WEBVTT 00:01:47.520 --> 00:01:55.280 Welcome to the TED LinkedIn live interview where today we'll focus on the question as an AI evolves, 00:01:55.280 --> 00:02:01.200 how do you stay ahead in the workplace? I’m Chief Roman and I'm excited to be joined 00:02:01.200 --> 00:02:10.000 today by Scott Lyens who is the chief AI engineer of PwC. But before we get started, 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:16.160 I want to add that TED relies on the generous funding of our partners and this LinkedIn live 00:02:16.160 --> 00:02:23.440 interview is made possible thanks to the support of PwC. Scott, welcome. Thanks for having me. Good 00:02:23.440 --> 00:02:31.920 to see you, Chief. Good to see you, Scott. So, you are the chief AI engineer of PwC. 00:02:31.920 --> 00:02:39.920 You are leading the AI engineering and emerging technology R&D teams, and you also drive the firm's 00:02:39.920 --> 00:02:48.080 strategy around AI, blockchain, VR, quant computing and other disruptors. So, here's 00:02:48.080 --> 00:02:54.240 my question for you. If you were explaining your job to say like a very smart high school student, 00:02:54.240 --> 00:03:01.040 what is it? What would you say that you do? Yeah, it's quite a broad spectrum. 00:03:01.040 --> 00:03:07.280 I look at my role as is really trying to understand and do the research around the 00:03:07.280 --> 00:03:14.960 most emerging technologies and then and try and take that into what it means to our enterprise 00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:20.000 to ourselves to our clients to the world around us today. And part of the challenge is emerging 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:24.320 technologies may be further out into the future but understanding the trajectory 00:03:24.320 --> 00:03:29.680 of what's happening is really important in the sense of do doing things today you know creating 00:03:29.680 --> 00:03:35.680 strategies and investments. So maybe not a high school level simple description but 00:03:35.680 --> 00:03:40.800 you understand what's happening in technologies at the edge and translating that into what it 00:03:40.800 --> 00:03:47.040 means to businesses today is really the challenge ahead for me and my teams. 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:54.000 So, it sounds like it's safe to say your world has undergone some seismic transformation over 00:03:54.000 --> 00:04:00.320 the past few years. Yes, let's talk about what that means though and we can get into 00:04:00.320 --> 00:04:07.520 some specifics here. What does that mean for those of us in the workplace? Let me 00:04:07.520 --> 00:04:14.160 start by asking you which industries you feel are seeing the most significant transformation, 00:04:14.160 --> 00:04:20.880 the most impact right now? specifically, around AI and technology generally, but what are 00:04:20.880 --> 00:04:28.640 the industries you're seeing that are probably feeling this seismic change? I think if we look 00:04:28.640 --> 00:04:34.560 at the era we're in right now, which is obviously the era of AI, first ground ourselves, 00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:40.480 AI has been around a long time, and you know 70 or 75 years we've been researching and developing AI. 00:04:40.480 --> 00:04:45.760 I think the past two, three, five years there’s been just an enormous amount of invention and 00:04:45.760 --> 00:04:51.360 innovation and with the investment behind that you know the past two years means that almost 00:04:51.360 --> 00:04:58.560 every industry is seeing, you know, foundational or fundamental change in what AI can do for them. 00:04:58.560 --> 00:05:04.160 I think other technologies that we've been through these waves on may be isolated in early days in a 00:05:04.160 --> 00:05:09.120 certain industry and then expanded. I think the wave we're in now, it's almost pervasive to every 00:05:09.120 --> 00:05:14.400 industry and I cover all of our industries. I'm not an expert in all of them, but you know, 00:05:14.400 --> 00:05:18.880 understanding where AI can play a role, I’ll almost take the challenge of any industry, 00:05:18.880 --> 00:05:22.800 I'll find a way that we could we could fundamentally reinvent parts of that with 00:05:22.800 --> 00:05:28.640 AI with the power of both generative and kind of good old AI that's been around a long time. So, 00:05:28.640 --> 00:05:34.320 it's a really, I think that's the difference in this in this wave. It's not industry specific. 