Kicked Off The Bus

Four years ago, Gav was offered a redundancy from his merchant bank employer, so he grabbed it and got the hell out of there.

The next day, he was at Vinnies, swapping his expensive pinstripe suits for some hi-vis shirts.

And three months later, he was driving a big blue bus around Sydney with a massive smile on his face.

He reckons it was like being back home on the farm.

But late last year, he saw something hurtling towards him down the AI super-highway.

A driverless bus.

His childhood dream of driving a big rig might be coming to a tyre-burning halt.

You see, a few months ago, data emerged that within the next 5–7 years, up to five million truck, bus, and Uber drivers in the US could be replaced with autonomous vehicles (AVs).

(Read: Australia too.)

That’s 3–4% of the US workforce up-ended by AI in one industry alone!

The problem is, most drivers aren’t like Gav.

Most are in their fifties, unskilled, and unqualified.

So, where does a fifty-year-old driver get a job if all they know is a steering wheel?

Well, thanks to AI, the fastest-growing industry on earth right now is ‘micro-learning.’

Micro-learning is a super-quick way of picking up new skills through bite-sized, digestible lessons.

It’s perfect for people like Gav’s workmates, who must adapt to a world changing at breakneck speed.

But the fear is, micro-learning won’t be enough to counter the seismic shift occurring in our workforce.

Put simply, the world’s approaching a very hazardous intersection.

Of course, all this assumes we’d rather deal with a ‘bot’ (robot) than a real person.

But I don’t think it’s that binary, and it never will be.

Consider these two basic examples at opposite ends of the digital spectrum.

As a people, we love asynchronous communication—being able to send and reply to messages in our own time.

It’s convenient and less intrusive.

And then, at the other end, we have cohorts like Generation Y (born 1981–1996).

Gen Y is the most connected generation of our time, thanks to Facebook, Instagram, etc.

They’d rather talk screen to screen than belly to belly because it’s safer and more convenient, but there’s no real ‘engagement.’

So while they’re the most connected generation, they’re also the loneliest.

Dating apps are experiencing the same thing—they’ve plummeted in popularity.

I love most things AI. In fact, I couldn’t tell you the last time I used Google. I’d much rather use ChatGPT because it’s a bigger, better machine.

But as AI reshapes the world at an exponential rate, we’ve gone retrograde to our most primitive needs—safety and security.

We’ve become hyper-sensitive to anything that’s fake and demand the truth more than ever before.

In other words, the more we lean into artificial intelligence, the more we crave authentic relationships.

The winners in AI will be those who are efficient with things but effective with people.

Because as time passes, we’ll be extra vigilant about what bus we get on.

Which means there will always be a demand for drivers we can trust.

Have a great weekend!

Adam

Back paddock: There’s a gorgeous white British bulldog that passes the office each day at about 7:30 a.m. He’s a nugget and weighs about 30kg. Anyway, I finally met him during the week. His name is Meatball. What a great name!