than the current time, right?
So this will help you be better at your jobs,
faster at your jobs.
You will probably many times even open up new things
that you didn't think are even possible.
-: Yeah, I completely agree.
And the one thing I'd add to that, is, actually,
I get very excited about the role that Gen AI can play
as sort of a partner in the workforce.
And so actually, how,
not just how can my admin tasks be automated,
but how can I partner with, you know,
ChatGPT or others in order to accelerate my thinking?
But, also, I think it's a very interesting one,
which should give a lot of workers a lot of confidence.
You know, our jobs are not gonna get automated out.
Actually, CEOs that we are talking to every single day,
are actually looking much more
at how do they re-skill their workforce,
rather than hire externally.
And so it's been great seeing
that shift across corporate America, in particular,
to make sure that,
yeah, they're looking within first and foremost.
-: Yep. Absolutely.
-: Sophie, Vlad, thank you so much.
-: Thanks, Georgie.
-: It was a pleasure.