Your Job, Redesigned - Helena Turpin

Hello and welcome to Don't Stop Us Now AI Edition. I'm Claire Hatton and I'm Greta Thomas. AI has been described as the most transformative technology since the harnessing of electricity and we are here to keep you in the loop for what you need to know and do in order to stay relevant in this fast changing world. Each episode we bring you leading experts and together we explore how you can stay ahead of the curve and in the know for what skills will be valued in the future. How jobs may change and how industries will evolve. So why not subscribe to stay in the loop and without further ado, enjoy this week's episode. Hello and welcome to this week's episode which is all about how AI is likely to reshape our working lives. Our guest today is Helena Turpin, the co-founder and CEO of GoFigure, a workforce intelligence company that helps organizations make decisions about how their future workforce will look. What I love about what Helena and her co-founders are doing is that they're taking a data-driven and methodical approach to answer questions such as, what if all those AI pilots happening in our business right now worked and scaled? How would that impact our employees' roles and our overall workforce in say three to five years' time? They're a great question. And answering that well with our human brains is a pretty complex and mind-bottling task, isn't it? It is and I suspect there's a lot of companies with pilots running right now that haven't thought that through, which is really interesting in itself. As you'll hear from Helena, how GoFigure answers those questions is by identifying all the different tasks that each individual employee's role does and then showing which tasks are likely to be significantly or completely impacted by AI and which tasks humans will continue to have the edge doing. Yeah, it's really enlightening stuff. Helena also shares with us what she's seeing inside organizations right now and what typically surprises leaders when they see their GoFigure data for the first time. And happily, I have to say I was quite relieved because there's a genuinely optimistic strand running through this conversation. Helena makes a really good case for redesigning roles around what humans do best, makes sense, and how we've imagined and constructed roles before. So it's simply now time for us to do that again. Yeah, I agree. It really was very optimistic. And so if you're looking at ways you can have some agency and control over determining your or your organization's future, as AI continues, it's a reversible rollout, then this conversation will help you feel more equipped to do exactly that. We talk about how GoFigures free assessment tool and we tell you how to get there can disaggregate your role into individual tasks and show you which tasks AI will automate or lead on. So that's a pretty interesting thing to try to. So without further ado, enjoy this conversation with Helena Turpin. Helena Turpin, welcome to Don't Stop Us Now AI Edition. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's a real pleasure. Now as you know, we always ask a question at the beginning of our interviews and that question is if you're at a dinner party and somebody said to you, Helena, what do you do? How do you typically answer that? So I describe myself as a career tech or workforce intelligence co-founder, but in practical terms, I kind of run ahead against future of work trends, and then I work backwards to build sort of products and services to help them. So right now we're very focused on how AI is impacting job skills and tasks. And so with that in mind, I work with a really smart team of people who build products and services to help people and organisations prepare themselves for what's about to happen to the future of work. And I know you're the co-founder and CEO of GoFigure. What problem is GoFigure built to solve then? Well, I'll be honest with you guys, it's changing. So the figure part of GoFigure stands for Find Inspire, Row and Retain. So what we were building and continued to build up until last year was a career marketplace built for mid to large companies to connect the skills and aspirations of the clever people in their company with internal opportunities to develop and grow. It came out of my career in management consulting and I guess I was sort of an HR adjacent problem solver. And my job was to look at ways that we could reduce the amount of people living at company. And the top reasons people left our company in my past life was because they couldn't see career future where they were working. And so they left to go and find it where, whereas I worked in big companies where we had nothing but opportunity for people. So we had loads of projects and had loads of great learning. We had loads of open roles and how could we use technology better to connect people's talents and skills with available opportunities. And then last year, I guess like many different people, we could start sensing a change in the way people were thinking and feeling about work. The way CEOs were behaving with people and people starting to feel a little tiny bit more disposable. And I think AI having entered the room has changed our way of thinking about how we prepare people and companies for the future impact of AI. So last year we started developing a new solution to look at that. And so we really solving the problem of, I guess, relevance and skills for employees and having access to great talent for companies. Yeah, I can see how that's changing. But it's still, as you say, it's still such an important criteria, particularly for Jett and Z, you know, as they come up really, really key. You know, we've got loads of those questions about the future landscape of AI. And I know, you know, who knows, I think is the answer. But