Will AI Replace Your Job In The Next 5 Years?

AI's Transformative Impact: Navigating Ethics, Innovation, and Workforce Evolution

Discover the trailblazing world of artificial intelligence with us and our esteemed guest, Kieran Gilmurray, a senior analyst, renowned AI author, and thought leader. 

We’ll unravel the seismic shift AI is creating in the tech industry, spotlighting Deep Seek's cost-effective AI assistant that has sent shockwaves through the stock market, challenging tech titans like Nvidia. 

Meanwhile, we explore the geopolitical theatre with President Trump's ambitious $2 trillion investment in AI, positioning the US in a fierce rivalry with China, while Microsoft makes bold commitments of its own.

Join our compelling conversation as we confront the ethical dilemmas and potential benefits of AI development. We’ll dive into the contentious AI arms race, urging a shift away from competitive national interests towards responsible innovation that bridges cultural divides and fosters trust. 

Privacy issues come under the spotlight, highlighted by a lawsuit against LinkedIn, as we stress the importance of learning from history to avoid repeating the Cold War’s isolation and mistrust.

As technology reshapes the work landscape, we explore the transformations spurred by AI and remote work. Employees are seeking meaningful work and balance, while businesses adapt to a gig economy accelerated by the pandemic. 

Learn how generative AI is rewriting workforce expectations and offering unprecedented avenues for entrepreneurship, breaking down traditional barriers like capital and experience. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or an employee, embracing adaptability and technological advancements is key to thriving in a rapidly evolving digital age.

Read my article : The One-Person, One-Billion Dollar Business to learn how to create a business in 2025.

Chapters

• 0:00 AI Industry Discussion and Market Impact
• 6:51 AI Arms Race and Ethical Innovation
• 14:42 Remote Work Revolution and Workforce Loyalty
• 20:12 Digital Workforce in Modern Business
• 25:36 Future Workforce Skills and Education
• 36:39 The Future of Work Loyalty
• 45:47 Entrepreneurial Tools and Automation Trends
• 52:05 Entrepreneurial Tools and Career Resilience

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

My co-host today is Kieran Gilmoury. He's a senior analyst to ERPA, ai author and industry thought leader. And, kieran, today you're actually our guest as well as our co-host. You're our subject matter expert, so let me give you a proper introduction. Kieran is a globally recognized authority on AI and automation, having authored multiple influential books and hundreds of articles that have earned him prestigious accolades, including being named a top 50 global thought leader and influencer on Gen AI, best LinkedIn influencer for AI and marketing, top 50 global thought leaders and influencers in manufacturing and top 14 people to follow in data. Kieran, that's a long list, buddy. Congrats on all those accolades. I always forget about because I know you personally. I just think you're just curing.

Speaker 2: 0:45

I still am yeah, no, look delighted to get all that. Years ago, I started writing because I got frustrated that there wasn't good quality information out on the network or online. You ended up paying a fortune for it and I've been really fortunate that ever since I've started to write books and articles and everything else that people kind of like it, which is kind of cool. Now, if you don't, that's okay too, because you and I know, dan, you and I have some great arguments. Do you know what I mean? And that's what this should be about. It shouldn't be one person's view of the world. It shouldn't be one algorithm telling us what to do. It should be a heck of a good debate between people who can disagree and still have a virtual drink afterwards, because you and I need to actually meet in person someday.

Speaker 1: 1:25

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, listen, you know, kir, you're one of those guys that you know has that great accent, but also the smarts to back it up. It's not just an accent.

Speaker 2: 1:36

So I'll take the accent.

Speaker 1: 1:37

I'll take that. So listen, man, every week I say headlines are crazy. But listen, headlines are crazy. I mean. I think deep seek just crashed the Internet. It certainly crashed the stock market in the US yesterday. For those of you living under a rock, they've launched this cost effective AI assistant. It's threatening the big US giants Just days after President Trump said you know the US is going to be an AI leader and was bragging about $2 trillion of AI investment. And not only did all the tech stocks get killed yesterday, although some of them bounced back on Monday, some of them bounced back yesterday. Nvidia lost 17% initially, like $600 billion with a B in market cap in just one day. I think they bounced back maybe 7%, 8%, yesterday. Crazy.

Speaker 2: 2:31

Yeah, it's a little bit nuts. Remember the days we used to talk about millions and then tens of millions found big and then hundreds of millions. Now we talk about they lost $600 billion and nobody batted an eyelid. This is amazing for me, I think, dan, and nobody batted an eyelid. This is amazing for me, I think, dan.

Speaker 2: 2:45

Not just the fact that President Trump turned around and said we've got $500 billion, we're going to invest in data centres, and then there was questions about that and I have to love Microsoft's leader went I'm good for $80 billion. That's a phrase you want to drop at any party, not I'm good for the taxi, home or a round of drinks, but I'm good for 80 billion. But this is amazing because I think there was a mixture of a couple of things here. You know, apart from the fact they went look, you don't actually need $10,040 NVIDIA chips, just get a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand. We'll do that one. You don't have to, and this is the proposition that all of the big companies have went out with to stock markets and the markets. You have to invest in big data centers, tons of GPUs and whatever else, and I deep sink when it come along with all. No, you don't, we'll just take existing technology. We'll do all that for about six million and people start to question the six million.

Speaker 2: 3:44

Let's say it was 10 times that and it was 60 million't matter. It isn't 500 billion, it isn't a you know hundreds and hundreds of millions. So I'm not surprised the stock market has got a little bit spooked by this. But this is tech sector, this is innovation at its best. Then the other bit I seen was and again, maybe it's slightly different, but the what I would describe as the rhetoric was, you know, anti-. So, again, from a European perspective, it never ceases to amaze me. When the US do AI, everybody's happy. When China does it and introduces something, it's like, oh my God, it's not right, it's not proper. So, from a European perspective, this has been fantastic sitting on the sidelines.

