I have a grandson named JJ. He’s a college freshman, studying to be an engineer. He’s bright, focused, curious, and industrious – probably, in some areas, more so than my children. He has a great sense of humor, is exceedingly polite, and great fun to be around.
In high school, he built his own computer from scratch. He taught himself to supercharge that computer with add-ons, enhancements, and exotic peripherals of all kinds, from studying YouTubes. We hang out as often as he can make time for me, which isn’t often enough.
And, like most grandparents, I have many times had that experience of spending time with my grandchild, handling some subset of small human maintenance (feeding, dressing, etc.) and then turning him back over to his actual parent.
Many grandparents see this as one of life’s perks – enjoying the great pleasures of time with a child, without the tougher tasks that pervade the actual parenting role.
I mention it for this reason:
As we transition into the Automation Age – the Fourth Industrial Revolution – our working lives are going to feel like that change from parent to grandparent. We are going to shift from full-time, high-responsibility, all-on-us working lives to a new role – part-time, less responsibility, shared-burden work. It will feel like we’ve gone from parenting to grandparenting.
We won’t be working 40-hour work weeks much longer; soon they’ll be 32, then 24, etc., in the same way that parent-to-grandparent shifts us from 24/7 to a day or two a week, or month, and so on.
We will still have some responsibility for our work, but much of it will be on the AI doing more and more of the actual tasks – just as child-rearing shifts from our shoulders to our children’s, with contributions from us as needed.
As grandparents, we team with our children in doing for our grandchildren – we share in it, but we don’t own as much of it.
That’s the world AI is offering us, if we can make it happen. In our working lives, we’ll go from a parent role to a grandparent role, with all the perks, and fewer and fewer of the tougher tasks.
And, as a grandfather, I for one think it’s gonna rock...
Beautifully true!