with the work that you're doing with GoFig and now and the sort of slight pivot that you've taken, how would you summarize what you're seeing in the average corporate workplace due to AI right now? I think we're seeing piloting and experimentation happening and maybe not a lot of thought of what happens if the pilot works. That we're so consumed with experimentation and we feel such pressure to just try AI or do AI or pilot AI. There's not so much brain power and thought going into what happens if this pilot's successful. We also meet a surprising number of organizations who are in the early stages of launching a co-pilot, for example. So we do see some organizations who are relatively infant in their adoption. But increasingly, I think we're all accepting of the fact that it's going to change work. We don't exactly know how. And there's a lot of people wanting to get some kind of clarity from which to make plans. And fortunately, I'm not seeing any kind of really amazing, transformational use cases of AI, but we are experimenting a lot in our own organization. So I'd say we're more in the experimentation phase than we are the sort of wholesale adoption or real innovation phase. And this is in the Australian market you're talking about, aren't you? Yeah, largely in the Australian. Although, so we see, for example, I do a roughly weekly post on the future of work jobs. So I do a post each week on and I scour the landstakes jobs that give me a signal or a clue that we're the companies are moving ahead. So I spend time each week looking for innovative jobs, innovative things. I do see a bit more movement in the EU. So I see some quite clever roles around process optimization. I see transformation roles. I can see the sort of breadcrumbs that companies are starting to get their house in order and investing in a headcount is a really tangible way. You can see that companies are starting to invest at AI adoption. I see some quite interesting cases in the US as well. Of course, there's not much legislation over there. Workers are as protected in the US. So we're also seeing some interesting roles there. So to give you one example, Microsoft about two or three months ago, advertising for a learning lead, except the purpose of this job wasn't just to create learning for humans. It was also to create learning. And I couldn't decipher whether it was learning that a machine could read. So IE, that you're creating learning content for an agent or whether it was to be scraped by agents and surfaced by humans in the flow of work. So I think I'm seeing a bit more innovation, perhaps in free markets like the US. But it's starting to happen in Australia and in organisations you might not expect lots of local government roles looking at AI adoption, which I just wouldn't have imagined. No, that's interesting. And is that sort of just really helping them do you think embed the basics like a copilot or standard sort of license for one of the large language models like Claude or Chat Gbt? Do you think in those local councils? Because yeah, that's not the intuitive place to be at the cutting edge. I think it's a mixture. I think again, I'm making some assumptions here. I think it's partly because AI is such an efficiency productivity tool. And if you're working for a local government, your tax pay are funded. I can imagine these organisations as few as a responsible use of our tax pay or money and looking at these tools and go, how can we get more for less? But I also think there are some amazing experiences to be developed as well. So if you think about how you might like to consume information about transport or rates or even when your bins are going to be cut. You can see that there's an elegant use case of that technology that improved the experience for the consumers of those services like you and I So I think it's a mixture. It's really interesting and you talk about efficiency and productivity and they are probably the prevailing descriptive words to describe how AI is being used at the moment and for many Employees and I dare say listeners that often equates to you know job cuts and things like that and we you know We've had reports like the world economic forum at the beginning of the year I think it was say a billion jobs will be some way it impacted or changed by AI Do you think that is what is going to happen in the the near term that? Absolutely, we're going to see efficiency and cost cutting as kind of one of the primary drivers for AI and and that there'll be Quite a few casualties along the way as a result Yeah, I think it's almost inevitable that jobs are going to be impacted We did a presentation recently to a really large community of HR practitioners and we analyzed a hundred HR jobs and I think if I recall right was about 84% of the tasks of that collection of 100 jobs are going to be an AI impacted like it or not And that's because there are vendors like me who are Injecting AI into the technology you use so increasingly even if you do nothing deliberate with AI People's jobs are going to be nibbled into There's two ways to look at this now. So if you've ever seen that Optic an illusion where you could either look at it and see two faces over candlestick right the witch or the Exactly a woman. Yeah, it could be either Almost wondering if companies are going to sift into those two camps right they're going to look at this AI Opportunity and they're going to look at the amount of tasks that could be automated or transformed and think geez we could do the same amount of output with 40% less staff and so block Lassie and their recent examples of CEOs going we're going to look at the future and we can see that we can do the same amount or more With with less cost right and I think there's going to be the other Amphus CEOs and leaders who are like gosh