My friend GenAI is oh so clever but oh so boring

Dec 13, 2023 by Robert M. Burnside

Ever have an older person in your life who was really useful, always right about what they said, whom you often turned to for help, yet always found boring, wanting their help only when needed, in as short a time as possible?

Welcome to my experience of Generative AI, let’s call it GenAI. Nomadic Learning recently had a truly interesting webinar on the future of career development, looked at through the lens of the impact of GenAI. I downloaded the transcript of 11,100 words to write a blog post about the cool ideas that emerged in the session. I edited it into a 2,000 word summary, mainly by taking out superfluous words or repetitions. A few hours later, I had a coherent 2000 word summary of the best ideas in the voice of each person who gave them.

But we wondered what GenAI would have made of it? First we gave my 2000 word summary to ChatGTP4 and asked it to summarize it; it gave an accurate 9 point summary of the main ideas. We then said, please make that 6 bullet points, which it nicely did. Finally we asked it to rewrite the whole thing better, which it also did, in 324 words.

Well, I then decided, to have actually reduced my workload, I should give GenAI the original task, upload the original 11,100 word transcript and see what it produces. When I asked Chatgtp4 to do this, it refused, saying the input was too long, and I should shorten it and try later. I then researched Microsoft Bing’s Copilot, finding that to my surprise, my existing Microsoft 365 contract included use of Copilot. And, Copilot nicely took the 11,100 word original transcript. I asked it to provide a title, an introduction, and a summary of the ideas. Thirty seconds later I had an impressive highly accurate 350 word summary of the main ideas. I liked this summary best of all the ones GenAI had provided.

Review it here and then we’ll reflect on it:

"Career Development in the Age of Generative AI: A Summary of Key Ideas In a recent webinar, Heather Yurko, Vice President of Digital Talent and Product Owner Unlocked at Mastercard, Pamay Bassey, Chief Learning and Diversity Officer at Kraft Heinz, and Matthew Burr, CEO and Co-Founder at Nomadic Learning, discussed the impact of Generative AI on career development. They updated the concept of building a career, taking into account the changing nature of work. Here are six bullet points summarizing their ideas:

1. Work will consist of a continuing evolution of projects that gather ongoing changing groups of people with the skills to accomplish them.
2. It is urgent that you master now how GenAI can take over the routine aspects of your work so you can do the real work of human interaction.
3. Develop systems in your organization that unlock the potential in everyone through access for all to apply for the work needed and equipping everyone equally with the support for their learning and growth.
4. Own your own career, with curiosity and learning as your power skill, determine what else you can do and apply for the role.
5. No one has a linear career journey. There is no ladder that you climb, there’s moments of disruption or unexpected events, maybe something that feels like a setback or a wrong turn, that turn out actually to be the things that are the stuff of a great career journey.
6. Along the way, it’s important to pursue your interests and passions, even if they don’t seem directly related to your career. You never know how they might come in handy later on.

The speakers also provided some next steps for career development, including staying curious and continuously learning about AI and its applications, considering having a reverse mentor or staying connected with those early in their careers to gain different perspectives, and taking advantage of opportunities to learn and develop skills, even if it’s outside of formal company structures."

In my view, this is an excellent nicely phrased review of the cool ideas in the session, but they are a bit bloodless. One reads them and thinks, okay, that’s a useful idea, but why is it so important and how do I set about implementing it?

Let’s compare one of GenAI’s statements with the actual voice of the speaker:

Copilot’s voice: The speakers also provided some next steps for career development, including staying curious and continuously learning about AI and its applications, considering having a reverse mentor or staying connected with those early in their careers to gain different perspectives, and taking advantage of opportunities to learn and develop skills, even if it’s outside of formal company structures.

Heather Yurko’s voice: This is my soap box, and everybody at Mastercard knows it's my soapbox: do you have a reverse mentor? Do you have someone that you're talking with? How are we thinking about folks early in career? Staying connected to them? It's so easy as we advance in our careers like, and I will say this just from my own personal experience, like I've been working for 30 years. you know, and it's like, after a period of time, you're like, Hey, I got it. Like, I know this, I've seen this. Yeah, it's not my first rodeo. I've done this, you know, whatever you kind of get in that head space of just like, I know how to handle these things. And we do. We know how to handle them, based on our understanding of the way the world works. I would just like to posit that maybe the world doesn't work that way for everybody anymore. So checking in with folks to understand how they see the world and how the world works for them. I think, is, going to get us to where we all need to be within our organizations and in society as a whole.

Here's another comparison:

GenAI’s voice: It is urgent that you master now how GenAI can take over the routine aspects of your work so you can do the real work of human interaction.

Speaker’s voices on this: Matt: Over the next five years, you can look across the enterprise and anything that has the dynamic complex human stuff is going to stay with the humans and a lot of stuff that is routine that we're all working on still today, is going to get outsourced to machines. Pamay: Some people when you explain the changes ahead, simply freeze. We need to help people experiment in a way that helps them understand what this technology can do now, so they can then get on the bus and try to figure out what happens when the new functionality comes in. Heather: It's not that your whole job may be replaced, but you may be replaced by somebody who knows AI, who understands how to work with it.

