TRANSCRIPT

Is Your Job Really Safe in the Age of AI? | ONE FM 91.3 The Morning Drive × Jason Ho

*Captions are taken directly from YouTube and may not be 100% accurate

Hi, we're live on Facebook with Jason Ho, founder of Strengths School. It's all because of something that came out in the Straits Times. My job feels secure but my industry is in decline due to AI, should I be worried?

Jason, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you for having me.

So you look at AI today, and I've said this to my kids, I said to everybody. We all know Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Terminator. And the thing behind the Terminator is Skynet. Can you see the similarities? I say it jokingly but I don't know whether it's true. But we keep hearing about AI replacing our jobs. If someone feels secure in their role today, but the industry is shrinking, should they then be worried?

Yeah, so I think for AI it's coming for everyone. I just, in terms of timing, there's AI in the body form which is like many years later, and now AI in terms of white collar and all the things you can do with a computer. So I feel that we should not have a "let's set up camp" kind of mindset. We should have a nomadic mindset. That means we're going to another country, we're going to set up shop there, we're going to try different things. Personally I feel it's just going to be a disruption. So what we need to do is address the AI portion, but there's also an internal portion. How do you find out which career is going to be suitable for you, because there's going to be a lot of switching?

So, you know, we've also read in the newspapers recently, people giving out $90,000 jobs to go to Australia and basically start all over again. Is this what you're talking about? Yes. So I think personally for me, I have done 32 different jobs and businesses in my life. I've been a busker on the streets of Orchard Road, I've been a logo designer, won awards, I've done financial planning, I worked as a professional will writer. I've done 32 different things. And for me, career has always been about figuring out where you have an unfair advantage. AI is just a multiplying effect. You multiply one times a hundred, you get a hundred. But if you have ten, ten times a hundred, you get ten thousand. So AI is the multiplier, but you need to figure out what is your core talent, what are your strengths. After all those jobs, I realized it helped me close a lot of doors, and it helped me understand there's actually a pattern. That pattern helps you understand, if I extrapolate it to the future, roughly what my job in the future is going to be like.

How far in the future should we look? I think for now nobody can tell, but I think like three, five years.

Let's go back to a basic question: what's the difference between a secure job and a secure career? Doesn't a secure job lead you to a secure career? No. I think a career is a little bit more targeted and directional. A job is just something that earns money. That's a new way of seeing it. So career is almost like, I know where I'm going because I'm built that way. My belief is that we all have a gift to mankind, every single one of us. If you go by job, you're just looking at what can plug the hole, just need to earn money. But if you go by career, you're thinking, this is my gift to mankind, I need to figure that out. Because if I do that, it's value add to mankind, the world gets a bit brighter.

What are some of the early warning signs that it's time to start thinking about a career pivot, even if you haven't lost your job? I think it's the same as buying property in Singapore, there's no way to stop this. So it's the idea of who's going to be the most nimble, the most nomadic. I like this analogy: what is AI actually? AI is a Harvard University student who helps you do your homework. All of us have three Harvard University students hanging around us all the time, and their names are Claudia (Claude), Gemma (Gemini) and Chad (ChatGPT).

So the idea for now, I think it's a two-pronged attack. The first prong: am I AI bilingual, am I good at using AI? If you have these three Harvard university students, are you leveraging them to help you do your homework and even your exam? Because if you're not, the next guy is going to do good, and he's going to be more promising in an interview because I'm going to ask, how often have you been using AI? So the first thing is you should be using these three Harvard University students, at least three times a day. Just get used to it, ask questions about your job. Which part of my job can you take over? Which part can you help me do easier or faster?

The other part is internally: what is your gift to mankind? That's about strengths, understanding where you have an unfair advantage over anybody else in humankind. Analogy: if you want to be tall, what should you join? Basketball. Our parents assume basketball players are tall because they join basketball. Is that true? No. Height is genetics, and all the tall people join basketball because they have an unfair advantage. The minimum NBA basketball height is around 198cm. Same thing for gymnasts, you need to be as short as possible, Olympic average is around 160cm. So the question is: imagine we're in a sporting arena, and there's so many jobs out there. Where do you feel you have an unfair advantage?

So the question I now ask: this whole thing about pivoting, planning your career three to five years out. What does a 40-something person do who's going through this now? Free, educate yourself, though a lot of people will say I'm too old to learn anything. But actually you can. We need to forget the ways we've been working from our grandfather's generation, our parents' generation. There's no job stability anymore, everything is nomadic, no more 20 years, 10 years, everything is one to five years. So it's about that 40-something being, having a 20-year-old mindset. He's got to give up this preconceived notion that loyalty and dedication is what everybody is looking for. He's going to work with a lot of different companies. In private sector especially, you need to give that up and figure it out for yourself, not wait for HR or the company to tell you.