if we automate away all of the nonsense the admin The stuff that we kind of have to do but doesn't bring any kind of value or joy or Immersal benefit what would be possible to some functions will be maybe downsize because the work can be automated and there'll be other functions that are kind of Empowered or boosted or are doing things that we couldn't even imagine and maybe we'll have companies do all three Let's say so I think sort of two different potential features, but if you're a CEO I guess what's your ultimate job? Are you ultimately there to kind of Protect the future of work and workers and the economy? Are you there to deliver? Sort of short to medium value back to your shareholders and these are driving CEO decisions right now. It's it's kind of It's how decisions are being made I guess. Yeah, and that is the classic dilemma isn't it? Whether it's with jobs or even just you know sort of where business models go if if they're being motivated by their one to three-year equity and incentives. Yeah, that's depressing to think about really But the other thing I imagine you have a Handle on to help people with and certainly kind of boggles my mind a bit is because You certainly read that the way to think about how a AI is going to impact jobs is looking at the specific tasks or skills How do you advise leaders get their head around that because obviously every job is comprised of so many different skills in them And so then if you're trying to plan what skills you need to build and how to just Redirect resources as AI automate some more stuff. How do you get your head around that complexity? It's certainly interesting to think about right is that you probably have some imagined futures right and I'm kind of a big believer of the fact that the future has Been created the future is ours to create right? I still fundamentally feel reasonably optimistic about our future with that in mind And I'm not sitting here saying that I know exactly what will happen the future that will be done and that won't age well So I don't think I'm smart enough to do that But I can I can see a world where we make some smart decisions or some reasonable bets about what the future will look like And we work towards those bets the three scenarios that we typically model It's like a small medium and large scenario is one where we decide to do nothing deliberate with AI And as I mentioned before almost like it or not AI is going to permeate in our working tasks the the tasks that make up Jobs are going to be transformed and that requires us to have slightly different skills There's a middle scenario where umpunny by trying to automate something specific We have a roadmap we have a an automation schedule we have a series of tech and it is possible to project out into the future to go Well, if these pilots and this technology is fully implemented, what does that mean? So to give a concrete example You have a big customer service center or a contact center and you decide to implement some automation to support customers Is it reasonable to assume that we'll need to send a map of people probably not? But it doesn't have to be that that we have to make a thousand people redundant next week We can start planning now for what that future looks like and then there's a third future where we go You know with AI does take over the world. We automate as much as possible the nor gets out of the way You're you have these three features that you can look at now the skills don't change enormously But the pace at which you need to prepare people for this future eventually eventuality does change So if you are the type of company that's not as aggressive and isn't as innovative and isn't necessarily adopting these technology super fast maybe you have a little bit more time But what's going to happen though is your competitors going to be doing something interesting with AI And then you'd that that time will evaporate let's say There are some rules of thumb as well So having done this analysis now a few times there are definite some definitely some patterns that you can look out for The types of work that involve relationships The way that you make people feel so things like sales or customer experience or coaching or those kind of very Humanistic relationship driven tasks We're better at better at them than AI's currently so those are going to stay inherently human Increasingly and I think scary relief for some people those more cognitive tasks Those tasks where maybe I'd have been the one in charge of producing the insights from the data or I'd have been responsible for the decision making or The strategy let's say increasingly AI is going to assist me more So I might be ultimately responsible for the decision That AI is going to do more of the kind of legwork for me and that's very confronting for a lot of white collar professionals who have built up A very nice salary or a very nice profession based on those sort of smarts that AI kind of chumps into And then there's the more transactional type of work so reporting compliance stuff for engineering as we're seeing some of some of those tasks where the more sort of routine and Standardized they are the more susceptible to automation. They are Okay, so coming back to the question about how do leaders and organizations get themselves prepared? I guess speaking on behalf of the customers that we work with and the work that we do Out of it is a bit of a stock take right so what talent do we have? What people do we have work are they performing right now? Which AI future do we think is the most realistic or which of those futures do we need to prepare for and then how quickly do we need to prepare for that? I don't think go figure or anyone is capable of giving you the exact answers But having data from which you make sensible decisions or at