Humans + AI workflow, AI for team effectiveness, work in a BANI world, AI global impact on work, and more

August 26, 2024

“Ask yourself how big an investment it’s going to be over the next 20 years for your organization to totally transform itself – as it will have to, to survive. Do you have a strategy for that? To address complex, urgent problems you have to say, ‘I can improve not only my product cycle time, I can improve my improvement cycle time.’” — Doug Engelbart. circa 1962

I am thinking of changing the format of this newsletter, and I want your opinion!

Rather than have the same structure every time, it could be more free form, sometimes including more extended reflection on recent developments or what I’m working on.

If the newsletter changes, what would you like me to keep? And what else would you like to see? Do you find the ‘Hot News in AI’ useful or do you get that news elsewhere? Is the ‘Humans + AI update’ particularly interesting? How much of my content versus curated content do you want? What else is useful - or not?

Just reply to this email to let me know what would make a newsletter from me something you’d love to get every week. Thanks! 🙏

Ross

 

📖In this issue

  • Framework: Humans + AI Workflow Principles

  • AI can help accelerate new business establishment and growth

  • AI to help team effectiveness using theory of mind

  • Product managers will thrive in an AI world

  • GitHub’s latest survey on AI use in coding

  • Natalia Bielczyk on work in a BANI world, becoming our own Zen masters, AI in recruitment, and contagious empathy

  • How AI's impact on work will differ across nations, gender, and sector

🤸 Framework

Humans + AI workflow principles

‘Humans + AI workflow’ is at the center of my work. Humans and AI each have distinctive and complementary capabilities. To integrate these into a system that transcends the capabilities of each individually and augments humans we need to design the workflows that seamlessly bring both into the same value network.

This framework I created early last year lays out the underlying principles on which specific and pragmatic Humans + AI workflows can be built.

 

👩🤖Humans + AI update

AI can help accelerate new business establishment and growth

There are many ways that AI can help entrepreneurs start and grow businesses, including developing and refining ideas, avoid expensive professional services, build technology faster, automate processes, and more.

AI to help team effectiveness using theory of mind

An MIT researcher has created “an AI assistant that communicates with team members to align roles and accomplish a common goal.[It] can oversee a team of both human and AI agents, intervening when needed to potentially increase teamwork effectiveness in domains like search-and-rescue missions, medical procedures, and strategy video games..”

Product managers will thrive in an AI world

Leading product management commentator Lenny Rachitsky say that “I’ve recently published a couple of pieces that have created anxiety in the PM community (i.e. how AI is getting closer to replacing PMs, which parts of the job are most likely to be impacted) [but] I believe that product managers are the best-positioned role in tech to thrive in a world of AI.”

🔥Hot news in AI

  • Perplexity plans to start running ads against search - CNBC 

  • Popular graphic design software Procreate pledges to never use generative AI, drawing praise - The Verge

  • Anthropic’s Claude can now generate LaTeX - Twitter

  • Google Pixel 9’s built in AI photo editing are said to be dangerously realistic and easy - The Verge

  • GitHub’s latest survey on AI use in coding shows that almost all coders have used AI, though around 80% have used only at work and not at home, among other findings - GitHub

🎙️This week’s podcast episode

Natalia Bielczyk on work in a BANI world, becoming our own Zen masters, AI in recruitment, and contagious empathy  

What you will learn

  • Exploring the impact of Black Swan events on the future of work

  • Understanding the role of AI in accelerating job market trends

  • Navigating the BANI world with better filtering mechanisms

  • Balancing AI and human judgment in recruitment processes

  • Emphasizing the importance of work ethic in the AI era

  • Discovering personal productivity hacks for focused work

  • Fostering empathy and kindness in a technology-driven workplace

 

💡Resources and insights

How AI's impact on work will differ across nations, gender, and sector

United Nations and International Labour Organization have released a report Mind the AI Divide: Shaping a Global Perspective on the Future of Work.

The reports show that the most developed regions are more diversified and have higher proportions of white collar work, resulting in greater potential for automation. Across the board there is over-representation of women in the "clerical" roles most impacted by AI.

Because a wider range of jobs can be augmented than automated, the augmentation potential is more similar across nations. However the key challenge is that remains a massive digital divide in access to computers and thus AI, meaning that the augmentation potential will accrue more to developed nations.

Thanks for reading!

Ross Dawson and team