But the next massive transformation will change all that once again.
As of early 2026, approximately 1 billion people, some 12 or 13% of the world’s population, have at least dabbled with some form of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The great majority of those people will have used it as a glorified search engine, replacing the work previously done by Google or Bing.
But that is all about to change. Despite many of us having been only modestly exposed to AI over the past 18 months, 2026 will see the various technologies change the way we live, work and play. Jobs will change. Other jobs will disappear. And services once provided by people will increasingly be delivered by machines over the next three to five years.
Knowledge will change too. Again, we won’t have to learn it or carry it with us. We’ll be able to find it when we need it and even contribute to its development.
The implications for business and government are immense.
Most Western governments, including ours, struggle to fund and deliver a health system that keeps up with the amazing progress being made in diagnosis, treatment and medication of illness.
A statistic often referred to is that medical knowledge doubled over the 60-year period from 1950 to 2010. By 2010, the suggestion was that medical knowledge would double every seven to 10 years. Today the prognosis is every 70 to 90 days.
So imagine our own health service, various aspects of which we struggle to maintain, fund and cater to the needs of the people it serves. Imagine a world in which we can take shortcuts. Services will rapidly become more streamlined, hospital stays will be shorter, diagnosis will be faster and more efficient. Day visits will replace overnight stays.
Staff scheduling and supply chain management will be done differently using AI tools. Waste will reduce and costs should follow. AI has the potential to transform healthcare from bureaucratic, reactive and centralised, to efficient, highly proactive and localised.
And that’s just health.
One of the largest occupations in the world is that of a driver. For a few years now, many of us have been following the progress of the driverless motor vehicle. That progress has been massive and we are now seeing driverless taxis operating in places like California. In fact, Waymo’s robotaxi service is now operating in at least 15 American states. Imagine being collected by a car without a driver.
Think about it. The USA alone currently has an estimated 2.5-3 million full-time and part-time Uber drivers. Note that doesn’t count taxis. There’s another half a million taxi drivers and chauffeurs. Bus drivers number an additional half million.
These are jobs that will start to disappear over time and, ultimately, probably within 10 years, cease to exist.
A mate of mine has a hectare of grass at his property. He was paying $800 per month to have his lawns mowed by one of the popular grass-cutting franchise operators. He was happy with the service, but he found a better way.
We’re now seeing and hearing advertising for mowbots. Even in New Zealand. My mate bought one and it’s changed the appearance of his property. They run 24 hours a day if necessary and his entire property is mowed every two days. And the transformation is almost unbelievable. He’s gone from a paddock to a parkland in a matter of months.
Our country does not provide great statistics. We’re too small. But again, referring to the USA, there are 1.2 million people whose job is to look after lawns. Applying a pro-rata calculation, we probably have 16,000 people involved in lawn care. What happens to those jobs?
The guy with the mowbot just downloaded his bank statements into an AI application and had his year-end accounts and tax returns completed. Another friend shared the key details of a proposed business purchase with the same system and created his own sale and purchase agreement, due diligence checklist and settlement statements.
It’s easy to get excited about new technologies and AI is no different. It will change the way we live. In many cases, those changes will be for the better. In some cases, they won’t be.
We need to start thinking now about those people whose jobs are under threat. What do we do with today’s service workers whose jobs will cease to exist? How do we train those whose roles will become increasingly led by AI tools? How do we train today’s students for jobs that don’t exist in businesses that don’t exist, performing services in a way that doesn’t exist?
What will AI mean for student graduates? Photo / 123rf
Professional services firms are the lifeblood of graduating students looking for their first jobs. Those students do the introductory level work as they start their careers. That introduction forms the framework on which they build their career.
But those professional service firms will increasingly use AI-enabled technology to do the introductory work. So how do we train the newcomers? How do they learn? Where do they build the experience that enables them to become leading architects, engineers, lawyers and accountants? Every step of that career path needs a rethink. And it’s not too early to start.
There are other downsides too. A Harvard Business Review article last year discussed the most common uses of AI. At first guess, you’d be forgiven for thinking that computer coding, medical diagnosis development, or bridge span calculations would top the list.
But no. At No 3 on the list was the use of AI to help people to find purpose in their lives. No 2 was the quest to “organise my life”. And at No 1? Therapy and companionship.
In other words, the arrival of these wonderful new technologies is teaching us something else about ourselves. The post-Covid, post-political correctness generations need help managing themselves in far greater numbers than any societal mental health research will tell us. We’ve often talked about the lack of resilience in today’s generations. Did we know it was this bad?
What do those statistics tell us about how a generation of people will adapt to the massive changes coming? Changes to how we live our lives, do our jobs, and communicate with our friends.
Like many technological advances, the wider use and acceptance of artificial intelligence will bring opportunities to progress and potholes to avoid.
The progress will come in the form of improved accuracy in everything we do, whether it’s driving or diagnosis. AI technology should assist a generation that has been strained to breaking point by overwork and burnout. It will present new opportunities to retrain and help us all to be more productive. Creativity will be enhanced and innovation will flourish. That’s an exciting place to play. Workplaces should be safer and lives better balanced.
The potholes are primarily the impact on the people who can’t or won’t cope with the change. There will be jobs lost and pressure to develop new areas of competence. Learning how to learn will become an important skill for all of us.
There’s also the risk that AI will make us lazy. Just as the arrival of calculators stopped us doing maths in our heads and phones with built-in address books seemingly disabled our memory for phone numbers, AI will do things so as we no longer have to. We will lose certain skills as a result.
But for all the challenges, I’m positively influenced by a massive change that occurred just 30 short years ago. The emergence of mobile phone technology and its related cellular networks enabled under-developed nations without copper wire telephone lines to leap forward, skipping stages of infrastructure development to catch up with the world. Those same opportunities now exist in almost every industry or government service that challenges us.
For a country like New Zealand, where we have struggled for so long to keep up with the needs of our society at so many levels, such an opportunity must be grabbed with both hands. But we have to start making it part of the daily conversation.
And let’s not forget, it might have taken a while, but we all eventually worked out how to use a smartphone.
There is no question in my mind that the positives of progress will always outweigh the negatives.
Bruce Cotterill is a professional director, speaker and adviser to business leaders. He is the author of the book, The Best Leaders Don’t Shout, and host of the podcast, Leaders Getting Coffee. www.brucecotterill.com
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