Hopefully you experience the difference - my lovely boring but useful friend GenAI for sure gives me in a few seconds the main points made. BUT so what. When those points are brought to life in the words of the human being who said them, they have much more life, meaning, purpose.

Also, let’s compare my title with GenAI’s title:

My title: Your Future Career “Work Without Jobs” I chose to highlight the new idea of how work will evolve to where we no longer have jobs, instead we match our skills to the organization’s needs in an ongoing process. GenAI’s title: Career Development in the Age of Generative AI: A Summary of Key Ideas Okay, it’s title is accurate but it can’t really grasp a future idea because GenAI is based only on the past - a machine generated summary of past ideas, and the future hasn’t happened yet for GenAI. Only a human being can grasp the living dynamic of the future and express it. If we ask GenAI to imagine the future, it can only hallucinate based on the past.

So, long story short: GenAI is extremely useful and every one of us needs to get working with it now. Let it save you a lot of time by creating a useful structure of what you want to say - and then BRING IT TO LIFE WITH A HUMAN BEING SPEAKING FROM THEIR EXPERIENCE! Add your ideas about the future to its boring summary of past knowledge. To be clear, I’m advocating a BOTH/AND not an either/or: we need to be using BOTH GENAI AND OUR HUMAN VOICE, together we’ll get further in more effective communication.

APPENDIX

Interested in the original 2000 word summary that is all in the human voices? Here it is below. If you read it, then consider: what is the combination of GENAI’s summary plus the human voice that would achieve the best communication about the ideas raised in the webinar.

Tuesday December 5th, Heather Yurko, Vice President of Digital Talent and Product Owner Unlocked at Mastercard, Pamay Bassey, Chief Learning and Diversity Officer at Kraft Heinz and Matthew Burr, CEO and Co-Founder at Nomadic Learning, updated the concept of building a career, taking into account the impact of Generative AI:

• No more jobs, work will consist of a continuing evolution of projects that gather ongoing changing groups of people with the skills to accomplish them
• Urgent that you master now how GenAI can take over the routine aspects of your work so you can do the real work of human interaction
• Develop systems in your organization that unlock the potential in everyone through access for all to apply for the work needed and equipping everyone equally with the support for their learning and growth
• Own your own career, with curiosity and learning as your power skill, determine what else you can do and apply for the role

Watch the recording of this 55 minute session by requesting access here. Warning: these are three people who have already gone to the future and are bringing it into the present, you’ll probably feel a bit behind if you take in their ideas, but, no time like the present to get yourself going! Here’s a brief summary of their ideas:

Matt: Basically, no one has a linear career journey. There is no ladder that you climb, there's moments of disruption or unexpected events, maybe something that feels like a setback or a wrong turn, that turn out actually to be the things that are the stuff of a great career journey.

Pamay: Along the way I studied comedy at Second City. I thought, well, what the heck, go do something that you've always wanted to do. And here I am years later finding the communication skills and presentation skills I learned are helpful. At the time I didn't see that connection.

Heather: After 911 in NYC, I thought, let's do something fun. I started making designer toys. So I ran an art gallery and made designer toys and worked with artists all over the world for a couple of years, which has greatly enriched my approach to work and to life.

Heather: When you start looking at entire enterprise systems and thinking about how you move people in a direction towards owning their career, thinking about how their skills and experiences might be applied in different ways than maybe what they were traditionally thinking, it's really a bit of changing hearts and minds, really new ways of thinking. What we offer is a way for people to find or be matched to projects, volunteer opportunities, mentors. learning plans and pathways and jobs inside of this platform Unlocked to really learn more about what's possible and where their skills and experiences could take them. We also offer 2 different ways to think about current paths. So we have that traditional career path where you can literally go in and look at our job architecture and kind of look, you know, up the chain, so to speak, like, look inside of your job family in that way. The other thing that we offer is what we call the innovative career path or more like transformational, which is, you have these skills and experiences. Here's where else in the company you'd be able to go with those. And so those are a little wild sometimes that people like oh, I never considered going into marketing from engineering, I never thought about going into HR from sales, etc. And there's a lot of those different things that can come up for folks. This really is a movement in the way that we think, the way that we work. The whole idea of, you know, having work without jobs, which is our concept that I absolutely love, being able to really give that flexibility to people to work when and where they want to work and to have access. And that is really the biggest part of this. It is the democratization of access to opportunity.

Matt: How do you deal with the kind of internal resistance that comes with changes like this?

Heather: In addition to the focus on everyone is responsible for their own career, we train people leaders to be ready to coach their people on furthering their careers, and supporting their people as employees of the company, there to bring their best to the overall organization.

Matt: Pamay tell me about how you're thinking about the learning strategy overall to prepare the organization for this much more fluid networks type project type of career world.