least open the conversation it gets people there quicker and as I mentioned before I do believe the features asked to create so having some sort of data Opposition to start from means that you're not going into that boardroom and barris or You're able to answer those difficult questions from employees about what does my job look like in the future? Yeah, no fascinating and so you've mentioned Sort of go figures data if you got lots of data that you've acquired or built up and then you run analyses Based on skills can you just briefly talk us through that? The mixture of both so the technology that we've built is very bespoke So I'm the CEO of a venture backed start up. Let's not kid ourselves that I do the same job as the CEO of Google So it doesn't matter the differences in the in the types of jobs that you're doing the context the size of the organization So first up our methodology does take those nuances into account So the differences between two people's jobs and two different companies what they're doing and so on and so forth So it's hyper personalized. That's the first thing We do use parts about technology to look at how skills and tasks interact So what are the most likely skills that that new task will transform task needs and then we aggregate that whole data on So I have a bunch of skills that remain important because no matter what happens with AI I'm going to need those skills so for my job it's things like relationship building And strategy building it's being able to kind of read the T-lose of the market for example There'll be skills that I need to develop so maybe that could be how to interpret the outputs of a large language model using my critical thinking skills Or maybe how I orchestrate a series of agents to do the work And that maybe I was doing before my team was doing before and then there'll be skills attached to tasks that won't be my problem anymore So there'll be certain reporting and analytical tasks Maybe looking at how our websites performing for example that won't be anyone's job anymore There'll be an agent that does that so I can kind of let those skills wear away or wear down because it won't be my problem anymore Fantastic I can really imagine that if you are the CEO or the chief people officer or Any leader really it's actually really overwhelming to know how to do that isn't it? I suspect that's probably what you find my experience is that that's leading to companies actually not doing it, not being able to think about it too hard. So I can see the value proposition that you're bringing in here. Let's say you've gone in and you've looked at this and you've broken down the skills and tasks and helped the organization think about kind of their workforce planning, their future workforce planning, which I assume is really what the output would be. What do you generally find people being surprised at when they see that? I think everyone's surprised at the scenario where we do nothing deliberate with AI and the fact that AI's meddling with people's jobs. I think people underestimate the amount of AI that already exists in the tools that we use every day. I think that's one thing. And I often see people's eyes light up when they think of the possibilities. So we almost have two types of reactions to the data. There's inevitably some people are concerned and fearful and think about what is the extent of the impact of AI on job skills and tasks. And then there's other people who are like, how do I make it go fast? How do I get rid of that whole thing that I hate doing? So I enjoy watching them see what the art of the possible is as well. And then the fun things that people have done with the data is that they sat and they've held workshops together, for example. So they've all done their own assessment and then they've looked at their data and they've looked at each other in the eye and go, I should be hate doing that. So let's think of a plan to automate that task, or that collection of tasks, because it doesn't add any joy, it doesn't add any value. And then they're starting to think about how else they would use that free time. So when people start using it to kind of create their future that they want as opposed to it being done by them, I think that's the exciting part of how we see people using the data. And I'd have to say, we spent a lot of time agonizing into the ethics of this. Though I know that once we've done this assessment and given that amazing data back to a customer, I can't exactly control how they use that data. And it doesn't really inspire me much as a founder to be thinking, I'm supporting this sort of erosion of people's jobs, right? That really doesn't inspire me. But it's also being used by organizations to model what the impact is going to be on cohorts. So one company we worked with worked out where the young people were more impacted or whether it was older workers, where the women were more impacted, whether there were certain geographies where work was clustered in a way that that was going to be more detrimental to their future outcomes. And what they've chosen strategically is to just plan for that, right? So there will be inevitably some casualties but rather than shock that workforce, they'll maybe not backfill some of those roles as people lead. So it doesn't come as a sort of jarring shock in 18 months time. We're prepared for it and it's been much more humane. And then another customer who's strategy is now, let's create jobs around only things that humans are uniquely capable of doing. So let's assume we're going to automate the robot out of the human and leave people with those uniquely human jobs. And that's where I feel excited and positive is that there are companies out there thinking that way about the future of work and jobs. So they are being quite responsible about how