Now I’m no big city lawyer…Back in my acting days, my cousin, a high-priced, high-powered lawyer was fond of telling me that I would one day be replaced by a hologram.
“Why hire you,” he’d say “when a theatre company could beam in Katharine Hepburn or one of the greats for any role anytime.”
He wasn’t trying to be mean:
Okay he was trying to be mean.
But he’d looked into the future and determined that it would be artists and poets and actors that would be replaced.
Lawyers would inherit the earth.
Hasn’t quite worked out that way:
Some jobs will be gone in just a few years. 10 years maybe. 20 years tops. The stress cracks are already showing up in all kinds of professions.
Especially law.
Big firms are going under as a lot of work that required a living, breathing human can now be done by algorithms.
Lawyers don’t even rate a hologram.
At this very moment, someone, somewhere is working very hard to replace you with an algorithm.
Maybe not today, or tomorrow but soon and for the rest of your life. (Pretend a Humphrey Bogart hologram delivered that last line, will ya?).
1/2 of today’s jobs on the block:
Within 10 years, we could lose as many as half of the jobs that are currently in the marketplace.
And you know who stands the best chance of hanging on to their existing careers?
Those in high-touch careers, physically, creatively and emotionally.
You will never beat a computer at logic or math:
There are some things computers just do better than us. But there is something encoded deep inside of each one of us that longs for connection with other humans.
Your humanity, and that alone, is really what will give you your competitive edge.
It doesn’t matter what job you are in:
You have a much better chance of keeping your the more you are able to connect with other people.
Everyone of your formal, stuffy peers can be replaced by a computer that does it faster and cheaper.
But you and you alone can make yourself irreplaceable by doing the one thing computers can’t do.
Be human.
And remember that humans are story-based creatures.
Stories drive connection and connection drives business hiring decisions, both on an individual and firm level.
Storytelling will be what separates the humans from the algorithms.
Susan McLennan
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