Speaker 1: 4:21

Oh, I love getting the European perspective of how insane we all are on the other side of the pondelines. Oh, I love, I love getting the European perspective of how, how insane we all are on the other side of the pond here. But no, you know so. So where are you? On this Cause? I I've seen reporting, of course, right On on both, both extremes, right From you know, people saying, hey, the Chinese government didn't even know about this thing.

Speaker 1: 4:39

The president of China went to visit the company when they made the announcement because he didn't even know about it. And it's just, you know. I mean, I saw IBM even today is talking about putting it in Watson X and so you can do it in a secure way, and it's great technology and it's going to change the AI industry history. And then, on the other side of that spectrum, you know people like Kevin O'Leary, shark Tank guy, coming out and saying this is an overt Chinese government attempt to, you know, mitigate losses with with uh, uh, tiktok, uh, and there's like three other Chinese apps that you know have gone gangbusters, and so much so that they actually, uh, you know they've, they've this. This companyek has reported malicious attacks. They temporarily restricted user registrations outside China, but that's just after they had 2.6 million downloads across platforms, surpassing ChatGPT. Where are you on that spectrum?

Speaker 2: 5:40

Yeah, maybe a personal opinion apart from. You know, if you had a set of popcorn and a large Coke, you could go. You know, brilliant innovation, chinese dominance of the world. You know we're still winning. Actually, we can do this for six million, so who knows what score it is? But look, sort of.

Speaker 2: 5:55

From my personal perspective, it is like this is open source. That's the phenomenal thing about this. So it's not a case of look where, like let's compare it to OpenAI, cloud or whatever else for Plexi, look hidden, you know, not available, not telling you what they're doing, not opening up the hood. This is technology they have taken from, you know, lam or other examples. Open sourced, it gave all the code away, said do what you want to do, and then they went look well. Well, that said, you know that said. And then we had to find another fault was the data is going to end up in china, so open ai servers aren't in the us. And then we've forgotten snowden, you know.

Speaker 2: 6:37

So I just believe that every government around the world wants a competitive advantage, and ai is one of those potential things that could be, you know, not only economic but definitely a military advantage as well, because the whole host of uses.

Speaker 2: 6:47

So I'm not surprised there's a little bit of you know what you might say is contention. My biggest fear is that we end up in an AI arms race. So, rather than technology and 6 million is still a big number, but technology costs come down Can you imagine now that this software, this tool, if it is as good and seemingly it scores as good in some maths and some others, but if you can build this and give it away? So companies, corporations, governments, big business, can now suddenly have technology that might allow them, at an affordable price, to transform the world for humanity's sake, not just for a particular country's sake. That's what I hope and pray. So, despite sitting in the sidelines giggling away watching all this unfold, I just hope that we're sensible. We have great business, great innovation, but we use AI to benefit humanity, not just one or two individuals. So let's see how it unfolds. It certainly won't be boring.

Speaker 1: 7:49

Yeah, and that term arms race has been used way too lightly in the last year or two, but it really is becoming an arms race. I mean, the US government is now contracted with Microsoft and OpenAI for what they're calling kind of top secret use. There's 26 new products that Microsoft has received authorization for in its secret cloud environment, so you can imagine what those things are going to be used for. So how do you avoid, like you say, kind of like a nuclear arms race kind of thing, where you say, hey, well, we're just doing this because the other guys are doing it and we got to be ready, and that just escalates and it escalates right yeah, it's a pity.

Speaker 2: 8:35

It's a bit like the last time, isn't it? You know I have to say this down. Let me jump out of this just momentarily. You know, if I read the news and let's not pretend, the European, irish or British news, and I get to see all of these and then see, you know, middle East news as well, if I'm there, they all have their own viewpoints. They're all subjective. We as individuals are all subjective beings and the greatest thing that causes distrust is ignorance, and I don't mean that in a rude way. You know, if you believe everything you would read. You know, I'll say this tongue in cheek all Irish people just spend all their time drinking every day and the crack is mighty.

Speaker 2: 9:12

You know all Americans don't know where. You know a part of Europe is and you go. Well, I haven't got a clue where half of America? You know there's so many tropes and cliches and something else. And don't't you know? I have to say, everywhere I've went in the world, I have met amazing people and I am fortunate to get to travel it. You know, next month I'll be in. You know, amsterdam, mauritius, riyadh. You know I was on to Dubai this morning. You and I talk regularly. I'm on and off to London. You know, there's just gorgeous people everywhere in the world if you're willing to listen and communicate. It's ignorance, it's not talking to people, it's tropes, it's fear, it's believing everything that's presented to you instead of you actually, you know, trying to learn these things yourself, that that might open your eyes.

Speaker 2: 9:52

I, I on this one, though, I suspect ai is amazing. I was a chief head of ai for 10, 15 years ago. You know, and I still am in ai every single day when I can see what it can do and the benefit it can bring. You know, if you can get this right, you will get a competitive advantage, and that's every government's right, that's every firm's right, although I do laugh, just as I say, we're talking about the secret lab and the secret projects, the secret number, the project that isn't so secret. Folks at least do a better job of keeping the secret secret. You know, don't tell me what you're doing, that that might help.

Speaker 2: 10:24

But look, I suspect there are companies everywhere doing all sorts of things, be it ai, be it innovative business methods, be it how they train their people. You know, next generation tech, next year. You know, good luck, as long as you know it creates a, you know, a very innovative set of economies. As long as mankind, womankind, kind benefit, I'm for all types of innovation and invention. It's just when we mistrust each other, that's when we all start to go into our own little holes. They end up as dark places and, to be honest, if you remember the Cold War, absolutely no one benefited. So pray that we don't go back there.

Speaker 1: 11:01

Well, and to your point about biases right, you know you tend to have these. You know, in our case, us perspectives, right, and other cases maybe Chinese perspective. Yeah, there's another story, which I'm not saying it wasn't reported, but I didn't see it initially and someone sent it to me and it was. It was actually reported by the, by the BBC, where LinkedIn was accused of this privacy issue. So there's a US lawsuit filed on behalf of LinkedIn premium users accusing the platform of sharing private messages with other companies to train AI models. According to the report, in August of last year they quietly introduced this privacy setting, automatically opting people into a third-party data training, and then also that a month later they tried to hide it by changing the policy, kind of retroactively. So it's not just Chinese companies doing this, right.

