CGTN Europe spoke to Zain Verjee, Executive Fellow at Harvard's Digital Data Design Institute.
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00:00and it goes from start to finish, and boom, you've got an essay.
00:04What's going to happen is that your computer is actually going to be able to reason that answer and go,
00:10okay, what perspective are we going to tell this from?
00:14I will be able to access your database in real time.
00:17The AI agent can do complex tasks, break them down into subtasks,
00:23create more information and more tasks for itself to execute
00:28while you go off to the gym for 20 minutes or do something else,
00:32and you will get an excellent piece of work from that.
00:36So I think what that's going to mean is that systems are going to be more automated,
00:41workflows are going to happen in ways that we've never seen before,
00:46and that every single sector, sales, marketing, media, PR, communications, finance,
00:53everything that we know today could be very transformed by agentic reasoning,
00:58and I think that's something that 2025 and beyond we need to focus on.
01:03Really important point there, Zeyn.
01:05Now, the International Monetary Fund says AI could pose a risk for 30% of jobs in advanced economies.
01:12You mentioned workflows.
01:14The question, are we going to see mass job losses in some countries?
01:20I think we're going to see mass job changes, Michael,
01:23and that's going to translate into losses, yeah, sure.
01:26The thing about artificial intelligence and Gen AI is that it has been the great equalizer.
01:32If someone has a couple of degrees from Ivy League universities on coding, for example,
01:37and I just graduated from high school and I don't know how to do that,
01:40well, both of us can now actively and effectively prompt AI and we would get the same result, right?
01:48So it's a great equalizer.
01:50So what's the differentiator?
01:52So we have to start thinking about things that we as humans can offer that is different.
01:57We have empathy.
01:58We have emotion.
02:00There's human connection.
02:01There's creativity.
02:02There's critical thinking.
02:04Some of the most talented people going forward
02:06and the skill sets that are going to be looked for are individuals who have expertise and talent in linguistics,
02:15super creative people that can come up with things that machines cannot.
02:19I think the critical factor here is skilling up,
02:22not freaking out over 50 percent of jobs will be lost by 2030 and it will all be automated.
02:28That's not the way to look at it.
02:30Skill yourself up.
02:31Look to learn something for five minutes a day.
02:35What I think we're looking at going forward is people that are generalists, not specialists.
02:42That era of being a specialist in that one task, I can read the prompter really, really well.
02:48I can code really, really well.
02:49The technocrat, that's gone.
02:51If you know a little bit about a lot of things, you know how to do prompt engineering,
02:55and that's just a fancy word, it's linguistics, right?
02:58Don't be intimidated by that.
03:01If you know how to generate video from Sora or VO2 or Cling 1.6, right?
03:08I just watch YouTube, and that's where I learn.
03:11If you have an ability to understand a range of things, you're a generalist,
03:16and your skill set becomes way more desirable.
03:19One last thing, Michael, is that women should not be intimidated by technology and AI.
03:27I see a lot of times that there's a little bit of a psychological obstacle.
03:31I want to say confidently and frankly that that should not be the case.
03:36A lot of data shows that less women use gen AI than men.
03:40It really is just about exposing yourself to different types of knowledge, unlearning, relearning.
03:49The person that will succeed in the workplace is the one that demonstrates adaptability
03:54and a great human skill.
03:57All right, Zain Virji, we'll have to leave it there.
04:00Thanks so much for your perspective on this particular issue.
04:04Sally, Louisa, it's back to you.
04:07Thank you so much, Michael.
04:10Students should use generative AI programs like ChatGPT,
04:16but teachers should know how to spot its abuse.
04:20That is the opinion of Portugal's education minister, Fernando Alexandre.
04:24He spoke to our correspondent, Ligia Noir, at Lisbon's Web Summit last month
04:28and also talked about attracting more young people to this annual event.
04:33A significant share of them will take a degree in tech sectors
04:41and they will contribute to improve our innovation ecosystem
04:47because what we want is for them to more and more think about how to translate knowledge
04:55into solutions for social problems and, of course, for economic problems.
05:00And when we do that, we improve our society and we make our economy more competitive.
05:07And artificial intelligence is a prominent topic in the tech sector.
05:11Do you bring AI to the classrooms now?
05:14Yes, ChatGPT is everywhere.