00:05:34.320 --> 00:05:39.360 It's not even function specific. If we start to dissect the functions within each industry, 00:05:39.360 --> 00:05:43.280 there's opportunities. There's probably pervasive functional opportunities and 00:05:43.280 --> 00:05:49.760 then sector industry specific opportunities by function. Whether we're thinking finance or IT or 00:05:49.760 --> 00:05:55.360 capital or operations or supply chain. So, it's that that's part of the challenge. I'd 00:05:55.360 --> 00:06:00.800 say the other challenge is the pace at which it’s moving. We've been through technological revolutions. 00:06:00.800 --> 00:06:05.920 They've just taken longer. You know, I started in the early days of the internet working on what 00:06:05.920 --> 00:06:10.960 could be one of the first browsers, Mosaic, back in the 90s, but we think that's four decades 00:06:10.960 --> 00:06:17.440 ago. We had time to absorb it. It's changed. It’s evolved. And while AI has been around a long time, 00:06:17.440 --> 00:06:20.960 this generative AI, at least this wave of it, is happening much faster. So, I think 00:06:20.960 --> 00:06:25.520 it's more the time scale and the pervasiveness, it’s probably not like we've seen before. So, 00:06:25.520 --> 00:06:32.560 it's a little different. It's not like we’ve seen before. and in so many ways it's even 00:06:32.560 --> 00:06:39.360 hard to process what we are seeing even as it’s unfolding. But you are on the front lines. You 00:06:39.360 --> 00:06:49.120 do have this front row seat in you know both innovation and leadership capacities. What 00:06:49.120 --> 00:06:58.880 do you think that you know workers, people who are kind of used to having a status quo 00:06:58.880 --> 00:07:05.520 in their job but it they see coming quickly? How would you advise them to stay 00:07:05.520 --> 00:07:12.240 relevant? What kind of strategies would you share with us? Yeah, it's always the question 00:07:12.240 --> 00:07:16.880 and sometimes it's from the executives or the board and sometimes it's for from, you know, 00:07:16.880 --> 00:07:21.520 the staff that are wondering what's next. Is it taking my job? I always start with curiosity 00:07:21.520 --> 00:07:24.880 and that's one of the things I've had a lot of my whole life and that's why I've been able 00:07:24.880 --> 00:07:29.440 to stay in in this mode of always at the edge. I'm always curious. I want to know what that next 00:07:29.440 --> 00:07:35.040 thing is. But I think today's workforce has to be curious in the sense of what can AI do for them? 00:07:35.040 --> 00:07:39.280 How can it be accretive to what they do every day? I think of it as a superpower. no matter 00:07:39.280 --> 00:07:43.600 what you do, there's some way AI is going to help you do that better and faster and maybe do things 00:07:43.600 --> 00:07:49.280 you didn't want to do. So, there's that curiosity in the sense of how do I use it for good in in 00:07:49.280 --> 00:07:53.680 the sense of my day-to-day? How do I use it to take tasks off my plate so I have more 00:07:53.680 --> 00:07:58.080 time for my family or my friends? Right? There that curiosity that has to be 00:07:58.080 --> 00:08:02.880 the starting point. And so, I always start with that experimentation. Try it yourself at home. You 00:08:02.880 --> 00:08:07.840 know, use it for something with your family. Research a trip, you know, the basics. And you 00:08:07.840 --> 00:08:12.080 you have to start to build these are new muscles. These are not things humans have had access to 00:08:12.080 --> 00:08:18.000 before. You know, thinking about ultimately infinite intelligence and reasoning and 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:22.960 capabilities that we haven't experienced. So, some of this is the biological is a little bit slower 00:08:22.960 --> 00:08:28.640 than the technological right now. But, have that curiosity. Do some experimentation and 00:08:28.640 --> 00:08:34.960 then start to translate that into what you do day to day for your job. What are you what are you 00:08:34.960 --> 00:08:39.600 passionate about? And I think that's how you start to get comfort. Some of this is about building 00:08:39.600 --> 00:08:43.840 trust in technology. We have to we have to trust that it's doing something that we want it 00:08:43.840 --> 00:08:49.200 to and sometimes that's uncomfortable. I go back to that pace of change. Speed can be the 00:08:49.200 --> 00:08:53.600 enemy of trust. Things are changing fast. I don’t know if I could trust it. so I think a lot of 00:08:53.600 --> 00:08:59.200 this is about the humans themselves absorbing this building that muscle around how we use AI. not 00:08:59.200 --> 00:09:04.000 looking at it as something that's taking my place but something that's expanding the 