they take their people on this journey. Yeah, I think that's really interesting. And I know, I think I've read something that you've written around where you share a case study about IBM, particularly thinking about graduate entry roles, which has been a lot of talk about graduate entry roles really being sort of decimated potentially. Maybe you could share what that best case sort of practice is that they have done in order to sort of think about the future skills that they need within their business. I've been to a really interesting one because not, I think, 18 months ago, they were actually announcing, they paused a lot of their back office hiring because their view was that AI will automate these roles. So they were actually quite controversial quite early and they're quite IBM. But they probably have the authority to do that. Let's say the smarts, the expertise, and the authority to think about the future of jobs. But increasingly, most recently, IBM actually tripled its entry level and grad intake. I think in recognition of the fact that, as the technology stands today, it is limited, let's say. It's like having a brilliant, but slightly, likeotic in turn, let's say, that will execute its tasks faithfully. And it's not able to replace whole jobs right now. It's very good at automating tasks, but it's not ready to automate whole jobs. So they're actually investing more in entry level talent. I think, on the assumption as this technology will catch up, let's say, but they are bringing in more entry level talent. The roles look quite different now. So maybe some of these software roles or product roles are a bit broader than they would have been. They're not maybe as narrow as they would have been in previous intakes. But I think it's inspirational for us all or it's a good indication into what the future might look like if they've kind of caught them down to this, knowing that technology, as well as they do, that this is what we might all need to be thinking about. So we do see, though, I ran some reporting a couple of months ago that, since you can almost see that the day that ChatGPT was launched in 2023, you can start seeing where out of entry level roles declining. And I think in the last three years, they're about 15% down in Australia than they were three years ago. So it is interesting to think about what the technology can do, but it's what we believe and hope it can do. Yeah, that young person scenario is a worry if companies don't think more creatively and constructively, I guess. And you've mentioned a couple of the key, if you're unique to human skills, that you don't believe will be automated, human relationship, building human relationship, critical thinking. For listeners who are trying to future-proof themselves, do you have others that you would say are definite candidates that we should all be building those muscles of? Yeah, did the skills that sort of remain relevant are those innately human skills? And to some way that's vindicating, right? You'll hear it described in the HR world as soft skills. And they've always felt a bit fluffy and intangible. And now it's vindicating to hear that these are kind of rising and important. So anything around problem solving, anything about relationships, relationship building, more about how you make people feel, let's say, that they're going to become more important. And I was listening to this wonderful podcast by the Center for Human Technology, where Ethan Mollick was speaking. And he made a really good point. Let's just imagine a future in, I don't know, three, five, 10 years' time, whenever that sort of AI imagined future has arrived. We're all building technology and our automations on what? In all 15, and pretty large language models, that these foundational models. And he's like, are we just going to be one of 10 flavors once everything's automated? Maybe we use the anthropic stack, it go figure. So as is quite, I don't know, sound, conservative, be-to-be friendly, maybe you decide to build with a rock. So your technology is a bit more spicy, let's say, you know. But are we just going to be one of 12 flavors? IE, we're all going to be beige. So in that imagined future, everything has been automated. All that more, if it's differentiated as companies, is happy. So yeah, I do like to imagine what that will look like in the future. And I don't know. I think there's definitely going to be some short-term casualties based on the vibes and what CEOs think and believe. But I ultimately have faith that the more we worry about this problem, the more we will come to a sensible solution about what it looks like in the future. Well, I find that very reassuring. And that is really good to hear. And I'm sure listeners will also be reassured, because the news has been pretty negative in terms of jobs and AI and the like. So that is good to hear. And I think we've talked about and we'll put a link in the show notes. But you've got this sort of AI impact assessment that listeners can do. Can't they? And that's a great way of actually having your kind of tool automatically disaggregate a role into the key sort of tasks and skills. So they can see where this current skill set might lie and then where there's some gaps. Is that right? Is that a fair sort of summary? Absolutely. It's free to try. It takes your job deconstructs it into the most likely tasks. You can say whether we got it right or not. And then it does the same. It projects it over the future. And it gives you an idea of the tasks of your role that might be automated in the future. It gives you some information about why that might be the case. And it gives you some insights into the skills that you probably have that you should double down on. And those that you should develop and those that probably will become less important as AI