Do You REALLY Want To See The Future Of Work?

Since the dawn of time, humans have had a fascination for the future. Multibillion dollar industries have been built on people’s fear of and desire to see the future. Any number of groups, from clairvoyants and tarot card readers to religions, all claim to have a handle on the future and promise, with great authority, to tell you what lies ahead of the curve, usually for a small – or not so small – sum of money.

Yes, foretelling the future is big business!

And speaking of business, unlike foretelling the future, seeing the Future of Work is not all that difficult. It’s simply a matter of reading the trends and seeing where they’re headed.

Take, for instance, the way Artificial Intelligence is creating a new future where AI is taking over the jobs of people who do work that is based on data. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the future that AI is creating. At first, it was the so-called lower level jobs that were under threat – the jobs that involved repetition and routine – that an AI system could quickly learn and do. AI has however made its way to higher level functions in the workplace.

But a new, world-first, one-of-a-kind, second generation AI, developed in Pretoria, South Africa, is something you should know about. Right now, it’s reinventing what we all thought the Future of Work was going to look like. Unlike first generation AI, which very efficiently mines and interprets data, this AI, known as TOM (Tacit Object Modeller), mines the expertise of a real, live human being. By expertise, I mean the tacit knowledge they have acquired over the years that few others in their field know. That’s what an expert is – someone who knows something others don’t know).

Now this is where things get spooky. This AI mines the experience, gut instinct, judgement, intuition and insight of a human expert – those qualities an expert uses to make decisions in a low data/high uncertainty environment.

Humans use this type of expertise across the world on a daily basis. Have you ever watched those TV programmes about Border Guards in the US just having a gut feel about a certain person or vehicle coming across the border? They essentially have no concrete evidence but that gut feel prompts them to do further checks and … voila! … a hidden stash of drugs is discovered.

So … in a matter of hours, TOM can capture and digitise that expertise a human took decades to acquire. This expertise can then be scaled up and deployed across an organisation to make real time decisions about millions of transactions from stationery purchases to multibillion dollar tenders and contracts.

You can essentially have teams of expert eyes watching every fricken transaction in your organisation, to audit procedures, processes and payments in real time, rather than doing the auditing long after the money has left the building, so to speak.

Now the nice thing about this AI is that it doesn’t replace your experts, it simply sets them free to do what they’re really good at instead of them getting sucked into backlogs, trying to monitor transactions to identify false positives and suspect transactions.

This is where the Future of Work starts to emerge …

TOM now makes it possible for a new way for experts to work. They can now have their expertise digitised into a Digital Twin, and their Digital Twin can be employed in any company in any country where it is needed.

Think about that for a minute. That means experts like a “Dave” or “Thuli” can have their expertise digitised and have their Digital Twins employed anywhere in the world while they work at whatever they choose to – or don’t work, depending on their preference.

Are you starting to see the Future of Work a little more clearly now?

Companies will start employing Digital Twins who are the best in the business in the world at a fraction of the cost of employing a human expert. And experts will start hiring out their Digital Twins to the highest bidder in the world. In fact, companies might have to agree to an expert working for them full time while hiring out their Digital Twin to other companies. Remember … never say, “Never.”

And you thought the Covid induced “work from home” trend was disruptive. When it comes to AI induced disruption, we ain’t seen nothing yet!

Not only will TOM change the face of who is employed and how they are employed, it will also completely disrupt the recruitment sector. Recruiters will now be able to place Digital Twins and be paid ongoing revenue based on a pay-per-use model instead of a once-off placement fee.

The good news, though, is that humans will still need to first become experts before their expertise can be digitised!

And the even better news is that, with Digital Twins deployed across your organisation, you will be able to address the challenges of the five Cs that cause organisational loss: Capacity, Competence, Compliance, Collusion and Corruption.

This is not science fiction – as I write this, banks and insurance companies around the world are already using TOM’s Digital Twins, as are healthcare companies and law enforcement departments in the US, as well as the US Government and 22 US State Agencies.

Want to upscale your capacity, competence and compliance? Want to stamp out collusion and corruption? What are you waiting for? Tell your CEO, your CRO, your CIO, your CHRO (if that’s not you!) and your Compliance Officer about the evening session being hosted on 13 September at this year’s Leaderex. This is what they’ve been waiting for … it will open your eyes to a whole new way of working – in the Future of Work.

None of us knew we needed emails before they were “invented”. Now we all use them. None of us knew before now that we needed Digital Twins. Mark my words, Digital Twins are going to become as ubiquitous as emails and cell phones.

If you want to meet the creator of TOM in person and get first-hand insights into how you can deploy Digital Twins in this Future of Work, join us at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg on 13 September on the first night of Leaderex 2022 (18:00 to 20:00). Treat yourself. Don’t miss out on getting a clear view of the Future of Work. This is something you have never seen before!

Alan Hosking is the Publisher of HR Future magazine, www.hrfuture.net and @HRFuturemag. He is an internationally recognised authority on leadership competencies for the future and teaches experienced and younger business leaders how to lead with empathy, compassion, integrity, purpose and agility. He has been an Age Management Coach for two decades. In 2018, Alan was named by US-based web site Disruptordaily.com as one of the “Top 25 Future of Work Influencers to Follow on Twitter“. In 2020, he was named one of the “Top 200 Global Power Thought Leaders to watch in 2021” by peopleHum in India. In 2022, he has been named on the Power List of the “Top 200 Biggest Voices in Leadership in 2022” by LeaderHum.