What Machines Can’t Do

What human skills will be more valuable?

What Machines Can’t Do

NYTimes

David Brooks | New York Times

Computers are increasingly going to be able to perform important parts of even mostly cognitive jobs

As this happens, certain mental skills will become less valuable because computers will take over.

• Having a great memory will probably be less valuable.

• Being able to be a straight-A student will be less valuable

• So will being able to do any mental activity that involves following a set of rules.

But what human skills will be more valuable?

• sprinters (people who can recognize and alertly post a message on Twitter about some interesting immediate event)

• marathoners (people who can write large conceptual stories)

• graphic artists who can visualize data, but it has punished those who can’t turn written reporting into video presentations.

More generally, the age of brilliant machines seems to reward a few traits.

• First, it rewards enthusiasm. The people who seem to do best possess a voracious explanatory drive, an almost obsessive need to follow their curiosity.

• Second, the era seems to reward people with extended time horizons and strategic discipline.

• Third, the age seems to reward procedural architects.

• Fourth: One of the oddities of collaboration is that tightly knit teams are not the most creative. Loosely bonded teams are, teams without a few domineering presences, teams that allow people to think alone before they share results with the group.

• Fifth, essentialists will probably be rewarded. This is an important skill because creativity can be described as the ability to grasp the essence of one thing, and then the essence of some very different thing, and smash them together to create some entirely new thing.

Read the whole story at The New York Times

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