takes over. And we invite you to try. It's completely free. But also, I don't know, take it to your boss, get your co-workers to try it, get your kids to try it. There's this wonderful school in New Zealand. And we couldn't work out why they were all downloading the app. But it was because these kids are going to graduate in about three to five years. They were popping jobs in on job boards to have a look at what those jobs of the future look like. So they're like, let's get ahead of our competition. So if I want to be a marketer in three years, what do I need to be thinking about now? It's like, no, you're enemy, right? So it's used this tool to have a conversation, take it to your boss. You might not be thrilled with the outcome, let's say, but you should have a conversation about your future, the skills that you should be developing, where you see your role going. And then do it with your team. Just sit together and share your results. So if you feel brave enough, go through and see what you could do with your team. It's your future to create still. So don't get AI. What do you grab control of it and see what you could do? Yeah, no, that's empowering, I think. And I've had to go. It's good. It seems like there's a real common theme with AI. in terms of. It's all about disaggregation because when you're thinking of use cases, you have to disaggregate a workflow, a process. Now we have to get much better at also disaggregating our current jobs and disaggregating them into skills and alike. There's this kind of common theme of we have to break things down into smaller units and then put them together in different ways. That's the big opportunity, but we invented jobs, right? The notion of a job is an invented construct based on common skills, experiences, common clusters of tasks, so we can reinvent it, I guess. Yeah, and that is, I think that if you frame it that way, it's actually really exciting, because as you say, you can outsource the stuff that brings you no joy, or that way you don't add value. So I know that we've both done the assessment and it's fascinating, really fascinating. So as someone who spends a lot of time helping others think about AI's impact, what does your own daily use of AI look like? I kind of have a love AI and it's true. I actually now would be lost without my sort of cohort of AI assistants, but I also worry a lot about my dependence on AI now as well. I do worry about how it's changing the way I think and changing the way I learn and changing the depth of how I learn anything. So in our business, for example, we just did an audit of our website. So instead of hiring a company to look at our website, we're a small company, right? So we're resource constrained, so we're more innovative because we have to be as a small company. And so I am now rapidly learning about answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization. And so there aren't many experts on the market that can do that yet because it's such a new capability. So we're using AI to kind of revamp our website, for example. We use it in all of the ways that you'd expect to kind of create better content and, you know, answer emails more effectively, but we have a series of agents doing stuff for us now. And so there are so many times where I kind of get frustrated with being a nonchalpreneur. So I don't have a legal team and I don't have an army of, you know, sales and marketing people, but I also don't have to spend loads of money implementing AI technology. I don't have to go through 20 rounds of approval to get it done. And I don't have 50,000 people to convince it's a good idea. So I think we're using AI in our coding. We're thinking of how we can use it to kind of test our software all the way through to how we can kind of better market and outreach and even in terms of hyper personalized marketing and sales, like the opportunities, I guess, are endless. But it also means you have to be a bit ruthless about prioritisation because you could do anything with this technology. You have to just think about where you start and why you would use it in one era of your business over another. And how have you prioritised that? Just out of curiosity. Maybe not perfectly, but it's based on the kind of number one problems that we want to solve along with the goals. So we are venture capital backed. We made a promise to invest us to return value back to those shareholders, let's say. So it's very much in pursuit of our organisational goals. But increasingly there's a level of innovation and experimentation. This is not, this is the kind of tech where you almost have to use it and try it to work out what is possible with this technology. It's not exactly the same as the internet, let's say, because the opportunities are infinite. And that makes it amazing. And it means that you have to use your imagination because you could easily waste time and you end up generating documents and artifacts that actually consume people's time because suddenly I can build a 20 page plan for something I would never have bothered doing before. So it's sort of problem or goal first solution later, but it is really fun to experiment with because if you have some imagination and some time you can do things you just wouldn't have imagined. Yeah, totally agree with you. And I really agree that the only way to really understand AI is to use it. And is there anything specifically that you can do now that you couldn't do three months ago, let's say? I was going to say 12, but 12 is way too long. In terms of a tool that you're using or a way that you're using it. We were really excited to see over the weekend the Claude Design tool that was launched. Yeah, what's been super interesting is to watch the market reactions to this. So the impact on Adobe's share price and Figma's share price, it's