I’m having to write this on Thursday this week because, as you're reading this blog, I’ll most likely be at the Haymes Paint factory with 20 students learning how paint is made. It’s part of our two day program at the Ballarat Tech School called STEM Academy that explores the world of engineering. It's the second year we’ve run this program and it was born from the idea that you can’t be what we can’t see so we designed a program that gets Year 9 and 10 students in front of as many different types of engineers as possible.
It's pretty extraordinary the range of industries that engineers appear in. Everything from infrastructure, construction, power generation and every type of manufacturing you can imagine - they all have at least a handful of engineers making sure everything works or is built to code or at least, is on time and within budget. It's pretty much a guaranteed career with lots of different pathways taking you to all sorts of branches of engineering including but not limited to mechanical, civil, chemical, electrical - the list really does go on.
Becoming an engineer seems like a smart choice for any young person these days but one thing that keeps popping up, over and over again, is how AI is affecting the trajectory for these young people. It's an interesting discussion to have at the Tech School where we are so often leading the charge in the adoption of new technology.
We spoke to an engineer the other day who was genuinely worried about how these students would go getting a job after finishing their study because AI is now completing so much of the entry level work that would normally be reserved for interns and graduates. As it stands, there is actually nothing for them to do. It’s not just engineering that suffers from this obviously. It's rampant in many industries, design included with junior designer roles being automated by AI and programs like Canva.
All the tasks that young people would cut their teeth on are now done at a fraction of the cost and 1000x quicker by AI. It's hard to argue with a business that must be profitable to survive that they should hire someone with less experience and knowledge who will be way slower than if they got a cheap bot to do it.
The problem with this is obvious - how do we continue to attract bright young people to become engineers, or designers for that matter, if they can’t get their foot in the door? It's an interesting dilemma that I’m curious to see how it plays out.
My instinct is that human to human communication and connection will become far more important and instead of employers looking for students with top marks (because they’ll need them if they're competing with AI) they'll be looking for people who have good communication skills. Being able to introduce yourself and hold a conversation is going to become super important because being a real human is going to be more important than ever. At the beginning of a career it might be the only advantage our young people have over AI. Being actual humans.
A friend was hiring a new employee on Seek recently and had over 400 applications - most written beautifully by AI - they all sounded the EXACT same - regardless of the person's experience. The candidate that got the job was the only person out of those 400 who had followed up with a phone call to the business asking how his application had gone. He got the job because at least, he was a real human who actually gave a shit about the outcome.
Being able to clearly communicate with people and work in a team is critical. The fact that someone can read a room or notice how others are feeling is going to be key. Being able to empathise with and make others feel valued will help incentivise workplaces to invest in real humans. Companies will have to adjust their onboarding programs to create new spaces that nurture and encourage graduates at the beginning of their careers because the reality is - they need them. Especially in engineering.
If we don’t we’ll simply run out of engineers. If there aren't enough graduates entering the workforce there will be no one for senior and principal engineers to mentor as their successors. It’s critical that graduates continue to be employed and they’re still somehow put through their paces while AI is chipping away at the lesser tasks. There is no easy answer but it’s already affecting huge parts of the work force and students are concerned.
Last week ex-CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, was booed during his commencement speech to Arizona University when he spoke about AI. He said “The question is not whether AI will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will have shaped artificial intelligence.” It’s a hard pill to swallow when change is happening so rapidly. Especially if you are a graduating student with a massive student debt and are being told AI is taking all the jobs.
AI was meant to make life easier but a recent study has found that about half of Americans felt the increased prevalence of AI in their daily lives made them feel “more concerned than excited”. As a creative person I tend to agree with this apprehension. It leaves me outnumbered in the Tech School staff room as everyone adapts all the new technologies. I feel like I’m becoming more and more ‘old school’ appreciating the little things like when emails have typos and aren’t composed perfectly because they were just typed by hand - not prompted. It makes me smile because it means a human wrote it and humans aren’t perfect so why does everything we output now need to be?
