Ten years ago, I joined the ABC’s Four Corners for their “Future Proof” episode to discuss what was next for the Future of Work.

I said a bunch of stuff so, a decade later, how do my predictions stand up?

Benchmarking the Evolution of AI
“The future of computing is not just [computers] doing things we have told them to do better and faster, but actually coming up with new ways of doing things we wouldn’t have thought of.”

I was extrapolating this conclusion from (at the time, recent) advances in Chess and Go computer gameplay, but I’m giving myself a solid 9/10 for almost predicting the coming of generative and agentic AI.

The Great Job Shift: Survival and Creation
“Many of today’s jobs will disappear, […] but we believe there will be more of tomorrow’s jobs to replace them.”

As it stands, I reckon this is an 8/10 — unemployment is running in Australia at around 4% (lower than 2016, at nearly 6%) whilst many new jobs have been created (in AI, data analytics and cloud, cybersecurity etc.) and the mix of jobs has changed significantly in the past ten years.

Social Upheaval and the Waiting Game
“I think we have to expect some degree of social upheaval as the world of work significantly changes over the next ten years.”

This is a 4/10. There has indeed been tremendous global social upheaval, but little of it driven by changes to work and more of it driven by a pandemic, armed conflict, and global politics. I think the next 5 years might see more social upheaval driven by changes to organisation structures and jobs from gen AI, but I may have gone too early with this one.

You can find the original show on YouTube — I reckon it’s aged ok given the amount of change we’ve experienced.

If you want to know what I think about the next ten years — get in touch.

Listen to the full interview here: https://www.rrr.org.au/shared/broadcast-episode/37352/875000/2356000