been interesting to watch the reactions that I guess personally I can have a client conversation at nine o'clock in the morning and talk to them about something that we're working on or something that they're looking at. I can have used the transcript to that call or the notes from that call. I can have injected in our user interface and I can have brought with a prototype of what they're looking for by lunchtime and I can do that myself if I want to. And that's where it's exciting and dangerous because you can go down this wall and of spending time where you shouldn't have. So the speed and pace at which we can build technology now has changed so much even in the last three months. It's also, but it's also having us think about how and where we deliver some of our technology experiences. So I think there'll be a future where GoFigure doesn't have a user interface. It'll be delivered in Slack or Teams or WhatsApp. So it's having us rethink where we are and how we surface ourselves to employees and customers as well. So it's changing everything and I think the point that you make about 12 months ago versus three months ago, it is that quick, it's exhaustingly quick. And there'll be some kind of chat GPT response to that next week and then we'll have to learn it all again. And it's exhausting. Yeah, yeah, it really is. Yeah, that's right. Well, I think one of the words I'm going to take away from all of this is imagination. I really, I think that's right. That's imagination combined with prioritization and that critical thinking used to prioritize what you can imagine could really be very exciting indeed for individuals and for organizations. And so as we sort of kind of wrap up, what do you think most concerns you about AI as it continues its dizzying pace of progress? I think it's vibe space decision making. I think it's those stories we see on the news where those CEOs and those organizations decide to call N20 30% of their staff on this notion that AI can do all of that work when it probably can't right now or it can, but only in the most sophisticated organizations, let's say where they've really short about their end-to-end tasks. And you can imagine when it must feel like in those companies now to be sort of 10 or 40% lighter. It's not like your job just got easier from last week to this week. If anything, your job probably just got harder and a bit more stressful. So it's that vibes base decision making where people's livelihoods can be sort of shot based on the perception of what AI can do rather than the reality of what it does in a company. I do worry for certain groups. I do worry for young people's features. I worry about how on earth you make a decision about your field of work or the educational part you take now when so much is so uncertain. So I do have some concern of the young people and I do feel that women as well. I think women, AI is absolutely an opportunity, but again women sitting a lot of the roles where that work can be automated. So I do feel a bit more concerned about women's job prospects as well. So those are really my concerns, I guess. And if you were just to some sort of summarise what the antidote as much as an antidote is possible right now is for those groups, women and younger people, is it to kind of build your muscle and skill set with the skills that we've already mentioned such as critical thinking, human relationships, which is really interesting for young people, isn't it, who are used to little texts and emojis and not very good at sort of elongated face-to-face relationships of communications necessarily. COVID did that to them, right? If you imagine the kind of like experience you had as a young person, so your university experience was stolen and for some people those formative like three, four years where you would have been, I don't know, socialising or drinking or whatever it is that you would have been doing, that all were taken away from you. So it's hardly surprising that we've sort of bred another generation of people who may prefer to sort of be at home and interact digitally them physically. That doesn't really come as a great shock to me. Yeah. But I guess helping them to overcome that, any other thoughts on women and what they can do to optimise their future proof of this. I think there'll be certain populations and certain jobs where you absolutely should lean into the experimentation. So the top reasons that people kind of abandoned AI or choose not to use it in companies is they weren't trained properly and maybe you tried a model when ChatGPT first launched and you were a bit disappointed or underwhelmed with the results and you've abandoned it when actually it's night and day, the technology is night and day now what it used to be like. So if you were one of those people who tried it months or years ago, go back and try it again and certainly those free models are not the same as the experience you'll get from those subscription type models. You do get quite a significantly different experience. That means the next phase there is training. So if you work for a company where there's training and you haven't taken it up and then you've abandoned it because you think it's rubbish because you don't have to use that technology lean into that. That there's very few companies. and he's now that don't have some kind of AI upskilling or tutorial or course. And if you don't have it, there's heaps on the internet of free learning opportunities. So if you have access to the technology, you are expected to use it. I do think that you should mean into it, even if, as I said before, it's to kind of know your enemy, right? And I would say, if you're a young person now, I would spend time thinking about your future occupation. I think there are going to be roles where touch and physicality and humanity. I