AI could bring human jobs back

Counterintuitively, I think AI is actually going to bring humans jobs. AI could create customer-service jobs. The barista example is a good way of looking at it. It may come to a stage where cafés simply have all the machinery done by AI. Your tastes and preferences could already be known. How hot you need your coffee to be, how sweet it has to be, how much milk should be there, and what kind of coffee beans you would like your coffee to be brewed from could all be known in advance. All of that could be communicated to the coffee-making machine through a phone, for example.

But you may still need someone who is going to bring you that coffee. You may still want to go to the counter and see if they have a nice cake. You may want to have a slight conversation with the barista. The barista would become a host. The barista would not be behind the counter. The barista would be in front of the counter. I think people are eventually going to value human contact.

They are not necessarily concerned about you working behind the scenes. They are not concerned about how cleanly you have cleaned the filter. They are much more concerned about how the service is. They are concerned about how you welcome them. They are concerned about the atmosphere.

If there is extra light falling, maybe you need the blinds put down. If there is excessive noise in the café, perhaps you can place a polite request with the barista, who is now a host, to seat you elsewhere. If the air conditioning is not working, you want some human contact. You may simply want someone to ask, “How was your day?”

You may have a bit of camaraderie. You may have a connection. It may be a silent one, but may become valuable over time if you’re a regular visitor to the café. That is why I think the barista is going to become the host.

Baristas would not be required to do the manual job of putting the coffee in the filter. I think they would be at the front end talking to the customer. They might ask, “How was your day?” They might say, “This is the price.” They might say, “Have you tried this new thing?”

The point is that personality matters. The one thing AI can never get is personality. It can develop a personality which can annoy you. You can change it. You can structure it. But I don’t think AI can make you laugh or make you feel like, “Oh, what happened?” or “How was your holiday?”

Few of us might perhaps fool ourselves into thinking we are having those conversations with AI models, and they are real conversations. But I think the general public would be like, “I don’t want to talk to a box about my day.” I think that is going to be the case.

I think a reverse trend might happen. The making of the coffee could happen automatically. Everything could happen super efficiently. But serving the coffee can still happen through a human being.

A barista’s job may become less about making the coffee. It may become more about people engagement. The machinery can do what is happening behind the scenes. The human being can be at the front end.

When that starts to happen, some of those entry-level jobs that are disappearing might begin to come back again. The other example could be customer-service agents. Right now, AI agents are taking over customer service, but we have all been there in the situation where you’re like, “You know what? I don’t want to waste my time over this AI agent’s conversation chat box. Could you please connect me to a human being?”

I think that is another example where jobs will return to human beings, which are centred around customer service, customer engagement and communication with the customer. Communication with the customer has to be in the language of the customer, which is a human language.

That is how I see it. Anyone who is good at people would become relevant. It would all be centred around talking to people. Soft skills would become key. Communication skills would become key. Human emotions would become key.