Speaker 2: 12:01

How anti-American are you? Your next minute you have about a thousand people on Twitter ranting. Look, let me do one slight bit of bias here, just for everybody's information. My wife works for the BBC, so I'm going to declare that up loud before anybody digs into my miserable bank account and very small Twitter following. But look, as I know, the BBC have hugely rigorous standards. There isn't a day my wife would know that wouldn't make it through. That wouldn't make it through. So I'm going to assume that this is real and I'm going to assume, you know, editorial standards have been followed and you go oh my, you know, if this was a company in China, the amount of publicity it would get would be phenomenal. But it's's okay, it's linkedin, so just bury it.

Speaker 2: 12:46

Linkedin always amazes me because it's a double-edged sword, like I adore it. That's how you and I met. You know we've access to some of the most amazing people in the world working out in it today, and linkedin, you know, can be the greatest pain. I think I've been banned about five or six times what I was doing. I don't know, because we're not telling you you can fill in a form, but we're not actually saying two or three weeks later, back you come, but we're not telling you know the privacy. Things have been done before they. You know that it's not the first time this has happened, never mind linkedin. So let's not be biased on linkedin.

Speaker 2: 13:12

We we mustn't forget cambridge analytics again, you can't forget. There's a whole world of data brokers around buying data from every company and go back to the old cliche there is nothing free in the world. So all of our social media, all of our google, all of our windows, all of our whatsapp, all of our it ain't free folks. We're, we are the product. So if something like this happens, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. The amount of money that goes into lobbying in the eu now is phenomenal. To try and get around the eu act or to mitigate or whatever. So like, like Kel's a breeze, you know, don't not surprising the slightest. I you know. But do we care? You know, as individuals, we want massive personalisation.

Speaker 2: 13:52

We see these stories and, let's be honest, you and I aren't going out on the street with a sign. The companies are too big. We're talking about. You know, companies been bigger than economies. So somewhere along the line, we need good investigative journalism. We need some element of regulation just to keep people for want of a better phrase honest. But let's be honest. We live in a capitalist economy. The idea is innovation, growth. You know you're there to make profit. Somehow you need to balance that out. I'm glad I'm not the person making the rules, because I don't know if I would get it right, but the rules because I don't know if I would get it right. But again, shock horror. Not the first time, won't be the last time. I'm not saying that in a blasé extent, but I look at what I give LinkedIn every day and I'm going.

Speaker 2: 14:34

you need to pay me, not ban me. So let's see, Hasn't happened yet.

Speaker 1: 14:36

So I got one more headline for you, but it's a good kind of lead into our main topic today. Amongst the long list of executive orders that President Trump signed within days of coming into office, one of them was an overhaul on the federal US workforce. One of them was mandating workers return to in-person work, but the goal, according to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Vivek Ramaswamy, was actually to cut workforce force resignations from government agencies. And it's no surprise, right? Private companies are kind of back on this return to office train as well. Amazon, jp Morgan, at&t are just a few that are demanding workers returned inperson five days a week, although I've seen some other data where there's some exceptions to that. If you have exceptional talents and skills or a proven record of exceeding performance quotas, you're often exempt from these mandates. But you know, still, 75% of US adults are working remotely at least some part of the time, and almost 50% have said, according to a Pew Research Center survey, that they wouldn't stay at their current jobs if they couldn't work from home.

Speaker 2: 16:01

Yeah, I'm going to use the words I hate to say. I told you so, but if people genuinely go back through my linkedin, I wrote ages ago look at one stage it was. It was far too common for businesses to force everyone to come into the office and what they were doing is basically saying we don't trust you. You know, we're not willing to put the tech in place, because the tech was there, let's be honest, way before covid, all the tech, everything was there, but they just didn't trust their staff and didn't have the nuts, the cojones to actually say that now mine is, hire right and you don't need to worry about your staff. You and I, dan, if we went into business, don't forget, manage, don't need it to tell us what to do and make you know to do a really great job. We're in, we're working. So, again, hire right first and fix the symptom. But said at the time because it went too far to one side at one stage, of course, employees come in and had all the rights and it went far too far. The other side, you know it doesn't matter about the business, communication, onboarding, teaming, it's not to say you can't build these at distance. You really can, but it went too far. So now we're maybe, you know, know, going back too far, in the opposite direction. I wish it was settled a little bit for me.

Speaker 2: 17:06

I would say look, give everybody all the technology they need to do their job. We all work slightly differently. Hire the right people because they'll deliver the job without you having to supervise and and sit on them all day. But you know, we're in a different world. You can hire the greatest talent in the world from you know, not just 17 miles down the road, but hundreds and thousands of miles away. Don't just give people the tech talent in the world from you know, not just 17 miles down the road, but hundreds and thousands of miles away. Don't just give people the tech and not the training, because too often I've seen organizations and I'll not name them but to save the embarrassment, you have to come in three days a week. The only people who weren't coming in with the leadership team three days a week, statistically, the second one was come in three days a week and people are complaining.

Speaker 2: 17:43

I'm just doing what I always did. I'm whatsapping or I'm zooming or teaming someone who's two floors down. You know, nobody taught us COVID, nobody taught us to deal with the repercussions of COVID and I'm still seeing a lack of training inside a business to say, why don't we organize ourselves a little bit better? Why don't we actually be fair to each other? But it is a business and we have to earn money and therefore it's not about. You know, being fair means do your laundry, you know, sort the dogs out and do everything else, and then if you could do a bit of work, that'd be great. We'll all wait for you.

Speaker 2: 18:12

It has to be some element of balance in there that, because the numbers you need the numbers to make some money to pay the tech. You know, if we are in the office, let's make sure there's an activity or we're teaming or we're doing something where we're genuinely bonding, genuinely innovating or doing something. Not just tell them to stay home, don't give them any training, tell them to come in, don't give them any support, and all it's going to do is lead to multitude of conflict. So how do we actually have an adult to adult conversation to make all this work to adult conversation? To make all this work? Normally, hire the right adult. This is easy. Hire the wrong adults.

Speaker 1: 18:48

And it's just hard every day. Yeah, but you know so I'll tell you. And this kind of brings us to our main topic. Right, it's created this new world, right, where people are working at home. They're arguably less loyal to the companies who are, you know, being oppressive about the way that they work. Right, I've had conversations with people I will also not name who you know kind of acknowledge that their people were going to work, you know, from home but had ridiculous levels of restrictions on them, and the attitude was you know, hey, if they're on my payroll, I don't want them doing all those other things. Right, but it has created this, you know, second revolution of the gig economy that we've talked about in the past right, where, you know, people have side hustles and other projects, or at least kind of you know multitasking between different projects and maybe even companies. And then the Gen AI thing happens, right. So tell me about this MECO system. I like this term.

Speaker 2: 19:58

Yeah, I go back. One Gen AI. Imagine those people wanting not bullied at work, wanting promotion, wanting to do meaningful work. Imagine wanting a work like balance. You selfish lot. You've got this so wrong. Much better to go back to our day.

Speaker 2: 20:12

Yeah, look, I wrote this article a little while ago called the Miko System, and, annoyingly, our friend Mr Altman wrote it at the same time. I'm going to argue, I wrote it first, I probably didn't, but I didn't see his. What it's basically saying is look, we have all the technology in the world now, including agentic AI, which are essentially digital workers, or you might call it, to a degree, rpa with an LLM in the background, and what's being described here is actually you and I. How many people do we actually need in our business? So I do consultancy, I do thought leadership, branding work, whatever else behind me is finance teams, marketing teams, digital teams, the whole lot to guarantee good quality work. But let's say this so I want to generate leads. Why don't I go to a piece of software and I'll call out a couple of names. I'm not recommending these. I'm not saying I'm not recommending them. Go and find the technology that suits you to solve your business problem, but planai can do SDR work as good as anyone else. Go to eselfieai and you can put a visual AI in front of you and it'll answer every question you want about your marketing, your finance, your HR. It'll deliver training for you. I can go in and go to you know Substrata and a whole lot of others where I can actually record myself my video, take an image of me, translate all of my learning courses and AI and data and leadership into Spanish and German and French and I can go out and put that online behind whatever paywall firewall and then I get my SDR to go out and reach out on LinkedIn and then connect to a whole pile of audiences and do this and then you can pay me and then my bots can suddenly take care of this.

Speaker 2: 21:38

So if I can build a 10 million 20 million pound business by using agents and it's not that I don't want people, I like hiring people, I like working with people. I don't want to find myself like Mr Wilson on the island beside me here talking to a statue because I'm lonely. I want to hire people, but my job as a leader in a business is to put the most efficient, productive, 24-7 digital enterprise that I can in place, because I can, because I want to and because I need to economically. Now businesses and you have to be careful here, because we had RPA hype, now we've got agentic hype and just today that was interesting the International Labour Report came out. Or the International AI Safety Report, and they're saying look, in the section on labour markets, the report says the impact on jobs will be profound if agents get their way. The world economic forum came out with a report the other day saying you know, between 43 and 90 some percent of jobs are going to get impacted by ai. We have to be careful with the hype.

Speaker 2: 22:37

But this technology in terms of, you know, ai and generative ai and rpa and ingentics and intelligent automation and visual ai and conversational ai and RPA and ingentics and intelligent automation and visual AI and conversational AI and everything else it's there. It's been there for a couple of years. The only thing we're limited by is our imagination and our willingness to put this in place. So I hope to see someone or some small team building a hugely successful company with all of these technologies that are now freely available, to demonstrate to everyone else just how simply it can be done. I'm not saying it's simple. Simple, but it isn't as complex as it might have been to build AI and build a one-person business, as it might have been in 1956, when McCarthy went to Dartford and invented the phrase artificial intelligence. But you need people and great tech to make a great business.

Speaker 1: 23:25

Well, I mean, there's a bunch of interesting things there, right, but I was. I was actually on somebody else's podcast this morning and you know, it was one of these things where they asked me me, you know what, what advice I would give to an 18 year old today and questions like that. And, um, you know, one of the things I said was there's never been a better time in history to start a business, right, I mean, you know you, you think about, you know, you know my father's generation, my grandfather's generation, you know the average, you know person couldn't start a business without. You know a bunch of capital, a bunch of partners, a bunch of backers. You know probably a bunch of experience that they may or may not have had.

Speaker 1: 24:12

And now you know, like you said, you have all the tools at your disposal. I mean you could, not only could you create your own, you know business ecosystem. You said you have all the tools at your disposal. I mean, not only could you create your own business ecosystem, individual, but you could do it from your house. You could do it from your bedroom, your garage and perhaps, depending on the kind of business, never even leave the house. So there's ramifications there, no-transcript across the country on, you know, 27 days notice. Uh, maybe you rethink that right. Maybe you don't have to be, um, you know, beholden to the, uh, the traditionalen, to the traditional structure that we had in a pre-AI world and a pre-COVID world and the olden days, the olden days, what four years ago?

Speaker 2: 25:28

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because the world has changed. If you look at what was the case a decade or two ago, dan, you went to college, went to university. Your worth was the amalgamation of the knowledge that you could collect and retain. Now we've got AI and chat, gbt and Claude and Bing and Bard and perplexity and I'm not saying they're perfect, they're far from it and all the risks I mean. But look at the trajectory of where we're going.

Speaker 2: 25:49

Now it's not about knowledge anymore that's actually valuable. It's about you know, the ideas that you have, your creativity, your imagination, your ability to combine know, tech and people and everything else together. And we're not talking about locally, we're talking about globally, you know. So I'll give you an example. My son has started a business. It's his seventh or eighth business and he's 19 or 20. All of these businesses have been digital, online, and he's, you know, on Facebook, marketplace, on eBay, on all these. He's looking at statistics, he's looking at purchase patterns, he's buying products I can't tell you what it is because he won't allow me to tell anyone else and he's making good money, Hold on.

Speaker 1: 26:23

he hasn't even told you, Ciarán. He's keeping you in the dark.

Speaker 2: 26:26

He booked me out of his first business, by the way. Good man, he learned from his mom, but he's learned buyer behavior and psychology and he's dealt at distance and you're sort of like back and go my god, how did you learn all these things? And then you sort of work your way back and you go in the world. There's over 3.5 billion gamers, that's almost. That's more than the movies, more than television, more than whatever put together, and you realize all then have been taught to communicate internationally. You know, I remember saying to my other son he says, yeah, I'm talking to one from mexico and I'm talking to you. What he was on his headset, playing in a team with others. They bought virtual goods, they navigated. You know difficult situations, multinational currencies, multinational personalities and cultures. That generation is bleeding through the workforce, so why wouldn't they? But they get education.

Speaker 1: 27:13

They get education the same way, right? I mean, I mean, I remember 20 years ago speaking to a friend's son who had taught himself to play guitar without a single instructor just on youtube, and this is 20 years ago. I imagine applying that to the, to the business world or whatever your area uh, you know, your business area of expertise is going to be um, without traditional education, right?

Speaker 2: 27:35

no, you know, it's not to knock teachers, because I'm an ex-teacher and I adore them and the right teacher can get you in the right place. But my other son, will, and he's sitting there with a large screen and one side he's got chat, gpt and all the LLMs you know, and he's not asking it to give him the answer, not learning it. He's asking it to deconstruct and he's asking youtube open here and he's doing his mathematics you know a level, and he's learning just, but all of these different tools. So he's using what's available, you know. But here's my thing look, um, they've learned a lot of this themselves. It's not been at school, and that's not a criticism of teachers, because we're not actually, you know, giving our teachers and their schools the education and funding they need to be as digitally literate as we might or ai, but we, but we're going into work.

Speaker 2: 28:18

Dan, I don't know about you, but I could count on less than one half of a finger the numbers of companies that I've went into. That went great. To see you again, by the way, we're now going to career path you for the next 10 years to stay with this company. We're going to look at future tech. We're going to invest in you. We're going to do innovative leadership and technology. So we have to be careful here that we're excited about Gen Z, gen Alpha, gen Beta coming through now, who will be and are true AI natives, and then we forget everyone else in work. They're not worthwhile, they're old, they don't know it. We need to bring the generations with us, otherwise we're going to end up in a very poor economy because there isn't enough workers and there isn't enough productivity, in Europe at least, to allow us to achieve all the things we want to achieve.

Speaker 2: 29:01

So we're really going to have to rethink this. And then I think as well and this is where we go back to deep sake, which is why I like it. You know, sometimes technology is about affordability and therefore, you know, I look in some of the schools where I'm near and you need a 500 pound iPad or whatever you know to actually get hold of your homework because it's built online and the lessons are online. What if you can't afford $500? And, by the way, that's a lot of people, and therefore what you're saying is actually now we're going to create digital haves and digital have nots through an education and affordability system, and that's really something we got to look to because, as everything moves online and everything costs more money, boy, we're really creating one of the biggest social divides we ever had, except this time it's a digital divide, and that could be more impactful than most things.

Speaker 1: 29:49

Yeah, and I think a lot of this has to do with education in the traditional sense, but also just people becoming educated. I'm always concerned about any political atmosphere that you know pushes an agenda and not a reality. I felt like that, you know, for a long time in the US, you know both administrations, back to the days of outsourcing, when, you know, the Obama administration was bashing outsourcing and you know, and I felt like they either, you know, weren't up to speed with what was going on in the world or just were and were telling people what they want to hear because it's politics, right. But that doesn't, that doesn't, million times. You know that. You know the college university system, you know, I think it was seven or eight years ago now was pumping out some of the least employable graduating classes in history, and that was before AI, right. So definitely a disconnect in traditional education. You know as well as I do. You know, in our space, all the RPA companies created their own education and training programs to the tunes of millions of dollars because they couldn't get people that were, you know, properly educated out of the traditional education systems, really in most countries in the world.

Speaker 1: 31:10

And I think there's a labor thing there. Right, you're right. I mean there's two halves to the labor conversation. You could say listen, the reality is, you know it's not going to replace everybody's job, but it is going to limit jobs You're going to have, you know. You mentioned, you know, sdrs and customer experience. You're not going to need a thousand person contact center in five years. I would argue you don't need it now. So what do those people do? Do they move to higher value tasks within the company or do they start their own billion dollar business on their own because they have access to all these tools that 20 years ago they would have had to be working for a big company to have access to?

Speaker 2: 31:46

Yeah, well, let me unpick some of that because you're right, Look for $20 a month I can get access to every tool that I ever need and the old barriers to entry, which is a big factory, you know more, a huge marketing teams, yeah they're all done away with, do you know?

Speaker 2: 31:59

I mean now I go online. I buy all the service I need from gpc, amazon, azure, a whole host of others, ibm, name it. I can create my own website. I don't have to wait for a dell server for six, eight weeks and part of it. So whatever else I was having that conversation some of the other night. You know, immediately I can go out and you know, advertise online. Advertise online, just, I don't even need I could build an MVP. You know, easily I can actually go and get someone across the country or the world to build an MVP, so I don't really need to do that.

