Data and Technology plot the end of Experience
…with a little help from code
…and open up a beautiful new world.
“We have collected all questions that a manager on the shop floor gets asked. The total number is 3000. On average, each question has three possible answers and there are many inter-connections. We have plotted these. The easiest thing a chat-bot can do is provide these answers.
With machine learning, before we even go to AI, we can, based on the data collected by the chat-bot, also predict and solve situations: so that questions are not asked in the first place.
And, of course, the chat-bot will be a mobile app so that an employee does not have to come to work and wait for the manager’s time and attention to solve their problem.”
The above is a real statement: made by a person who has no experience in the industry in question, is a couple of years out of college and does not consider the above achievement a big deal. In fact, this situation is one of the simplest ‘digital applications.’
This ‘simple’ digital application will take care of five years of experience that a ‘line’ manager accumulates, after attending work for more than 200 days each year.
The golden age of experience is ending as we move from deep to wide.
From ‘Deep’ to ‘Wide.’
It was not long ago that we sought people with experience: Gurus, ‘Meisters’, ‘seasoned’ and ‘experienced’ professionals. This experience was accumulated over many years. People became taller, older and wiser. The notion of ‘wisdom’ co-related to ‘having seen it all.’ If you wanted to know about something, you asked someone who had experienced the same or similar before.
When I was in college, I had an interest in learning about western classical music. My ‘guru’ was a 60-year-old Bengali anglophile who had done his college in Cambridge, England. He owned forty long playing records of composers such as Chopin, Hayden and others. My learning process had to revolve around his time schedule, his mood and his permission to play those records. Every conversation was top-down with a hint of condescension.
What I learned from him is now possible to know in a matter of minutes in a much richer, online environment without individual prejudice, at my convenience. Those forty precious records are available for 99 cents each or nothing at all.
Code feasts on Experience.
All experience can be coded. In the past, we did not have the technology and data to do so.
As computing power improves, as coding continues its relentless advance and as machine learning and AI make their impact, we will be able to code more and more complex experiences. This process will take exponential leaps as each cycle releases more data and hypotheses that are further processed to a higher level of effectiveness in the next cycle.
Very soon, statements such as ‘years of experience’ and ‘years of service’ will not sound so attractive. Experience will be available on tap. There will be a race to creatively use this universally available experience. The standards of ‘creative use’ will keep getting higher. What you do with what is already known will become bigger and more interesting every day.
A beautiful new world will open.
Many will bemoan the ‘sad’ demise of experience.
The truth, however, is that a beautiful new world is opening. A wide and horizontal world where age and tenure will not be a barrier to opportunity.
Control, respect for tenure and inequality have always been vertical concepts. Freedom and opportunity have always been horizontal concepts. Freedom and opportunity are ‘flow’ by nature, while experience and seniority are ‘trail’ by nature. The world has always sought more freedom and opportunity.
Data, Technology and Code are now joining the plot and lending a powerful hand.