think there's some healthcare roles. Healthcare is actually projected to be one of the most rapidly growing and sustainable industries, certainly in Australia. And there are trades as well where maybe you're young and you're thinking about a job and you want to do something more physical. And there's these glorious studies and entries that they wear. Gen Z is a sabotaging AI. Adoptions and company adoptions. I do like to think about the sort of unintended consequences. And I wonder if young people are going to sort of abandon it, whether there'll be a future where there'll be groups of young people who just have an entirely and do something physical and off the grid or something completely different. It's fun to imagine, right? Yeah. What do you think? Well, for young people, I think, yeah, it's a pretty heavy world right now. And this is just one ingredient of the multiple kind of ingredients that kind of make future forecasting a bit of a kind of a gray to depressing experience. I'm sure for many young people. And so I think, I think that's why I like imagination too. It's like, okay, well, here are the things you want to lean into and use your imagination for both what you could do, but also where AI could help you do those things that you love more and make a living out of them and things like that. So I also think just being curious and as you said, learning because nobody is set, everybody's roles are going to change. Young people are going to have to be more adaptive than ever before. And so the more that they can be, have this curious mindset, really sort of dig into stuff, understand it more as you say, experiment the better. I think it's the only way you're going to stay on top of it. And maybe becoming an electrician for data centers. I think that's a top job. At least for the next five to 10 years, that will be after that. So for five to 10 years, we're all safe. I might not web myself to a particular career now. If I were doing my time again, I might, I mean, I'm not an accountant or a software developer, but I might not web myself deeply to a profession. I might pick a course that was more creative or more sort of getting me a suite of muscles and skills to flex upon as opposed to becoming an accountant or a software developer or maybe psychology and psychiatry because I can see a booming industry where we all go a bit sort of AI crazy or we're all using our AI as therapists or we're becoming addicted to AI. I wonder if this could be a booming field there in the future to kind of correct all these weird behaviors we're picking up now thanks to Heather. Undoubtedly. Let's end on a high. And we've asked you what concerns you about AI. What are you most excited about, Elena? What am I excited about? So some of the stuff I mentioned before, as a founder and entrepreneur, I am excited by the opportunities for sort of imaginative and ambitious people to do things that were before imagined. And actually, I do feel as much as I complained about being small or resource constrained, I actually think it's a beautiful gift, let's say. It's going to force me to be imaginative and innovative in a way that bigger companies won't necessarily have to be. So I'm excited about the opportunity for innovative entrepreneurs. But I'm also excited about how life might get better for us. So I am trying to move home at the moment and I don't really know where we want to live. And so I'm using AI to sort of think about what's important to my partner and I in our lives and where we might like to live or what I'm going to cook for dinner tonight or how do I finally get the answer to a question. I'm actually interested in how people's lives will become better and things will become more convenient and hyper-personalized based on what I need as an individual versus what you two might need, for example. So I'm quite excited about some of the sort of light hacks and benefits that will receive. And I'm interested in those kind of small benefits to just humans really where it actually works for us and doesn't make our lives worse. Yeah, absolutely. And we've talked about women a little bit in terms of their careers, but let's face it, women, typically not always, carry the load outside of work as well. And so anything that we can all kind of play around with incrementally or more radically to help those kind of work, sort of mental loads is also a fantastic thing. Yeah. Well, Helena, it's been amazing and really fascinating. And I know listeners will be really sort of listening intently to this to sort of see how they can help future proof themselves and their organizations. If people want to learn more about you or go figure or the assessment that we've talked about, which we will put on our show notes, but where else should they go to learn about you and go figure? Through the top three places, our website needsgofigure.ai and it'll be easy to find from there. So if you want to try out a little free assessment, go there, share it with your friends, your colleagues, your kids. Please just make the most of it. It's completely free to use. I'm on LinkedIn, so I think I'm the only Helen that's working on LinkedIn, so you can find me relatively easily via a little Google search there. And I also have a substatement newsletter as well, where I post at least once a month on some of the stuff that we've talked about. So I talk about the future of jobs, the future of work, the future of skills, what's scaring me, what's exciting me. So I also have a substatement newsletter. So if you google gofigure.ai or me, you'll find me easily enough. Helena, thank you so much. It's been a really fascinating and interesting conversation. We really appreciate your time as well. Thank you both so much for having me. Great questions. Thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING]