Future of Work: Will AI create quality jobs that pay?
Noorjit Sidhu, future of work investor at Plug & Play, reached out after seeing my LinkedIn post about joining Catalyte and how reskilling ties to my parents’ immigration story. He wanted to connect over the future of work. We jumped on a fun phone call and Noorjit followed-up with a list of questions for me. Being the (proud) nerd I am, I’m excited to write up my answers and share them with you in a Future of Work Series. Enjoy and let me know what you think!
NS: AI will end some jobs, it’ll create other jobs, but do you think on balance the quality of jobs (i.e. the total rewards/comp the employee receives) will incline or decline?
LT: I’m not sure we have a balance in the quality of jobs and compensation today. So, I’m not sure that we can easily say that AI will make things better or worse. What we do know is that AI created about 3 times as many jobs as it took away in 2018; that we expect 58 million new jobs to be created in the next few years; and that by 2030, AI, robotics and automation tech will bring great economic benefits. PwC says AI can add up to $15 trillion to global GDP.
If we consider the quality of jobs based on the amount of work performed by humans versus computers, and if we prefer doing less work, then the quality of work will get better. Because according to the World Economic Forum, by 2025 machines will do 52% of the work performed by humans.
If we consider the quality of jobs based on the type of work we do, and if we prefer jobs that require technical and human skills, then the quality of work will get better. This is because we’re seeing both a growing number of jobs in data analytics/software development and a growing number of jobs that require skills such as sales and innovation.
Bigger picture, I predict that in an AI-centric world, there will be an ample amount of jobs where work compensation will be inversely correlated with the abilities of tech. Simply put, humans will get paid more for work that tech can’t do or for work that elevates the work of tech (e.g., the top AI jobs pay six-figures).
Humans just have to upskill or reskill for the future of work, and we’ll be fine. If you think about it, what’s happening in the fourth industrial revolution is similar to what happened in the industrial revolution, where farmers became workers at factories, factory workers became managers at factories, etc.
Liked what you read and want to read more Future of Work posts? Clap 👏👏👏 and share with a friend.
About Lolita Taub
Lolita Taub is the chief of staff at Catalyte, a TEDx speaker and an AI enthusiast, with a venture capital and enterprise tech background. She is a Venture Partner at NexGen, an LP at Portfolia’s Enterprise Fund and a former VC at Backstage Capital and K Fund. Lolita holds nearly a decade of enterprise B2B software, hardware and services sales experience at IBM, Cisco Systems and in Silicon Valley. She has a BA from the University of Southern California and an MBA from the IE Business School. Lolita has been recognized for her work on Forbes, Inc.com, The Huffington Post and Entrepreneur.com among other publications.
