Mind Readings: Two X Factors In The Future of Work

In today's episode, uh Marcus Sheridan was talking about the future of work and how AI is going to radically change things. And you know, we all need to get ready and and a lot of jobs are going to go away. And we've talked about this this particular topic in the past, but I want to talk about two X factors that are going to change the future of work. And these two X factors are big macro trends that will have profound, profound impacts. And we can't forecast what those impacts are.

I'm gonna tr also try to avoid politics because unfortunately it's sort of woven into any macro trend these days, but we're trying to avoid it because uh no one needs more of that right now. Um in terms of work and new jobs and things you can't foresee. One of the biggest question marks right now is climate change. We are already seeing radical changes in climate and climate disasters are already going to get or they're only going to get worse. Like this is as good as it gets right now.

Wherever it is, whenever you listen to, it just gets worse from from every day onward here. We've already had in in 2024 record-setting hurricanes. Uh, Hurricane Barrel was the first hurricane to go to Cat 5 the soonest in the season in a place in the ocean where they normally don't even form, much less um form and and accelerate and grow that quickly. It was remarkable watching it. We have record-setting heat.

We have there's a heat map of the city of Phoenix, Arizona in the United States the other day that was uh showing air temperatures at 120 uh Fahrenheit, which is 50 Celsius, um, and ground temperatures, like the asphalt on the ground, 160 Fahrenheit. Now, for context, you cook steak in a sous vide at 120 if you want rare steak. You cook steak at 160 if you want it well done. So the fact of the matter is that the ground temperatures are getting to uh the ability to cook steak well done, right? That is wildly dangerous.

That changes our use of energy. That changes uh climate disasters dramatically change things like construction trades. Skilled tradesmen in carpentry and building, electricians and plumbing are gonna be in greater and greater demand than ever from disaster recovery, right? As disasters get bigger and worse and more expensive, that's gonna radically change that industry. We are gonna have a short if we don't already have a shortage of skilled tradesmen who can build a house, uh, who can build uh buildings that are more resilient and stronger, able to stand up to these crazy new storms, uh, able to stand up, able to effectively keep warm or cool, all that's gonna change.

And these there are jobs that don't exist yet um in those companies in those industries. The insurance industry is gonna be a wild mess because all all the calculations in that industry for for whether ensuring something is profitable or not have to be redone and have to be redone frequently because of how the climate is changing. So think about climate and energy usage and things and supply chain. All that's gonna change. What are the jobs that don't exist today that could exist tomorrow?

For example, uh, there may be a need for people to do their part in growing some of their own food. A lot of people don't have those skills. Can you can you foresee in a situation like that someone being a consultant and going house to house and and providing advice on how to sustainably farm on you know micro farming? Doesn't exist today, really, but depending on on how climate changes, it might become a necessity. Part of your part of your task is to use tools like generative AI to play out scenarios to say, here's the way things appear to be going.

What are the likely outcomes? How is this going to interact with my with my industry? How will this impact me? What can I do to adapt? That's number one.

Number two, healthcare. With a bunch of papers that have come out this year, 2024, there is no credible doubt left about the wrecking ball that is the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the disease known as COVID. There was a paper that came out two months ago. Um 12 to 15% of people who contract COVID in a given year will end up with long COVID, which is causing long-term and perhaps permanent disability. At the last count, something like 230 million people had long COVID.

And it's not like, oh, I don't I feel tired. It's it's debilitating. It is a it is long-term, if not permanent disability. That puts enormous, enormous strain and enormous burns on the healthcare industry. There's already a shortage of qualified healthcare workers.

There will be much more demand for them and not enough people in that industry. There will be a lot more assistive care. Because as a species, this is not just one country, this is the planet. People are trying really hard to pretend the pandemic never happened, much less acknowledge the fact that it's still ongoing. And every repeated infection you have of COVID increases your probability of having long COVID.

Again, this is going to create healthcare jobs. This is going to create different kinds of health care jobs for managing this as research goes on to figure out what the heck long COVID even is. There isn't there's not good agreement yet that it is even a single condition. It may be a cluster of different conditions. Some respiratory, some cardiovascular, some neural.

That as long as as long as people pretend that this is over, you're going to have hundreds of millions of people yearly with significant long periods of disability. It's going to change the healthcare landscape. It's going to change the employment landscape. It's going to change things like marathon times and the need for emergency medical services for people who suddenly have substantial cardiovascular disabilities. This is a big X factor because it is so pervasive, because it is uncontained, and because we still know so little about this very new novel disease.

We do know it makes everything worse. It's like it's like an evil version of Nutello. It's it's on everything and it makes everything worse. Um, it accelerates cancers. It makes you more susceptible to other respiratory diseases.

It's a really weird little virus. And interest in it has dried up. Research dollars have dried up, and so it's going to continue to create very large-scale problems that will impact employment. That will impact the kinds of jobs we have, that will impact every industry, that will impact things like AI and assistive technologies to help people who didn't used to have handicaps now have handicaps. So those are the two big X factors that when we talk about the future of work and we talk about artificial intelligence and are all the jobs going to be gone.

No. No, they're not. If any they're going to change, trade schools, I think are going to be more important than ever, because you're gonna need a lot of plumbers to fix climate disasters. And robotics are advancing and they're really cool, but there's so many weird little nuances in in the skilled trades that building a robot to do generalist stuff is very, very difficult. What of these two mega trends have you planned for?

What have you asked generative AI to help you build scenarios around? How's it going to impact your business? If you don't know the answers to that, now's a good time to start planning. Now's a good time to start running scenarios because it will help. It will help you understand what products and services to offer, how to do your marketing, how to plan your finances and forecast when you when you are aware of the mega trends and what they could do to your business.

So that's gonna do it for this episode. Thanks for tuning in. I'll talk to you soon. If you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button. Subscribe to my channel if you haven't already, and if you want to know when new videos are available, hit the bell button to be notified as soon as new content is live.