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:09.840 place that I could actually exist in giving me that access and power really a superpower in what 00:09:09.840 --> 00:09:15.040 you do. So that that's both at home but that's in the workforce and that's a struggle that's a 00:09:15.040 --> 00:09:20.720 that's a long change to make in a workforce. And we've seen this we have we have a massive 00:09:20.720 --> 00:09:25.360 workforce of professionals around the world and you know how do we take them on this journey 00:09:25.360 --> 00:09:31.040 make it safe make them make sure they do it responsibly but give them these powers that you 00:09:31.040 --> 00:09:36.000 know just bring new capabilities to life and transform how you work at the end of the day maybe 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:42.320 it frees up some time to go do something fun and you know that's what I like. well I'm 00:09:42.320 --> 00:09:48.160 I'm glad you brought up the question of trust, and I do want to get to that but share if you would 00:09:48.160 --> 00:09:54.880 just a couple of examples that you've seen that you’ve seen people kind of come to that aha oh wow 00:09:54.880 --> 00:10:02.080 I can do this I can use it for that or this will make my job in what way more streamlined. Sure. 00:10:02.080 --> 00:10:06.560 The easy one and the one we started early and people are talking about so this is not probably 00:10:06.560 --> 00:10:10.640 shocking but software development is changing and as a software engineer from the early days 00:10:10.640 --> 00:10:15.840 of my career although I started as a pilot switched into software engineers 00:10:15.840 --> 00:10:19.760 changing and in a good way you know it doesn’t mean software engineers are going away. It means 00:10:19.760 --> 00:10:25.280 software engineers now have capabilities that they didn't have before. So we’ve really kind 00:10:25.280 --> 00:10:29.760 of doubled down on this and I'll just be fully transparent. Sometimes good engineers are 00:10:29.760 --> 00:10:33.440 the hardest to convince because they're experts. They're great at what they do. They're 00:10:33.440 --> 00:10:38.160 engineers and they know how to engineer and telling them that this tool is going to make them 00:10:38.160 --> 00:10:42.800 better is is sometimes a hurdle. And what I’ve seen is once you get them over that hurdle, 00:10:42.800 --> 00:10:48.480 the light bulb goes off and the capacity and capability we're seeing from our people is 00:10:48.480 --> 00:10:54.560 just mind-blowing. And I won't give specific stats, but it's high double digit, 00:10:54.560 --> 00:10:59.760 you know, capability increases. So, what that means to me is this team, this brilliant team I have is 00:10:59.760 --> 00:11:04.960 10x more brilliant and we're going to produce better quality technology at a higher pace and 00:11:04.960 --> 00:11:09.760 we're going to deliver more to our clients with higher quality. So, software engineering 00:11:09.760 --> 00:11:16.000 was one but I like to look across our business of professionals and we do tax advice. We do audit 00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:21.040 and attestation of businesses and there was a conversation I was having in the early days in the 00:11:21.040 --> 00:11:26.960 early days when it was really just more of a chat to an LLM and you know a pretty senior staff 00:11:26.960 --> 00:11:34.000 said you know I asked a question it just it got it wrong it hallucinated and my first question was 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:38.000 did you ask did you tell it that it got it wrong and that it hallucinated and you wanted it to try 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:43.120 again and she said no I didn't and I said well wouldn't you have done that with a human 00:11:43.120 --> 00:11:47.200 you would have said you know you got it wrong, go back and try again. And the light bulb went off in 00:11:47.200 --> 00:11:51.680 the sense of I didn't think about it that way. I didn’t think about it as a digital equivalent. 00:11:51.680 --> 00:11:57.360 I thought about it as a chatbot. And you know, so there’s these moments no matter what we what 00:11:57.360 --> 00:12:02.160 we're doing in our work, thinking about different ways that new muscle we're building to use AI. So 00:12:02.160 --> 00:12:07.440 we started to look across all functions of what we build internally and whether it's finance 00:12:07.440 --> 00:12:12.480 or or within IT and technology what we're doing in human capital you know we're seeing these 00:12:12.480 --> 00:12:17.360 opportunities just to change the way people work and then translating that into you know how we 00:12:17.360 --> 00:12:22.480 support our clients and how we give advice, and you know infusing that AI is that u that augmentation 00:12:22.480 --> 00:12:26.960 of the knowledge we already have and the experts we have and expanding what they could 00:12:26.960 --> 00:12:31.200 provide. So, it's really again it's pervasive and I can go function by function and give 00:12:31.200 --> 00:12:36.720 examples, but I think it's that light bulb moment you have to find for each person in context of 00:12:36.720 --> 00:12:41.360 what they're doing. It has to make sense to them and then man, they're on board and 00:12:41.360 --> 00:12:50.560 and they just create new capabilities and ideas super-fast. Okay. I'm loving your 00:12:50.560 --> 00:12:57.280 enthusiasm. I also wanted just to remind our audience to send in your questions. I'm 00:12:57.280 --> 00:13:02.400 sure there are many. We’ll try to get as many as possible. I'm going to follow 00:13:02.400 --> 00:13:07.680 up with that one though and to just come back to the workplace and ask you a question about 00:13:07.680 --> 00:13:17.120 leadership because I think that's also where you know leaders are also concerned about their 00:13:17.120 --> 00:13:23.520 own vulnerability and their jobs. And I'm interested in, you know, sort of how do you how do 00:13:23.520 --> 00:13:32.080 you give them permission or help them understand how to take AI and integrate it more fully without 00:13:32.080 --> 00:13:41.680 threatening or seeming to you know look to displace any of their teams. Yeah. We 00:13:41.680 --> 00:13:46.640 really start with this idea of responsible AI has to be the grounding that you 00:13:46.640 --> 00:13:51.360 use as you roll this out to your organization. We have to provide a safe and secure and responsible 00:13:51.360 --> 00:13:55.280 way to actually experiment. And even at the leadership level, you know, I've talked to 00:13:55.280 --> 00:13:59.680 many board level or sea level executives and they’re very supportive. They see the opportunity, 00:13:59.680 --> 00:14:05.840 but then if I asked them, how do you use AI every day and you know, well, I don't I don't use it. 00:14:05.840 --> 00:14:10.240 And I said, that's the wrong attitude. This will help you just as much as your workforce. 00:14:10.240 --> 00:14:17.520 So I think there's leadership is showing that I personally know how to take advantage and use this 00:14:17.520 --> 00:14:22.720 to the benefit of what I do every day and then providing that safe secure permit and permission 00:14:22.720 --> 00:14:27.440 to experiment. but there's a lot to do to make it's safe and secure right this is not 00:14:27.440 --> 00:14:32.800 you know single way that to do that today. So, I think you have to ground yourselves on 00:14:32.800 --> 00:14:37.440 doing it responsibly giving some permission and then choosing areas of your business that you're 00:14:37.440 --> 00:14:41.360 going to double down as a leader. We're going to reinvent how we do this piece of our business. 00:14:41.360 --> 00:14:44.960 We're going to take some risk and you know, we’re not going to I don't like the fail fast. I like the 00:14:44.960 --> 00:14:48.240 learn fast. We're going to learn fast. We’re going to pivot in the sense of how we're using 00:14:48.240 --> 00:14:54.640 AI to reinvent this part of our business. And then we get to ROI, right? We believe if you do our AI, 00:14:54.640 --> 00:14:58.880 responsible AI, right? You'll be much better positioned to have that ROI, the return 00:14:58.880 --> 00:15:03.280 on that investment. But the ROI is really just about the core business. You're measuring it 00:15:03.280 --> 00:15:07.040 the same way. Did we get to more markets? Do we create products faster? You know, is it more 00:15:07.040 --> 00:15:10.880 efficient? It's not about cutting headcount. It's about the market opportunity, about the revenue, 00:15:10.880 --> 00:15:15.680 the transformation, or reinvention of something we’re doing. And we're starting to see that. 00:15:15.680 --> 00:15:19.600 I think last year was very experimental at the leadership level. This year, we're seeing real 00:15:19.600 --> 00:15:24.160 investments in production, hitting the bottom line from a revenue perspective, from a margin 00:15:24.160 --> 00:15:28.640 perspective, from a market perspective. It's not about the efficiencies that that's how you learn, 00:15:28.640 --> 00:15:32.400 but it's about the reinvention and rewiring your business. So, leaders have to 00:15:32.400 --> 00:15:36.800 lean in. They have to use themselves and they have to make it safe and give that