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Techno-optimism or techno-pessimism? McKinsey Global Institute video series ponders the future of automation

A four-part video series from The McKinsey Global Institute examines automation's impact on the future of work.
By Matt Parke
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Will automation bring about a near utopian future where work is done by machines and humans working together or will it bring societal collapse when we no longer have purpose and become obsolete?

A four-part video series from The McKinsey Global Institute poses these questions and comes to a conclusion that although the future of work is uncertain, it will bring dynamic changes that have not been experienced before in our history.

Automation has the potential to change nearly half of all current jobs as we learn to work alongside artificial intelligence and robots. This could spell the end of the 9-to-5 workday and eliminate our conception of work in the near future, according to the series’ interviewees. Whether we are preparing for these disruptions or sitting idle is what concerns the series’ experts, a mixture of academics and business leaders.

Interviewees include NYU professors Arun Sundararajan and Vasant Dhar, LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue, Upwork CEO Stephane Kasriel, former CEO Carl Camden, McKinsey senior partner Katy George, MGI partners Michael Chui and Susan Lund and many others. They were gathered together for MGI and New York University’s The Digital Future of Work summit back in April and the videos are the product of this important conference.

Further discussion in subsequent videos center on building skills so the workforce is prepared for an automated future, the increasing obsolescence of the 9-to-5 job and suggestions on how business leaders and policymakers can shape the automation economy.

The experts outline potential solutions for adapting to this reality, like changing traditional education into a life-long pursuit of skills and how politicians can create a better safety net to help the displaced who are not able to transition to the new work.

Though some of the interviewees portend a scary future where automation technology replaces the need for a large workforce altogether, they also say there is enough optimism that this latest industrial revolution will not have painful long-term consequences if we act now to mitigate them.

Some choice quotes from The Digital Future of Work video series:

  • Michael Chui: “Going forward, we’re going to see more of these technologies which involve robotics or artificial intelligence, again, working side by side with human beings. Even if you’re on a shop floor or a factory floor, you’re seeing these robots, which are now safe for humans to work alongside.”
  • Mike Rosenbaum, CEO of Arena: “The skills that I would recommend an 18-year-old think about, which may or may not fit in the traditional definition of skills, are to try stuff that you never thought about.”
  • Stephane Kasriel: “There are all sorts of things that are being designed right now to facilitate this transition from a world where everybody needs to be in the same office and everybody’s constrained by a traditional 9-to-5 job, to a world where people can live closer to their communities. They can live in a place where the cost of living and the public school system, or whatever other considerations, allow them to live where they want to be.”
  • Tom Siebel, chairman and CEO of C3 IoT : There most certainly is a role for policy makers to facilitate the transition. But in my experience, policy makers tend to deal with problems after they reach crisis levels, not anticipate the problem and head it off. The social implications of what’s happening in information technology, communication technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, while many of them are very positive, many of them are highly deleterious. We’re going to create a class of people who are unemployed, permanently unemployed, and unemployable. And we need to figure out how to deal with that.

Join the Discussion: Watch the videos and tell us on our Facebook page what you think about the future of work? Are you a techno-optimist or techno-pessimist?

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Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.

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