Somebody said something at a talk I attended recently which struck a chord. As technology takes over the administrative and increasingly more complex professional tasks, robotic surgery or automated contract drafting by way of example, professionals, as they of necessity move up the value chain, may become less specialised.
For example, although I am broadly an IT lawyer my main focus is on non-contentious complex service contracts. I have advised on corporate deals and on litigation and on various compliance issues, but I have built my reputation primarily as an outsourcing lawyer.
If technology makes my job easier by helping me draft contracts at the same time as it helps my IT litigation colleagues by using automated discovery software maybe our true underlying skill set in technology law will mean we can do both jobs – something that to date would be frowned on in major law firms, except possibly in intellectual property practices.
Renaissance person means a person who is "enlightened" in all subject matter including arts, math, athletics, philosophy, music, history, and any other cultural aspect of society. The phrase as the name suggests originated during the Renaissance Period which lasted from about 1400 to about 1600 and was used to describe famous people like Leonardo da Vinci, who whilst he was most famous as a painter, was also a scientist, engineer and mathematician.
Some have predicted that the age of artificial intelligence will ultimately spell the end of the professions as we know them. Richard Susskind in The Future of the Professions persuasively explains how 'increasingly capable systems' - from telepresence to artificial intelligence - will bring fundamental change in the way that the 'practical expertise' of specialists is made available in society. He challenges
the 'grand bargain' - the arrangement that grants various monopolies to today's professionals and argues that our current professions are antiquated, opaque and no longer affordable, and that the expertise of the best is enjoyed only by a few.
I agree we will all need to change but I think maybe this is a huge opportunity to get away from the professional drudgery of tasks that can be automated, whilst still providing our expertise.
As Sebastian Thrun, computer science professor at Stanford University said I am infinitely excited about artificial intelligence and not worried at all. Not in the slightest. AI will free us humans from highly repetitive mindless repetitive office work, and give us much more time to be truly creative. I can't wait.
And as Steven Pinker, psychology professor at Harvard University cautions us We should worry a lot about climate change, nuclear weapons, antibiotic-resistant pathogens, and reactionary and neo-fascist political movements. We should worry some about the displacement of workers in an automating economy. We should not worry about artificial intelligence enslaving us.
Maybe although it seems at first counter intuitive, we will be enlightened not enslaved by technology and able to bring our expertise to bear like renaissance man across a variety of different subjects.
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com sums it up nicely I predict that, because of artificial intelligence and its ability to automate certain tasks that in the past were impossible to automate, not only will we have a much wealthier civilization, but the quality of work will go up very significantly and a higher fraction of people will have callings and careers relative to today.
For example, although I am broadly an IT lawyer my main focus is on non-contentious complex service contracts. I have advised on corporate deals and on litigation and on various compliance issues, but I have built my reputation primarily as an outsourcing lawyer.
If technology makes my job easier by helping me draft contracts at the same time as it helps my IT litigation colleagues by using automated discovery software maybe our true underlying skill set in technology law will mean we can do both jobs – something that to date would be frowned on in major law firms, except possibly in intellectual property practices.
Renaissance person means a person who is "enlightened" in all subject matter including arts, math, athletics, philosophy, music, history, and any other cultural aspect of society. The phrase as the name suggests originated during the Renaissance Period which lasted from about 1400 to about 1600 and was used to describe famous people like Leonardo da Vinci, who whilst he was most famous as a painter, was also a scientist, engineer and mathematician.
Some have predicted that the age of artificial intelligence will ultimately spell the end of the professions as we know them. Richard Susskind in The Future of the Professions persuasively explains how 'increasingly capable systems' - from telepresence to artificial intelligence - will bring fundamental change in the way that the 'practical expertise' of specialists is made available in society. He challenges
the 'grand bargain' - the arrangement that grants various monopolies to today's professionals and argues that our current professions are antiquated, opaque and no longer affordable, and that the expertise of the best is enjoyed only by a few.
I agree we will all need to change but I think maybe this is a huge opportunity to get away from the professional drudgery of tasks that can be automated, whilst still providing our expertise.
As Sebastian Thrun, computer science professor at Stanford University said I am infinitely excited about artificial intelligence and not worried at all. Not in the slightest. AI will free us humans from highly repetitive mindless repetitive office work, and give us much more time to be truly creative. I can't wait.
And as Steven Pinker, psychology professor at Harvard University cautions us We should worry a lot about climate change, nuclear weapons, antibiotic-resistant pathogens, and reactionary and neo-fascist political movements. We should worry some about the displacement of workers in an automating economy. We should not worry about artificial intelligence enslaving us.
Maybe although it seems at first counter intuitive, we will be enlightened not enslaved by technology and able to bring our expertise to bear like renaissance man across a variety of different subjects.
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com sums it up nicely I predict that, because of artificial intelligence and its ability to automate certain tasks that in the past were impossible to automate, not only will we have a much wealthier civilization, but the quality of work will go up very significantly and a higher fraction of people will have callings and careers relative to today.
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