People are not interchangeable units in an AI workforce redesign (Molly Kinder)

"Become an electrician" is not a workforce strategy. It is a claw machine.

Molly Kinder describes the pattern she hears from tech leaders, economists and politicians alike: draw one circle for the jobs AI will take and another for the jobs that remain, then pluck people from the first and drop them into the second. Build, care or start a business. Take your pick.

The advice is not wrong for everyone. Retraining can work when it is chosen and suits the person, as it does for the electrician's apprentice Kinder interviews. A redeployment that keeps someone inside the organisation beats a retrenchment letter. The failure is not movement. It is the assumption that people are interchangeable units.

The evidence says that assumption fails. Sociologist Jennie Brand finds displaced workers suffer lasting harm to wellbeing and family outcomes even when the new job pays the same, and part of the damage is the loss of the relationships and community a career builds. Jobs are more than a pay packet. An introverted auditor is unlikely to want a customer-facing role, and an engineer who has coded since adolescence may not thrive in aged care. Kinder has interviewed dozens of recent graduates and clerical workers about what comes next; not one told her they wanted to retrain for a job in a data centre. We told coal miners to learn to code, and that did not work either.

For employers this is practical rather than philosophical: they risk losing valuable judgement when capable people reject the destinations chosen for them.

The better question for any AI-driven redesign is not "where can we put them?" but "what do they want to be needed for?" Ask it before the restructure, not after.

Source: Molly Kinder, "Enough with the Human Claw Machine" https://lnkd.in/g7fD7KVb

#FutureOfWork #AI #Leadership