What Career Should You Choose in the AI Age?

Merryn Talks Money

Host Merryn Somerset Webb interviews economist Daniel Susskind about navigating career paths in an era defined by artificial intelligence. T

Key takeaways

• Daniel Sussund suggests shifting career focus from 'what job do I want' to 'what problem am I interested in solving.'
• Recent PISA education data indicates a global decline in math and reading proficiency.

Main topics

• AI and the future of work
• Global decline in educational standards

Notable quotes

What job do I want to do? ... No... what problem am I interested in spending my life solving.

Conclusion

The episode offers a hopeful framework for the AI age, emphasizing tha

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) We don't just invest in cutting-edge companies. We look at companies with a history of steady growth. And companies whose growth cycle has come round again. Because in the real world, you have to look at growth in three dimensions. Monk's Investment Trust. Speaker 2 (0:15) AI is entering its most consequential phase where scale, safety and sovereignty will determine who leads and who lags. Join Bloomberg Tech in London on November 2nd and 3rd as global leaders across business, finance and policy examine the defining trade-offs shaping the future of AI. Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Salesforce, and supporting sponsors, IDA Ireland and Schneider Electric. Learn more at BloombergLive.com slash Tech London. Speaker 5 (0:48) Bloomberg Audio Studios. Speaker 4 (0:49) Podcasts. Radio. News. Speaker 4 (1:04) Welcome back to Merrin Talks Money, the podcast in which people who know the markets explain the markets. I am Merrin Somerset Webb. This week, I'm speaking with Daniel Sushkind, an economist and one of the leading thinkers on how technology and artificial intelligence are changing our world of work. Daniel is a professor at Gresham College and King's College London and a researcher at Oxford University and the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. He has spent the last 15 years studying technology and work, and his previous books include A World Without Work and Growth, A Reckoning. Regular listeners to Merrin Talks Money will know that I often ask our guests, what should our children be studying? What kind of work will survive the rise of AI? And how should young people prepare for what is coming? And how can we help them prepare for what is coming? Well, well done, Daniel. He has written a whole book about exactly that. Not because we asked him to, but just because I guess it's interesting. It's called, What Should My Children Do How to Flourish in an Age of AI? It asks what the next generation should learn, which skills will matter, and how much we can prepare for it. future we can't predict. Daniel, welcome to Merintooks Money. Thank Speaker 1 (2:07) you so much for having me. Speaker 4 (2:09) Right. We are very lucky because we have got the perfect hook for our conversation, which is that the PISA education numbers came out this morning. And I'm sure that you've looked at them as well. We are talking, by the way, on the 8th of September. They came out this morning and they were really depressing. They showed a global decline pretty much across the board in maths and reading. They were even down from what we saw in 2022. And when we saw depressing numbers for reading and mathematical skills around the world in 2022. We went, nah, COVID, it'll get better. It'll be fine. But it isn't. It hasn't got better. It's got worse. And I know that all generations look at the one below them and go, well, they're useless. It's getting worse. And normally it isn't. But these numbers suggest that there is something going on. Speaker 1 (2:59) I think that's right. I think that's right. I mean, the numbers appear actually early on in the book. but only up to 2022 because it's global data and it takes the OECD a good few years to gather it together. Many people have pointed to the particularly sort of precipitous fall in literacy, but it's also numeracy as well. I mean, I think it's a disaster in itself, but it's a particular disaster for thinking about how we prepare. the next generation for the age of artificial intelligence. And I think there's two reasons why. One is, and this is a theme that runs through the book. And you alluded to it in your opening comments there, which is that it is incredibly difficult and impossible to predict the future. The way in which we have traditionally, I think, thought about preparing the next generation for the future of work is to try and think as cleverly and as deeply as we can about what's going to happen in the future and what jobs will have to be done and then reason back and say, well, look, these are the sort of... future-proof skills that we need to teach the next generation. I just think that's too difficult to do. We just can't predict with confidence, particularly in this extraordinarily uncertain world, exactly what more advanced skills, perhaps it's creativity, perhaps it's judgment, perhaps it's problem solving, are really going to be in demand. But I think what we do know is that whatever those advanced skills turn out to be, they are going to Speaker 1 (4:34) rely in some way on people having those basics in place. Now, those basics are basics, not simply in the sense that literacy and numeracy are the most fundamental skills, but they're also basic in the sense that they're the building blocks. They're the foundations for everything else. And so I think that is one reason that I think it's particularly worrying. Speaker 1 (4:55) that whatever skills do to turn out to be valuable, they are going to rely on these basics. Would Speaker 4 (5:01) you blame technology for this decline in literacy and mathematical ability? Would you look at that and say, well, this is social media, this is children not paying attention, or is it something's gone wrong in teaching? I mean, there's always fads, aren't there, in the way that children are taught, and there's different ways that children are taught. drill down into the numbers that we've seen globally, there's something quite interesting that's happened to England, where mathematical and literary skills have remained fairly static, and there's been no devotion to any particular type of educational fad in England. It's stuck to basic old-fashioned ways of teaching, give or take. And so England now finds that it's moved from number 20, 25 in the world in most things up into being in the top 10 in almost every... educational skill, whereas at the same time, we've seen devolved areas of the UK where maybe there's been something more faddish going on, Scotland, Wales, where we've seen declines. So it's just that that could be part of it globally, a different way of teaching. But another part of it, it seems fairly obvious to adults anyway, that it is social media related. Speaker 1 (6:07) I think there's two really interesting things here. One is, I think technology does play a role. I don't think it's a coincidence that this decline in literacy and numeracy begins in 2009. 2009 is the year that young people's lives start to become saturated with smartphones and social media and they're sort of distracted and attention is fragmented. And in the book, I am very critical of social media. I have lots of worries about social media. I think many of the... ideas that are gaining traction for restricting children's access to social media. Things like no smartphones before 14, no social media before 16, phone-free schools, lots of play. I think all of these are terrific things. But I think there is something really important, though, to remember, which is that social media is not the same thing as artificial intelligence. And one of the worries that I have is that legitimate concerns about social media are being bundled into conservatism and fears about artificial intelligence. So sensible restrictions on social media are leading to knee-jerk bans and things like chat GPT. And I think that's a mistake because whereas I think social media does disempower and distract us, artificial intelligence, if used in the right way, has the potential to make our lives go vastly better. And that is... Speaker 1 (7:36) That's part of what the book is, or it's a big part of what the book is about. There's another way to put this, which is that I think at the moment we have trapped ourselves in a debate about what the right amount of screen time is. Do we want more screen time or do we want less screen time? And we're sort of collectively searching for the sort of Goldilocks level of screen time, not too much, not too little, just right. And my view is that actually that's the wrong debate. What we should really be debating is what is actually on these screens? How are we using this technology? And if we are using it right and using it to prepare the next generation for this world that they're about to enter, then I think that's a really, really good thing. Speaker 4 (8:18) One of the reasons I think that people may be confused or are concerned about the connection between AI and social media is because, of course, AI has. invaded social media. So, you know, kids are now seeing AI swap all over the place, which I think keeps them moving through reels faster and faster and faster and through larger chunks of time than they might have pre-AI. So there is a connection there. You can see where the danger signals are for parents and for teachers. Clearly, Speaker 1 (8:45) the distinction