Speaker 2: 32:24

But here's where we're going to struggle and we really do need to look at this. As you know, individually, I own my own career because nobody else has, so I take accountability for all the things I need to know and invest in it. It's cost me a fortune but it's paid back multiple times over. But we need me, we need the employer, we need the government, we need educators to work together. Because I help design courses, so I help do the financial mathematics course in the local university here and when you work through the cycle of that, it takes about two years to design a course by the time you've done the faculty meetings, worked out what is needed, and I'm coming in from a business perspective saying, look, this is what I'm projecting happening in the next couple of years. It then eventually gets approved. Then it's a four year course. So when you think about it, what was six years ago the two plus four was the cutting edge of of need has now become the cutting edge of probably tradition or whatever the heck is out of date. So somehow we need to change that. What I'm seeing and this is for me, an amazing thing, because governments in the UK did away with what we called apprenticeships, which is you go into work, you get real world experience, you meet people who can do the job, you learn to engage with customers and spend money and project plan, and then later on in the week you went into the education institution to get access to some of the best thinking and meet some of the best creatives or academics and colleagues that you can imagine. I would love to see us doing far more of that. So let's work during the week Monday, tuesday, wednesday, Thursday, if even, and on a Friday let's go to college, let's whatever that be a technical college, a university, you know whatever it is, but let's give you the best of thinking and academia and knowledge and cutting edge insights and models and methods and let's put you into businesses, that career path you successfully and grow you, not just in the immediate need but actually career path you and say, ok, karen, dan, you've started. Great to see here, love your skills. By the way, we're just going to do an assessment here to see here, love your skills. By the way, we're just going to do an assessment here to see where you're shy for what you currently need. And, by the way, in 18 months time, we see the following trajectory and you're now going to start to go on your leadership, technical and financial courses and everything else. And here's a really innovative way to make sure you remain employable.

Speaker 2: 34:33

Because the fallacy is there's two fall fallacies with this AI age. One is don't worry, as we burn the planet and build huge data centers, agi is going to cure the planet afterwards. So please be distracted. You know that's the first one. And the second one is let's be honest, I'm not going to become a data scientist. I love mathematics, I love what data science can do, but if you ask me to build, you know a deep neural network and said don't worry, you've lost your current jobs, jump into this one. It may just be a while down and a little trip to a chat GBT where I come up with something. So that's not possible and we're not thinking far enough ahead. We're constantly surprised to the market and how technology is impacting us, and we shouldn't be but we are, yeah, I agree with you.

Speaker 1: 35:17

And as I think back to that, that question about you know, you know what advice I would give, uh, you know a young person, someone in college or really anybody, right, and anybody who's not like you know, a year or two from retirement, um, is, you know, I think in the next two to 10 years, um, you, everyone is going to have to have an entrepreneurial way of life. You know mindset, entrepreneurial, you know mindset, I mean. And if you think about you know what's happened to the job force, the labor force, over the last you know 60, 70 years, and I've got a graphic I'm going to put together on this. You know, you talk about, again back to my grandfather's generation. I mean, he worked for his entire career, every day of his career, work life for one company, right, it was IBM, my dad's generation. You know my dad probably had five or six different jobs right throughout most of his career, right, then you take, you know, the younger generations, our generation, the younger generations, I mean some of them are, you know, you have headhunters calling. Some of them would take changing jobs every 12, 15 months in the pre COVID era, right, you have this phenomenon.

Speaker 1: 36:38

I think that happened. You know, I would argue, big companies kind of lost their loyalty to employees, right, employees they stopped, you know, providing the same types of bet. I mean, when my grandfather was, you know, coming up through ibm, they gave him a house. I mean, that's how big they him that and the local shoes, two companies in town, upstate New York you either work for IBM or you work for the shoe company and they all had houses. I mean, my grandmother had that pension until she passed away a few years ago. I mean, it was just, it was crazy, right. So those, those days are gone, those that loyalty is gone.

Speaker 1: 37:16

And now, I think, with Kobe, we talked about return to office before, you know, now it's flipped. Now, not only have have have companies, employers become less loyal to, you know, employees, now employees aren't loyal to the companies either. Right, they got these gigs, they got these, you know, side hustles. They're working multiple jobs from home. They rather sit at home and, you know, you know, watch a daytime TV than than reported to the into the office, the office, and I think that's just the reality. So I think you know my kids' generation, I think it's going to be, they may not have a full-time job.

Speaker 2: 37:53

They may have a portfolio right and work for you know, 20 different companies, them plus a small team of people or agents, or probably a combination of the two yeah, excellent, whatever makes you happy, and I mean that genuinely because I do multi-portfolio and I do fractional cto work and whatever else and I enjoy the portfolio of skills that I get to practice. Like you know, somebody's worked for ibm, a brilliant company, you know. By the way, ibm brilliant company, come company. You know, a really good company. Why not? You know, if they look after each other, you know, and bring huge value to each other, absolutely tick the box, as you say, when you look at what's coming through now, the access to technology and jobs and you can work from anywhere, like, why would you want to do a nine to five where you're frankly bullied for whatever better phrase? I'm threatened with job loss or whatever else. And you know, suck it up was a phrase that I heard multiple times. I remember doing 60, 80 hour weeks, you know, for decades. Now, that's why I was laughing earlier on about gen z, where folks are complaining hey, you don't want to do 80 hour weeks we got complaining. Hey, you don't want to do ADR weeks, we got it wrong. You don't want to get bullied at work. You don't want to get sexually harassed, you want to be treated as an individual. You want D I, o. We got it wrong as a generation.

Speaker 2: 39:11

So the fact that these opportunities are available is amazing. And why not? If you can sit there and you can, you know if this is what, what excites you and you like you. You can make money selling all sorts of products, drop shipping, you know, buying stuff on ebay, buying stuff on facebook, you know. Meet people across the world and earn more than you can earn in your day job in a business pay tax, of course, please, legally and everything else. Why would you want to do that?

Speaker 2: 39:37

I have friends minded who she? She literally travels the world and this is her choice for the last 10 or 15 years, works with the most amazing people, does the most amazing thing and has the most amazing life because technology allows you to do it. So, look, mind is never judged. Do whatever makes you happy. If you're sitting in a job that's making yourself miserable.