permission 00:15:36.800 --> 00:15:42.560 to use it throughout business. Yeah. I like what you said about let's retire the fail 00:15:42.560 --> 00:15:49.360 fast. Yeah. Yeah. It's not failure if you’re pivoting, learning from it. Yeah. I do want 00:15:49.360 --> 00:15:56.320 to ask you and I and you raised this and it's been raised by many we’ve just come back from 00:15:56.320 --> 00:16:05.200 our you know major flagship TED conference, and it was lovely. Thank you. And we heard we 00:16:05.200 --> 00:16:10.880 heard some fierce warnings. I mean, you know, we heard from a number of people that that were 00:16:10.880 --> 00:16:21.120 ringing a very loud alarm about things like a digital coup or what unregulated AI could 00:16:21.120 --> 00:16:29.600 could end up threatening us in in many ways. we're you know we're very concerned about 00:16:29.600 --> 00:16:39.600 democratic institutions and our freedom and our identity. So I guess I would be remiss in in you 00:16:39.600 --> 00:16:50.400 know I think we are at a moment where there’s some trepidation and real concern. , and from 00:16:50.400 --> 00:16:54.960 your point of view, and you've, you know, you’ve explained you've been in this and been doing this 00:16:54.960 --> 00:16:58.640 for so many years, and it's been around, but what 00:16:58.640 --> 00:17:05.200 keeps you up at night? Yeah, I actually, if I compared TED last year to this year, there was a 00:17:05.200 --> 00:17:09.840 very drastic energy change around AI. Last year was super positive energy. This year, there was 00:17:09.840 --> 00:17:15.120 a balance. There was definitely some worry. What keeps me up at night is this this pace of 00:17:15.120 --> 00:17:19.120 change. And I think it's the time scale that’s frightening people. Again, we've been through 00:17:19.120 --> 00:17:25.360 dramatic technology in inventions and innovations, just it's been over more years or even decades. 00:17:25.360 --> 00:17:30.080 So, I think part of the thing that keeps me up at night is the pace of change and then the 00:17:30.080 --> 00:17:36.320 pervasiveness of change. Not only are we seeing AI and so specifically large language models increase 00:17:36.320 --> 00:17:41.200 in their capacity at at a rate we couldn’t really predict before, we're seeing fundamental 00:17:41.200 --> 00:17:45.440 change in the compute infrastructure. So, the actual hardware is changing to, you know, 00:17:45.440 --> 00:17:48.880 provide more capability. As you mentioned, we’re looking at things like quant computing 00:17:48.880 --> 00:17:54.320 and neuromorphic or biological computing. So, the fundamentals are changing. The interface to how we 00:17:54.320 --> 00:17:58.640 access these are changing. It's being built into more and more things almost invisibly. So, it's 00:17:58.640 --> 00:18:03.840 it's that pervasiveness that I worry about. So how do we actually know what's happening? I do feel 00:18:03.840 --> 00:18:08.080 like you know as PwC this is one of our passions response being responsible about this setting the 00:18:08.080 --> 00:18:13.200 standards now and the guardrails working with the right standards bodies both non-governmental and 00:18:13.200 --> 00:18:19.200 even governmental. I think for the first time we we've started the discussion about responsibility 00:18:19.200 --> 00:18:23.280 in the beginning versus at the end. And you know, I go back to the early days of the internet. 00:18:23.280 --> 00:18:27.840 We were like just connect everything and then we'll secure it. This time at least we're talking 00:18:27.840 --> 00:18:32.160 about it. So that you know the TED event having those worries out there that's important 00:18:32.160 --> 00:18:39.440 to get the conversation at the table. And so I do I do feel like that's different but there's a lot 00:18:39.440 --> 00:18:43.840 a lot to put in place. I don't want to snipe innovation but we have to do it responsibly. 00:18:43.840 --> 00:18:49.600 We believe in trust in design and by design. So, all along the way building those trust 00:18:49.600 --> 00:18:55.440 guard rails and then using the technology to help find the vulnerabilities, right? 