The 4th Industrial Revolution and the second machine age is well and truly here. We have evolved from the steam engine in the 1800’s to mass production in the early 20th century, to computers and automation and most recently, Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence and Robotics taking over the world. It is real and a lot has been written about it already. People's reactions to this trend varies from being blissfully unaware to being scared stiff. 

I am a big fan of the Inversion Principle, often espoused and attributed to Charlie Munger.

Many hard problems are best solved when they are addressed backward
- Charlie Munger

It is hard to solve this problem looking forward so I applied the inversion principle to AI/Robotics and the second industrial age. Instead of figuring out what jobs the computers, robots and AI software will take over, I asked myself what jobs are going to be super difficult, if not impossible, for them to take over in the next 10-20 years?

To start my anecdotal research, I explained what AI, Robotics, and Automation are to my 9-year old son. I, then, asked him about what professions would still make sense in this highly automated, post AI world. Within a couple of minutes, he came up with Sports, Politics, Teaching, Dancing, Musicians, etc. Then I asked some teenagers the same question and they came up with Design, Architecture, Travel Operators, and such. I also found this lovely article in the NY Times about jobs and careers that are susceptible to be eliminated. The ones in green below are less likely to be automated away.

Source: O*Net, Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation?, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne

What are those common attributes required across all these professions so as to not-be-easily-replaceable by AI-enabled machines? Not too surprisingly, all these skills have something to do with us being humans. Furthermore, there are quite a few underlying skills that will be super valuable going forward. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list but just something to get our thought process going.

• People Skills – the ability to understand, listen, empathize, collaborate, lead and organize
• Communication Skills – the ability to comprehend and explain things clearly
• Cognitive Skills – the ability to perform various mental activities associated with learning, interpreting, analyzing, remembering, being attentive, and problem solving.
• Creativity skills – imagination, performing arts, writing, etc.

In addition to these skills, it will be critically important to have a deep understanding of history, geography, geo-political landscape and also domain knowledge in fields such as Finance, Law, Engineering, Medicine, etc. Computers are great at computation, deep and exhaustive understanding of data, and figuring out patterns in existing data. However, they are going to be lousy at explaining the meaning of the proposed solutions and its impact on humans. Interpretation of that data in a human context is something only humans can do effectively. 

Additionally, it will take some time for computers to have a deep understanding across all domains, for example, how would the principles of the Renaissance apply to modern furniture design? Or, how would the lessons of mountaineering apply to solving medical problems on land or to sports training? How would human psychology apply to finance or trading? Learning about multiple domains and their interaction with each other is a sure shot way of staying ahead of the machines.

As things get more automated, it is a very likely that cost of living will come down. Humans will have more time even though they may have lesser income (discussion on Universal Basic Income is beyond the scope of this article). What are the things that will entertain them? Inform them? Beyond their basic survival needs, will they seek to attain higher levels of self-expression, spirituality, service? If so, can we think of education, ideas, products, services to enable humans to reach higher levels of self-realisation?

Let us go back to the coming of the second industrial age. AI is going to enable computers to get insanely good at tasks which require large amounts of data, computational power and unemotional decision making. Great examples are Google's victory over the Alpha Go champion of the world or IBM's Deep Blue's victory over Garry Kasparov. Whether you know any computer science, machine learning or AI, if your job involves a lot of "mechanical" / tedious, rote work, you are right in line for Darwinian job elimination of certainly reduction in scope.

So, how should one deal with this transition?

1) Self-assessment

Do a self evaluation of what subset of your skills are "replaceable" by automation, robotics and AI. Just being aware of those will help you go in the right direction and you will start moving up the food chain.

2) Become friends with computing, robotics and AI

There's a fantastic TED talk by the legendary Garry Kasparov who was arguably the first really evolved human mind and a dominating world champion of chess to be beaten by a computer in 1997.

Garry makes a strong case to not be afraid of these evolved machines but to learn how to work with them. This will be true whether you are a doctor, a mechanical engineer, a lawyer, an athlete or if you are in any other profession.

3) Become a meta-learning machine

The world is evolving at exponential speed. Just look at what all did not exist in 2006 in the infographic below.

I'm sure when we look back in 2027, we will see more profound technological changes that have transformed life for billions of human beings but are nascent now. As Albert Einstein said, intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death. I've written about two of my favorite ways to learn - read 5x more books and learn from every interaction with people.

Additionally, it will be imperative to focus on holistic thinking (both left and right brain working in unison). I do believe Liberal Arts curricula will make a big resurgence.

In fact, Vala Afshar recently pointed out a lot of big movers and shakers in the Technology world having liberal arts degrees!

4) Focus on your soft skills that are hard (for computers).

The purpose of human life is to serve other human beings. To enable this, one will need to have super levels of empathy, understanding, ability to influence and persuade people, etc. In addition, one will have opportunities to lead and work with various kinds of people, across different cultures. Computers will arguably have a tougher time doing that!

I believe the future of humanity will be far richer and brighter for those of us who will embrace it. As Charles Darwin said, it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent ones. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.

About the Author -

(Amit Somani is a Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, an early stage Venture Capital firm based out of Bangalore, India. Prime VP invests in category creating, early stage companies founded by rock star teams. Prior, Amit has held leadership positions at Makemytrip, Google and IBM. He is also deeply engaged with the early stage startup ecosystem in India and actively volunteers with iSpirt, TiE and NASSCOM. He tweets at @amitsomani)

This article was originally published on Linkedin