“Every day is a school day” as a philosopher named Ned (from my childhood village) used to say.
Since co-founding EthicCo, Ned’s sage words have echoed in my ears. Most days I get to explore something different, often it’s something outside my area of expertise. As a card-carrying generalist, this suits me.
In the corporate world, roles tend to be relatively narrow and there are specialists you can call on for specific help. Need some marketing material, there’s a team for that; need a security review, there’s a weighty process for that; want to divest from fossil fuels, sorry, can’t help.
When you are half the workforce of a company, there’s not a great deal of delegation or specialisation available. You just get on with the job at hand, and this is where AI comes into play.
I’m still quite reticent about humanity’s shiny new toy, but it is not without merit. I recently built a website from scratch (never having done this before), it took 2 weeks from start/finish (in dialogue with Gemini). Which brings me back to my opening gambit. AI gives beginners a leg up, rather than replace specialists or experts. The website I built is clearly not as good as one crafted by an experienced professional, but it’s a solid starting point for a start-up. ‘Perfection is the enemy of progress’, as us agilists love to proclaim.
I then moved on to applying for a NSW grant, I can see how Not-for-profits have whole teams who just do nothing but this. “Death by a thousand grants” is the phrase you hear mentioned. I understand they don’t want to make handing out money simple but his was repetitive, mind-numbing work – a week of my life I won’t get back. If only we had someone to delegate that too. But again, using AI to hand-hold me through the process helped meet the submission date – fingers crossed…
So is AI ushering in the ‘age of the generalist’? …. Kinda, sorta… it depends…
In a corporate setting, I think that the specialisation and division of labour will persist (albeit with fewer real people employed). It also depends on the type of work needing to be done, physical work would appear less AI impacted than white collar’ tasks.
However, AI has the power to turbo-charge small business. The work is by nature more generalised – there aren’t teams of functional experts on tap or the budgets to hire a shiny consultants with their perfect teeth. It’s not that simple though, there are genuine concerns that prevent the adoption of AI in small companies (definitely worth exploration in a future blog).
Given the Aussie economy relies so heavily on small-medium enterprises, I’ll come down off the fence and declare that we are entering the ‘age of the generalist’.
What do you think?
Power to the generalists
Ewan