00:18:55.440 --> 00:19:00.480 So AI solving these AI problems and so I think there’s more opportunity to do that. But 00:19:00.480 --> 00:19:04.800 this is a passion of ours and something we weave into every conversation and every architecture 00:19:04.800 --> 00:19:08.480 and every piece of engineering because it’s so important right now. But the pace and the 00:19:08.480 --> 00:19:14.880 pervasiveness are the things I worry. It is the speed of change right now. And yeah, 00:19:14.880 --> 00:19:22.880 I'm glad that TED could be a platform for people like you to hear some of these 00:19:22.880 --> 00:19:27.920 yeah, it was it was really interesting discussions. Yeah. Existential concerns. Yes. 00:19:27.920 --> 00:19:37.680 Our audience is jumping right in here. So, I’m going to I'm going to take some questions. , 00:19:37.680 --> 00:19:47.120 one question is about humans. The question is as AI gets smarter and better at thinking jobs, 00:19:47.120 --> 00:19:53.920 where do humans fit in? And I guess maybe you could take that to be a question about 00:19:53.920 --> 00:20:00.720 the future is where are we going to where are we going to be as humans in three to five years? 00:20:01.360 --> 00:20:07.360 Yeah, it's a deeply philosophical question and you know I always go back to about 00:20:07.360 --> 00:20:12.080 maybe 100 years ago most of us were farmers and today we're not I am a little bit but most 00:20:12.080 --> 00:20:17.840 of us are not and we eat fairly well but again that’s a hundred year transition and 00:20:17.840 --> 00:20:21.840 again it's about the speed of this transition. I work at a large professional services firm. 00:20:21.840 --> 00:20:26.960 We've gone through you know going from 10 keys to Excel and you know I don't think any of our 00:20:26.960 --> 00:20:31.120 people want to do math on paper. We trust Excel. So, there's been these transitions. 00:20:31.120 --> 00:20:36.080 They've just been in a longer time scale. Now this one’s definitely larger and when you think about 00:20:36.080 --> 00:20:40.480 you know human intelligence and reasoning and you know that that's a much deeper 00:20:40.480 --> 00:20:46.640 question. I always refuse to predict five years because I think predicting five months 00:20:46.640 --> 00:20:52.160 right now is tough. but there's no doubt this to change our interactions with 00:20:52.160 --> 00:20:57.760 information and knowledge and as an again a professional services firm. We're thinking 00:20:57.760 --> 00:21:01.680 about this every day. But it's also creating new opportunities as I mentioned, you know, 00:21:01.680 --> 00:21:05.760 with this infinite access to information. What else can we be doing? Could we be solving much 00:21:05.760 --> 00:21:10.240 harder problems? And I think we saw this at TED this year. There was a lot going on in healthcare 00:21:10.240 --> 00:21:15.600 in in pharmaceutical and biomed gene editing that there’s going to be much harder problems we can 00:21:15.600 --> 00:21:20.640 solve. So, I think we're going to pivot from the almost the mundane we're doing today to the 00:21:20.640 --> 00:21:28.160 groundbreaking type of work we can solve. going to space solving disease you know we for quotes 00:21:28.160 --> 00:21:33.440 we may solve all diseases in the next decade I mean that's amazing that's great for humanity means 00:21:33.440 --> 00:21:38.880 we're going to doing different things day-to-day from a work perspective but I believe humans 00:21:38.880 --> 00:21:44.880 as a species are very adaptable the question is this time this time scale issue u but I believe 00:21:44.880 --> 00:21:49.520 we will adapt we'll take this you know to the benefit of society and hopefully everyone's 00:21:49.520 --> 00:21:57.120 marching down the AI for good path and you know. That's one of our passions. Yes, I think we 00:21:57.120 --> 00:22:04.160 underestimate how adaptable humans can be. But that said, we have a question from somebody 00:22:04.160 --> 00:22:13.440 who's concerned about, sort of the early career. They ask, what does AI mean for 00:22:13.440 --> 00:22:19.040 people who are earlier in their careers and trying to enter this workforce? It seems like it could 00:22:19.040 --> 00:22:26.800 be replacing a lot of entry-level jobs. How are people supposed to get experience? So, we've been 00:22:26.800 --> 00:22:31.120 doing a job study over the last two years. We look at a billion job postings trying to understand the 00:22:31.120 --> 00:22:35.920 true impact of AI. So, we'll publish that in June. It's actually got some pretty positive 00:22:35.920 --> 00:22:42.720 messaging. What we're seeing is it's not taking jobs, maybe some but very small 00:22:42.720 --> 00:22:47.200 amount of jobs going away. What’s changing is the tasks within jobs are changing rapidly, much 00:22:47.200 --> 00:22:51.680 more rapidly than we thought. So, the jobs themselves, if you're a project manager today, 00:22:51.680 --> 00:22:55.440 you you're likely to be a project manager, but the way you project manage will change. You're 00:22:55.440 --> 00:22:59.280 going to take advantage of these tools and AI will help project management