Speaker 2: 39:55

Have that exit plan, you know, and that portfolio career, doing the things that you really like, developing skills you know that will serve you well, and working for ranges of companies. I call that kind of like a jigsaw career and it's your jigsaw. And once you combine all those pieces together, amazing and those individuals I get excited by because they're creative, because they're entrepreneurial, and I'd rather have one of them in my company for 18 months or two years, knowing they're going to exit, Because statistically it doesn't matter what you do. Gen Z will leave after four years Then have a rubbish employee I'm not saying that I'm sure you're a nice person, but technically rubbish for 10 years. Do you know what I mean? So it takes your pick.

Speaker 1: 40:34

Yeah, I think it's actually.

Speaker 2: 40:35

You know, when I was growing up, it was the perception out there, we're still growing up, by the way, dan, we're still growing up.

Speaker 1: 40:42

Eli, that perception of not working for a single entity was considered very risky. I would make the argument that it's actually riskier. Now, right, the loyalty isn't there. The market's too different. And, by the way, while all the work I'm not just beating up on the big companies, anyway, while all the work I'm not just beating up on the big companies While all of the employees did what they did during COVID, after COVID and have all these demands now, a lot of the big enterprises I talk about are not filling those jobs back. They're finding out other ways to get those jobs done.

Speaker 1: 41:18

Because, as you know, as a lot of our followers know, the technology has been there for a while, like automation and AI existed before chat, gpt. Now it's another level, but it's existed for a while. One of the biggest levers or one of the biggest hurdles for it was not the technology, it was the culture and the politics around employment, right, so you know. Now you know, you have a lot of these organizations that are like well, you know what, maybe we don't need people to do that, or maybe we don't need as many people to do that, and and those, those things are not coming back. So so you know, the marketplace is not going to ever return back to. You know, use the term new normal if you want, but you know it's not going to return to the way it was.

Speaker 1: 42:00

So I would argue, having that you know jigsaw career, as you call it, or that entrepreneurial portfolio career approach, I think, is actually, you know, less risky than putting all your eggs in one. I mean, I just spoke to a friend of mine I won't mention the company name, but big Fortune 500 company. She's dedicated, like you know, a good chunk of her life to it. Um, and they basically just let her go without a whole lot of explanation. Uh, her friend who is in the same company just got let go because they told him there's no more upward mobility for him in that, in that you know organization and you know that was a big blow, right. So I don't know, I've always been an entrepreneurial mindset because that's just the way I'm, I'm wired. But I think more and more people are gonna, you know, should, but also are going to have to in the next dozen years. You know, go, go that route.

Speaker 2: 43:00

Yeah, look my empathy to your friends. Uh, it's happened to me, but I have to say and this is maybe approach it was the best thing that happened to me when I got made redundant, because it made me actually not, you know rethink my career every 18 months. So I need to explain that. You know, got was very successful in the business. Business got took over, was very successful, worked 80, 90 hour week, forgot to train, forgot to reinvest in myself and eventually, three or four years later, she said the market had moved on because the shelf life, or the half life of your skills, you know, you get a degree 30, 40 years ago, it would last you 20, 30 years. You could have gone career, career. Now, whatever skill you got is worth two or three years. So it taught me to invest in me.

Speaker 2: 43:45

And when you think you're in a job and you're secure, you're not Because, again, same thing. I know one of the big four today just walked into an office, laid off half the team and went we're just not making enough money. It's not that they're not making money, it's just we're not making the other couple of hundred million that we actually require. And then you're sort of going. Folks, really, really, what lesson does that say to anyone who's left behind about your loyalty? When you're making billions a year Like you're going to lay them off because you're not making an extra couple of hundred million? Not in mission, will they stay in any length of time? And I know some people in the business that's their immediate reaction. But look, there is no job security. Anybody who believes there's job security doesn't exist, because employers can't even offer you that anymore, because look at our friends in open, ai and claude, we've got a billion, five hundred actually. No, you don't need it, you know, I mean for six million. Someone else can do the same thing.

Speaker 2: 44:30

So the only security or the only assurity is your willingness to invest in yourself. It's your control over your own career, because I know you and I, dan, we're looking ahead all the time what's coming in, what money coming and what cash is coming in. Money isn't coming in. You and I, dan, we're looking ahead all the time what's coming in, what money coming in, what cash is coming in If money isn't coming in? You and I are putting our head down to get more into the pipeline and more over the line and I feel more in control than I've ever been in my life because I've taken responsibility and full accountability for my career, since I was made redundant 10, 15, 20 years ago or something else. I always sort of say be hungry, just just be hungry. Call it an entrepreneur or whatever else, but everything exists to allow you to be exceptional. The odd person. Anything I see is a bit of confidence. But look, if you don't believe in yourself, no one else will. So you might as well try and believe in yourself and get stuff done, you know.

Speaker 1: 45:16

So, karen, what is your? We talked about this kind of portfolio approach, but what? What is your kind of toolkit look like? I don't mention any names, but you know, if you think of kind of the types of tools you're using in your day to day, how do you recreate this one person business? What are your favorite kinds of tools?

Speaker 2: 45:38

Yeah, so look, I have to say, generative AI everywhere. You know, and that's an extraordinary thing thing, but we're only talking about a couple hundred dollars a month. You know, using research tools, you're using, uh, writing tools, you're using grammar connection tools and whatever else. So that helps. You know, output courses, consulting engagements, whatever else. It isn't that I'm typing into one of these programs. Please write me a consulting evidence on the back of this. It doesn't work with it. You're just using a really good tool to augment, but that's only one part of what you and I do.

Speaker 2: 46:06

You know I've cloud-based financial systems, social media, massive platforms. You know turning up at events and that's putting in the leather. You know the shoe leather is aware to actually meet people and get to know people and whatever else. So you know that now I'm out looking at more automation to go into the business, so that you know a agentics and I'm on with two or three companies at the moment who are actually building agents for me to do particular parts of my business and my particular function. That you know. And it's not about denying someone a job, but go back to what you said earlier on If technology can do it, why wouldn't you do it. So then, when I'm spending money on researchers and writers and co-authors and you know other people in technology land or whatever else I'm spending really good quality money on really good value-add stuff. So, realistically, it's working out.

