My 9-year-old son returned from being away on a school residential yesterday. Over dinner, he wanted to talk about artificial intelligence (AI). I have no idea what prompted this, the conversation started with “Mum, you know AI?”.

He then went on to tell me that AI is not yet a physical threat as it’s not generally in mechanical bodies, that the army is using virtual reality (VR) for training recruits for a virtual battlefield and when AI bots have been asked about their capacity to be human, that they have responded that it’s not in their programming to communicate as sentient beings (he did clarify on that last point that these were his own words as a summary, not a direct quote!).

We discussed some of the work we have been doing at SCW to get the workforce ready for AI, from work around reviewing technology in undergraduate clinical teaching to general AI readiness in the NHS workforce, use of robots in recruitment and use of VR for clinical training. He then asked if we could try ChatGPT sometime, as he’s heard some great applications of it. I had to admit to him that I hadn’t yet used ChatGPT, but had seen a colleague use it with his young family and that we could give it a try and learn together. 

It struck me that when we have been talking about getting the ‘future’ workforce ready for AI, actually the future workforce entering the labour market over the next 10+ years probably has us beaten in terms of their current knowledge and interest in AI. When we are talking about getting the workforce ready for AI in the future, it appears we mean getting oldies like myself, who are already in work, ready for how AI will shape and change the way we work and then helping us with both the psychological and operational transition as new technology is implemented. So next time you’re thinking about what adaptions might be needed for your current workforce to make them ready for the future, go find a little person and ask them their thoughts on life and how they think the world will look when they start work!