be more efficient, 00:22:59.280 --> 00:23:05.680 more effective, have less waste. So, we're going to track that. I think I look at 00:23:05.680 --> 00:23:11.360 you know graduates ask me, you know, what should I study or what degree should I get? 00:23:11.360 --> 00:23:17.120 And I think we're seeing more moment engineering than ever, right? But it's more broad. It's 00:23:17.120 --> 00:23:20.160 electrical engineering, mechanical engineering with the advancement we're seeing in robotics 00:23:20.160 --> 00:23:26.560 and space. There's tremendous new cap opportunities for jobs. , but it all goes back 00:23:26.560 --> 00:23:32.320 to the same math and science and chemistry and biology. It's just a a repackaging of how we 00:23:32.320 --> 00:23:38.160 bring it to life in jobs. We're still hiring CPAs and accountants, but they're going to have to 00:23:38.160 --> 00:23:43.360 use AI as they do that CPA and accountant work. So, the job isn't going away. It's changing. So, 00:23:43.360 --> 00:23:47.920 I think we have to monitor that. five years from now. I do not think this statement holds 00:23:47.920 --> 00:23:52.880 up five years from now. Again, my refusal on five year predictions, but it's those critical 00:23:52.880 --> 00:23:57.520 thinking skills you build, the logic, you know, whichever path you're going in. And then there's 00:23:57.520 --> 00:24:00.960 the human side, you know, the philosophy and the understanding what this means long term, 00:24:00.960 --> 00:24:06.320 the humanities, that's important as we connect as humans. So, I think it's changing the 00:24:06.320 --> 00:24:11.760 the jobs, but I’m bullish on the new jobs. It's going to create bigger problems, bigger jobs. 00:24:12.400 --> 00:24:18.880 H are you a little bit alarmed about the shift also in education? and I guess I guess I should 00:24:18.880 --> 00:24:26.720 say that are you a bit concerned that people will stop feeling it's even necessary to go deep into 00:24:26.720 --> 00:24:31.840 the into the critical thinking and the humanities because there's so many ways it can be solved just 00:24:31.840 --> 00:24:39.520 with you know quick a quick question to chatGPT. Yeah, I'm more concerned about the way we 00:24:39.520 --> 00:24:43.440 teach today at least in the US. I think the curriculum need to change. I think we need 00:24:43.440 --> 00:24:48.480 to be mindful of these new tools. We're seeing early patterns. So, it's very little 00:24:48.480 --> 00:24:53.920 data that leveraging AI is, you know, precision tutors is having an outsized impact on students 00:24:53.920 --> 00:24:59.760 performance and growth. So, I'm more worried about how we teach. I'm not worried that 00:24:59.760 --> 00:25:04.080 people don't want to learn. So, I think if we change the way we teach, you know, the schools can 00:25:04.080 --> 00:25:08.640 can adapt and adjust and we're going to have a much better outcome. But I think humans are 00:25:08.640 --> 00:25:12.560 curious by nature typically. So, they're going to want to learn and if you want to learn with an AI 00:25:12.560 --> 00:25:17.440 that that's great too. and understanding that helps you build that understanding going 00:25:17.440 --> 00:25:20.960 forward. So, I think it's a combination. I’m still bullish on learning and curiosity. I 00:25:20.960 --> 00:25:26.960 think that's the fundamental starting point in this new world. Our audience here 00:25:26.960 --> 00:25:32.720 is certainly very curious and eager to learn from you, Scott. one of the questions that's come up 00:25:32.720 --> 00:25:39.840 and I'm sure you've encountered this as well is the environmental impact and sustainability. 00:25:39.840 --> 00:25:46.480 is that something that you're dealing with in your in your world and what are your thoughts as 00:25:46.480 --> 00:25:52.080 because as you say the speed of change is so fast and we're ex exponentially the requirements for 00:25:52.080 --> 00:25:58.400 energy and resources is just is skyrocketing. Yeah, I love this question. I know there's a 00:25:58.400 --> 00:26:03.280 lot of fear and uncertainty and there with this this mass increase in demand for 00:26:03.280 --> 00:26:08.160 for processing therefore energy and water. We actually just released a study where we built an 00:26:08.160 --> 00:26:13.120 AI systems dynamics model to try and look at the next 10 years of climate impact on AI with 00:26:13.120 --> 00:26:17.520 you know some different levers around how big we think that would get. the net the headline of 00:26:17.520 --> 00:26:20.480 the story is actually it's going to put us in a better place. So, what you're seeing right now is 00:26:20.480 --> 00:26:25.840 tons of innovation because of the demand. We’re having to move very fast to provide this this 00:26:25.840 --> 00:26:30.240 compute for AI. There are tons of innovation in how we're doing that. So, the chips are getting 00:26:30.240 --> 00:26:34.240 more efficient. You're seeing breakthroughs that we didn't think possible. The generation of energy 00:26:34.240 --> 00:26:38.160 is changing. You're seeing things like nuclear come back online, small nuclear inventions, 00:26:38.160 --> 00:26:43.840 different ways to create energy in a much greener fashion. So, the innovation for AI, 00:26:43.840 --> 00:26:48.320 which is probably, you know, data centers may hit about 10% of global electric use. Well, 00:26:48.320 --> 00:26:52.560 that innovation is going to permeate the 90% of other industries that are using the same electric. 00:26:52.560 --> 00:26:58.080 So we're going to get a net benefit if we do this right. So, I like the innovation side solving that 00:26:58.080 --> 00:27:02.880 problem. There's no doubt this is going to take massive amounts of energy and water. , 00:27:02.880 --> 00:27:06.000 but if we do that the right way, it's going to benefit all these other industries. So, 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:10.480 I'm again I'm a bullish believer in innovation solving this problem using 00:27:10.480 --> 00:27:15.920 AI to optimize this in a way that we couldn't have before, and we published that study. 00:27:15.920 --> 00:27:24.000 it's a very detailed scientific study. So, happy to go find it and we can debate it. 00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:31.200 yes, more room for debate and yes. I appreciate you acknowledging that these 00:27:31.200 --> 00:27:37.600 these are real issues. Problems. Yeah, real problems. We have to wrap up soon. I know 00:27:37.600 --> 00:27:44.320 you have a flight to catch, but I didn't want to let you go without one last question, which is, 00:27:44.320 --> 00:27:51.360 Scott, we were speaking about this earlier. It really kind of is very heartwarming 00:27:51.360 --> 00:27:56.960 to me to learn that you live on a farm and you raise a lot of animals and for you personally 00:27:56.960 --> 00:28:06.080 in your own kind of sense of balance. I tell us about how you how do you make that 00:28:06.080 --> 00:28:14.160 work for you know a kind of holistic intense job with what's happening so quickly and the 00:28:14.160 --> 00:28:21.680 speed of change and then you know raising goats. Yeah. So it's probably one of the crazy 00:28:21.680 --> 00:28:26.880 anomalies of my life. But I do live on a ranch in Texas. I did that coming back. I lived in 00:28:26.880 --> 00:28:31.680 Hong Kong five years and I really wanted to get back to nature and out of the cities. So, 00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:36.880 this has really grounded me in in this this crazy pace, this this time scale that we're not 00:28:36.880 --> 00:28:42.320 understanding, being able to step back and just watch how nature continues to progress, 00:28:42.320 --> 00:28:46.640 you know, and watch how it fixes itself. So, you know, through whether it's 00:28:46.640 --> 00:28:51.120 rescuing animals and bringing them back to a beautiful life or just raising, you know, 00:28:51.120 --> 00:28:56.720 goats, alpacas, emus, cows, and horses, it just gives me this grounding so that when I 00:28:56.720 --> 00:29:01.520 get back to the pace on Monday, I've had this this peacefulness and it's hard work, 00:29:01.520 --> 00:29:05.840 man. I'll tell you, you know, clearing trees and buying hay and my weekends is hard work, 00:29:05.840 --> 00:29:09.920 but it's just such a mental break and it allows me to reflect on what's actually happening. So, 00:29:09.920 --> 00:29:13.920 it's given me this grounding. I love and it's a great balance. So, , 00:29:13.920 --> 00:29:19.360 thanks for asking about it. Yeah. No, I think it’s lovely to hear about this sense of balance 00:29:19.360 --> 00:29:24.240 and that you found that you've found a way to do that. Scott, we want to thank you so much. 00:29:24.240 --> 00:29:30.800 We've learned so much from you even in this short interview. We hope to continue that with you. 00:29:30.800 --> 00:29:36.000 we want to thank everyone for their questions. Apologies we could not get to all of them. And 00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:44.000 then finally thanks to the support of PwC for allowing us to do this this interview and have 00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:57.682 this conversation. and we will see you again next time. Thanks everyone. Great job.