Now that interstate travel has returned, Climate Control News editor, Sandra Rossi, finds herself with a little too much downtime at airport terminals sending her imagination into overdrive.
Imagine a technologically advanced workplace where humans and robots work together in unison. It is the office of the future, a brave new world where the printer still doesn’t work (only joking).
I have been preoccupied with reports on the future of work, dreaming about a splendid new age but then reality returns as I notice that my laptop battery is about to die.
With the return of conferences and increased work travel, there is a lot more downtime at airports, which means opportunities to catch up on some long overdue reading.
A recent report by the Institute for the Future, in partnership with Dell, predicts that 85 per cent of jobs that will be available in the year 2030 haven’t even been invented yet. Dell identified four emerging technologies that will change the way we work in 2030.
These technologies are collaborative Artificial Intelligence (AI), multimodal interfaces, extended reality (XR), and secure distributed ledgers (don’t panic I wasn’t familiar with all of these terms either).
What we do know is that we will be partnering a lot more with machines and robots.
The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence aims to build common sense into machine systems so that they can be better collaborative partners for humans.
Rather than looking to outperform a human (such as in a chess match), the aim is to build machine systems that can better communicate and interact with human partners.
Soft skills will grow in importance as the demand for the things machines can’t do will continue to increase. This is the kind of environment that should elevate creative thinking.
In a separate Dell Technologies survey of 4600 business leaders across more than 40 countries, Dell found that 86 per cent of respondents plan to use emerging technologies to improve workforce productivity and 70 per cent welcomed people partnering with machines to surpass human limitations.
It all sounds very exciting but it will mean constant learning for us humans to keep pace with this everchanging landscape.
But don’t fret there will be plenty of new learning tools, one of them will be known as Interplay Learning, which combines Virtual Reality (VR) and 3D simulation-based training software.
It is already being used to train HVAC and solar technicians with workers accessing 100 hours of scenario-based learning coursework via their phone, computer, or in VR.
I am hoping that our new robotic colleagues are pre-programmed to provide IT support and have built in phone and laptop chargers. Now that’s my kind of workplace of the future.