Speaker 2: 46:48

And this is the bit for folks starting their business. You know it's what you enjoy doing and hopefully what you enjoy doing the market actually wants. And then it's putting out for me a premium product. You know premium writing, premium consultancy, premium. You know masterclasses and whatever else and providing immense value on top of that. And that I can do because of enough. You know, loads of tech that allows me to do more in a day than I was ever capable of doing, to higher quality, to higher output levels than has ever been possible, because I've put these technologies in and taken time to learn them, surrounded myself.

Speaker 2: 47:22

So, without giving the tools away, you know it's social, it's cloud, it's in-person, it's generative AI, it's agentics, it's automation, it's, you know, market researchers around the edges and writers and constructors and everything else. And I actually go through a lot of other companies as well, and they you know my multi-portfolio career and my fractional work that's actually provided by others companies as well, and they you know my, my multi-portfolio career and my fractional work. That's actually provided by others who've seen what I've done and experienced the quality of it as well. I'm not unique, by the way, in any shape, form or other. I'm not suggesting, wow, this guy suddenly can do this and no one else can. As you said earlier on a lot of it's been blood, sweat and tears to work it out and just deciding Joe, I'm going to do it because the technology's there and the will is there and I have to say I've never had a richer career in terms of variety and the people that I meet and the places that I go.

Speaker 2: 48:13

You know I wouldn't swap it for the world. The odd time I'm sitting at a particular airport that cancels the flights, I might change that, but the rest of it I adore.

Speaker 1: 48:19

Yeah, I agree. I mean, for me it's I mean, obviously, content creation. I mean, and anybody can be a content creator. I mean it brings up this other topic of how do you validate authenticity of content and how do you determine who really is a thought leader in a world with AI-powered content. But from the entrepreneurial standpoint, from the standpoint of, you know, having your own business, everybody can be a content creator, everybody. I mean even the platform we use here, right, yeah, everybody's got a studio, everybody's got, you know, content creation text, video, audio, social media management. So that that's definitely, for me, that's the, the obvious one.

Speaker 1: 49:00

The one that I think people underestimate is sales and marketing in general. Right, the ability to do mass personalization at scale, to be able to create very custom, profile-based outreach to your target audiences. You know, yes, marketing automation, but that's come a long, long way. And you mentioned AI. You know SDRs. I mean we're tracking some tools that you know are outperforming people. And, by the way, when I say outperforming people, you know it's the typical people thing, right? You get 80% of your, your, your productivity out of 20%, you know, of your people. So if you can replicate it, actually maybe you're closer to 90, 10 in some spaces, right. So, um, you know, if you can, if you can, if you can create. I mean, part of the reason people love you know, you know Zuckerberg loves you know this is that you know he can take his best 10% of his programmers and replicate that and scale that up. And the subtext is only keep 10% of those people but, more importantly, take advantage of what the top 10% are doing.

Speaker 1: 50:12

Same thing's always been the case in sales. 20% of your sales team is doing 80% of your volume. You can now automate a good chunk of that, and not just in the ways you think. Everybody's seen LinkedIn automation. There's a lot of really interesting conversational AI for sales email outreach, text message outreach, even phone call outreach. So I think that's the area where it's like well, okay, now I have a business and, yes, I can automate all the finance and accounting and that stuff has been around for a while, but now I can create content, create marketing, create media. I can basically have a sales and marketing department, an AI-based sales and marketing department. I can have a virtual assistant as an admin. So you start thinking about from a department standpoint sales, marketing, content, media, publishing, finance. You start pulling together all the different pillars of a traditional firm right.

Speaker 2: 51:12

Yeah well, this is the bit. Try not to end too controversially whilst lining up. Let's end controversially. I'll use me as the example. My job of getting me fired was my fault, you know.

Speaker 1: 51:23

I don't care.

Speaker 2: 51:24

You said well, the employer did you choose to do what you want to do? All this is there. All this Dan has been there. You and I have talked about this for the last 10 years. The technology has just got better, cheaper, whatever else, but it's been there.

Speaker 2: 51:36

If you don't take accountability for your own career, you in trouble. Please don't rely on your employer, please don't rely on anyone else. The one person in life you can rely on is you, and then, hopefully, you have a close-knit network around the edges to help you out. So you need to learn these tools, you need to use these tools. But to your point, look, I look sometimes at people saying you know AI, ai rubber, you know, whatever I go, I often write the bottom of my content and AI help produce this. This because it works. And I agree with what you're saying. The 20% Someone said that's what Musk did. He went into Twitter. Have you noticed any difference when 80% of the workforce gone? No, we just kept the 20.

Speaker 2: 52:10

And I'm not suggesting win fire. What I'm suggesting is look, don't wait, do what you and I did. We're not exceptional individuals by any extent. Know, create your own like, set up your own business and use all of this technology. You don't have to use it all day one, but start.

Speaker 2: 52:25

But sales and marketing is the rain that makes everything else work, and the fact that if you do automate the life out of all of the back office and everything else, it frees you more time to do that.

Speaker 2: 52:33

And if you're really critical, in the most gorgeous sense, for yourself, once you actually start to look at the things you do every day, in a daily, daily, daily basis, week in, week out, you pretty much go actually, do you know something? If I'm being honest, someone else could do that or a machine could do that, and if you're in that position, it's time to get a unique set of skills or a forward set of skills that's going to allow you to retain gorgeously employable so you can do all the amazing things that you want in your own life. I wish everyone success. I never wish anyone harm and dear goodness anybody who's been impacted by a job loss. It is like an emotional roller coaster, but you will come out the other end If you just approach it with the mindset you know something that happened, I'm not going to fix it, and from now on, I'm going to fix it myself as well.

Speaker 1: 53:16

Yeah, yeah. Well, if anybody watching is, I want. I want some more details and just to just to chat about tools. Kieran uses the tools I use. I'm fortunate, as Kieran is. We've got a large network, over 130,000 members, so if we don't know the answer, we usually know someone who knows the answer. Feel free to book a call with us. It's erpaaicom slash networking. You can book a call with us. We're happy to share our advice, our two cents.