The AI revolution and jobs: We ALL have to become 'solutionists', says author

The Money Show's Stephen Grootes is joined by Bronwyn Williams, trend translator and future finance specialist at Flux Trends.

Every week The Money Show interviews the author or reviewer of a new or trending business book.

This week Stephen Grootes talked to regular book reviewer Flux Trends' Bronwyn Williams, but this time in her capacity as an author herself.

She talks about the recently published Survive the AI Apocalypse: A Guide for Solutionists, which she wrote together with business transformation specialist Sharon Pearce.

While the publisher's title may seem hyperbolic, the point does stand with AI developments containing an apocalyptic element for many people, Williams says.

"A solutionist is someone who sees a problem, identifies that problem and then finds a way to solve it. We're really just talking about the good old thing of how to start a business and be an entrepreneur - what do you do is you find a problem and you solve it."

"But what we're trying to say in the book is that it's not just people who currently identify as entrepreneurs but really EVERYONE; whether you're employed, currently unemployed, whether you run a business or you're part of a massive organisation." 

"Our thesis is everyone's got to see themselves as a solutionist because what's happening now with this 'apocalypse', is that basically there's a reckoning in terms of the value you are bringing to the economy, and the price that you are charging. It's those two figures that have to be aligned and, quite frankly, theyr'e not aligned at the moment."

"We're basically telling people they need to be actually adding value to whoever is paying them, whether that is a customer, an employer, an organisation or an individual  - are you really adding value to that person or are you really just extracting value from an inefficient market?"

"We certainly see what's happening at the moment with digitisation and automation and globalisation, is that there's a lot of scrutiny of where the fat is sitting on the system and where there are people simply extracting value."

Bronwyn Williams, Co-author: Survive the AI Apocalypse

Description on Penguin Random House SA:

Look around you – is anything real or normal any more? News, images and videos created by AI are everywhere. The world we live in is changing daily, and it’s no exaggeration to say that everything you thought you knew is undergoing apocalyptic levels of change. Our new normal includes AI CEOs, AI partners, AI versions of our dead relatives to keep us company, and customers deploying their own adversarial agent ‘armies’ to hostile-negotiate on their behalf. Meanwhile, the expensive skills you have accumulated, the jobs you’ve fought for, the relationships you’ve invested in, the organisations you’ve worked for and the economies we depend on for survival are shrinking even as our choices expand.
 
Discernment and understanding of context are now critical to your survival. So, let’s stare the future down and, instead of fearing AI, become solutionists. In order to survive in this hyper-competitive, globalised and automated world, where the strongest and smartest winners are set to take all, we need to change our mindsets and our skill sets to become fit for the ‘post-AI, apocalyptic’ world that is here to stay. This means embracing progress and turning AI and technology into an asset with which we can co-exist, while continuing to create new possibilities far into the future. This book is a call to action to live on the flipside of fear.

Scroll up to the audio player to listen to the full conversation