Victims and Heroes of the Revolutions

I have personally witnessed several technological revolutions in my lifetime. As a child, my father sent me to a typewriting institution. There were more than twenty typewriters in a large hall, filled with students and young people learning a skill that promised employment. My uncle owned a small printing press. During vacations, I helped him arrange the metal printing types. His business was prosperous.

One Revolution After Another

Then came the Computer Revolution. Another uncle opened a computer centre. At first it prepared official letters and printouts. Soon, computers, the Internet, DTP and laptops transformed it into a busy centre for students and young people. The typewriting institution became empty. It eventually closed. The printing press also lost its customers and closed.

Then came mobile phones, smartphones, social media and the wider Information Technology Revolution. I learned these technologies and eventually obtained a good job in a metropolitan city. I thought I was prepared for the future.

Then Artificial Intelligence arrived. After returning from a fifteen-day leave, I found my colleagues anxious and frustrated. The head of the company told me: “We are downsizing. AI can perform much of our work at a fraction of the cost and with much greater efficiency.” I lost my job.

Every revolution creates victims. Every revolution also creates heroes.

An Unexpected Twist

But then came an unexpected twist. The son of my uncle who had owned the printing press, and the youngest son of the owner of the old typewriting institution, joined together and established an AI startup. Within three years it became a major enterprise serving governments and corporations internationally. The children of yesterday’s victims had become the entrepreneurs of the new revolution.

Then my son asked me: “Dad, what should I study to get a good job?” I had no immediate answer. After thinking about it, I told him: “Don’t study merely to get a job.” He was surprised. “Then what should I study for?”

Study to create the future.

I told him that the AI era itself would not be the final destination. We must think beyond today’s Artificial Intelligence — toward an era in which Knowledge, Human Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence work together. That is where I see the possibility of a new Knowledge Industrial Revolution.

The lesson I want to share with today’s young people is simple. Don’t ask only which jobs AI will leave for you. Ask instead: what new knowledge, products, services, enterprises and institutions can you create for the post-AI world?

Will you become a victim of the next revolution — or a creator of it?