Late last year I had the pleasure to attend the National Children’s Summit in Ottawa with our oldest child. As some readers may know we lost our daughter, Teagan, to murder on December 10th, 2014. This tragedy inspired us to start Teagan’s Voice, a non-profit focused on children’s rights. It also inspired Teagan’s brothers to volunteer their time and brains to make the world a better, safer place for kids, which brought us to the National Children’s Summit.
It was an amazing couple of days listening to youth from across Canada talk about their challenges and fears. During one session my personal and work lives collided. One of the topics that came up was AI and the Future of Work. The kids talked about how they keep hearing that robots will be doing all the jobs in the future and wondered what it will mean for them. Will there be any jobs left? How can they prepare to ensure they will have careers?
These are topics I speak about regularly at contextere as we transform the Future of Work. It is our belief that augmentation will trump automation for most jobs. Technology, when paired with the innate human talents of creativity, empathy, and judgment, will make the workforce safer and more productive for workers today as well as the those of tomorrow.
As the kids talked about their future it was encouraging to hear them conclude that there would always be change but, through education and innovation, they believe their place in the workforce would be different and exciting. I could not agree more and many of us in the workforce today would be wise to share in the optimism of the next generation.
To learn more about Teagan’s Voice and how you can help protect children’s rights, visit our website, http://www.teagansvoice.com, and Twitter page.