Pamay: In addition to democratizing access to opportunity we need to democratize access to learning, because we all have to be learners. The world is changing at a speed beyond what we even could comprehend a few years ago. In order to be the kind of person who's really excited by, unlocked and excited by the opportunity to go in and see how I can be loaned out to a different part of the organization, or embrace applying my skills to a different place, I have to be a learner. The organization needs to have a vibrant learning culture. You have to be a company of people who think of themselves as learners, a company that has both a personal and organizational growth mindset. They need to have learning practices where they're learning something new every day. They think of learning being their super power. You need to democratize access to opportunity and democratize access to learning. Really, you can unlock so much value, and people can be tremendously engaged.

Matt: How do you bring this to frontline employees, to the employees where these opportunities might feel more limited. What do you do there to reach folks and help them see where the work they're putting in, how it fits in the organization and where development opportunities can get them and what that means and make that visible.

Heather: There are organizations that have approached this, when there are frontline workers like people who are working on the line who aren't sitting on desks. A lot of this was going mobile first, and having an unlocked app where people literally could while they're riding the bus to work listen in on, you know, different learning opportunities, or, you know, start searching for are there stretch projects that I could take?

Pamay: I would be the first to say, we're still learning how to make the value so clear that people will want to stay and do the things that are, you know, available on mobile app, etc. But maybe we need to make the value a little bit more clear and connected to true career development. And that's a challenge. And I will say we have not cracked all the codes, and that's one that I think we're still working on.

Matt: Over the next five years, you can look across the enterprise and anything that has the dynamic complex human stuff is going to stay with the humans and a lot of stuff that is routine that we're all working on still today, is going to get outsourced to machines. That’s a profound challenge for us, as both career and learning professionals: to help people who ask, Okay, well, what should I focus on? Where should I be putting my attention? What skills and muscle should I be building to make sure that they're still relevant over the next 5 to10 years?

Pamay: We need to upskill folks around AI, encourage people to start learning about it. To be curious, because some people when you explain the changes ahead, simply freeze. They say “oh, well, you know what the world is going to change, and I can't, I'm so behind. I don't know about AI. And so it's just going to happen to me.” We need to help people experiment in a way that helps them understand what this technology can do now, so that you can then get on the bus and try to figure out what happens when the new functionality comes in, and more complex things. You have to just get in there and start learning and learning how this can be of service to you now, and how it might be able to change, might change your role.

Heather: It's not that your whole job may be replaced, but you may be replaced by somebody who knows AI, who understands how to work with it. And so helping people, just learn and jump in and get a little bit more comfortable with it. But yeah, the half life of skills has really become shorter and shorter. And so giving people time and space, I think, is the other thing that we really can try to do as best as possible through our people leaders just encouraging, you know, if we have no meeting Fridays or Friday afternoons.

Matt: Older people can make good use of GenAI, with it they are using something they are very familiar with, which is like natural human conversation. The half life of certain skills, is getting shorter and shorter but the half life of power skills is not changing at all. Delegation is as old as time and being a good delegator is still, and perhaps even more so, going to be a part of both the way you manage teams in this era, but also the way you manage your digital assistant. Maybe that's part of the advice we give to people which is: find those things in your job that are truly human and timeless, like creative insight and delegation and human judgment, and look at jobs where those are a really important piece of what that job entails. And that's a relatively safe bet to make, because those things are going to continue to be what drives real performance.

Pamay: You have to be curious, but you also have to have that discernment, asking great questions. We're all trying to make sure that our employees have these skills. And they are important and will become even more important

Matt: GenAI is not necessarily something to be afraid of. I mean to your point, Heather, if you do nothing and don't respond, then maybe it is something to be afraid of. But there's a route for all of us here to use these things, to help us advance our career, and that is not an existential threat. If we're open to what what's changing and able to kind of adapt as it goes.

Heather: Honestly, we're using a lot of this technology today without even thinking about it, helping people understand that that it's like every time you get on, Netflix, every time you get on Amazon every time like this is actually part of the way that you're living today is getting these recommendations based on your preferences based on data based on information, being aware that it's like, hey? You're you are already living in this world, and you are thriving in it.

Heather: This is my soap box, and everybody at Mastercard knows it's my soapbox: do you have a reverse mentor? Do you have someone that you're talking with? How are we thinking about folks early in career? Staying connected to them? It's so easy as we advance in our careers like, and I will say this just from my own personal experience, like I've been working for 30 years. you know, and it's like, after a period of time, you're like, Hey, I got it. Like, I know this, I've seen this. Yeah, it's not my first rodeo. I've done this, you know, whatever you kind of get in that head space of just like, I know how to handle these things. And we do. We know how to handle them, based on our understanding of the way the world works. I would just like to posit that maybe the world doesn't work that way for everybody anymore. So checking in with folks to understand how they see the world and how the world works for them. I think, is, going to get us to where we all need to be within our organizations and in society as a whole.