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We're talking about your job which may feel secure but your industry is in decline because of AI. I was saying I've been in radio 45 years. Seven years from now, radio becomes a little more AI influenced. Does all my experience count? How do I use that to maintain or better my position?

I'll say it's a two-pronged way of looking at it. Number one, the question I'll ask is: why stay in radio? If you look at the love you have and break it down into molecules and atoms, there's actually different patterns you enjoy that look like radio but can extrapolate to somewhere else. Example: you have the gift of bantering, you love joking around, you have the gift of nice words and phrases, you have a gift of making people feel connected. If you atomize everything you do in radio and list down ten, twenty, thirty of these little gifts, you know these are things that excite you, that can be taken to another industry and it will work as well because that's your gift. So you can continue in radio and maximize it, or take these gifts, which are almost innate (like how does a bird learn to fly, it just knows), and extrapolate to something else you like, maybe F&B or fashion. Take the same gifts you have in radio and do the same thing in a different industry. It's a fresh breath of wind, and you're still living your job, just in a different place.

Should we also be asking what do I enjoy doing? I broke this whole idea of careers down into a few things. First one is interest. If I lock you individually into a library with all the books in the world, which genres would you stay in? For me, psychology. Another guest said science, design, vocal development, biographies. That's interest, your north star.

Second is energy. If I'm doing that task, how do I feel about it. Example: Excel spreadsheets, scale of zero to ten, ten being I love it, zero meaning it drains the life out of me. Same exact task can be light for one person and heavy for another. Energy helps you understand, in any task, how energized or drained you feel.

Then there's competency: are you competent? Does the world judge you as above average or great? So there are two internal factors (interest and energy) and competency is external. Shine a light through this ICE (Interest, Competency, Energy) framework and you get a clear direction of where to explore, because there are too many things to explore otherwise. But you still need to explore, and exploration means prototyping, and prototyping means failures.

In order to identify your internal strengths, you need to go on this journey, think like an entrepreneur. Try every area you can, family contacts, opportunities from an uncle or auntie, anywhere. I love baking, can I bake for my friends for free, just to get a testimony and see if it's good. Think of it like being dropped in a city you don't know, you need to earn your keep, you just explore everywhere. There's no map, it lights up as you go.

Someone on the show once told me: you are not a celebrity, you are a brand. I thought about that for months. Every single person working is a brand, and they need to identify that. It helps you grow, it helps you think like an entrepreneur, because you are a brand, not a person. Your branding is what people know you as. Give an example: there are certain tasks you do that your boss and team feel is your strength, and they brand you as that, even if you feel drained doing it and it's not actually your strength. So you want to be branded for what you actually love, not just what you're diligent at.

Two tips on how to start building a brand: same thing, interest and energy. What are you interested in, what do you want to be known for. List that down. Second, of the things you feel energized doing, which tools are lightest for you. When you list those down, that's somewhat your brand.

How important is LinkedIn? Depends on the industry. Some industries like government service, people don't use LinkedIn, no need. The idea is you need a platform, it can be LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok for younger people, whatever it is, your platform to showcase. Building a brand is not about posting every day, it's about: when they Google you, what do they find? If they find something you feel is right, that's your brand. If not, you gotta pivot and change that.

What human strengths do you think will become even more valuable as AI gets better and better? AI is such a big unknown, everybody predicting the future has maybe a 50-50 shot. I feel it's better to figure out personally where you shine brightest, where you have the unfair advantage, and double down on that. If AI is coming, your best skill is what you're born to do, what you're built to do. People feel unfairly challenged by AI, thinking how do I compete with tens of thousands of people working on AI that's getting better every day. That needs a lot of soul searching.

What kind of jobs or people are least likely to be replaced by AI? I break up AI into AI and AI-with-a-body (robots). Anything with physical work is least likely to be replaced for the next five years, until robots come in. Most likely to be replaced: anything work-from-home that is not client-facing. Client-facing, like a coach, is safer. Faceless work from home, like help me do my accounts, is the first cut, because AI at the end of the day is cheaper. Undeniably.

When do we pivot? Do we wait for the change to happen? I think it's the same as branding: are you building your portfolio right now? Not your resume, but the things you've been doing on the side that have AI integration, and your other interests. One practical way: within your industry, where can you try out different things. That's step one, you should be trying that even now. The more dangerous move is going outside your industry entirely, and you should try that too. It's about building a portfolio right now, same as property, you should have bought ten years ago, so do it now. Employers in future will first ask: how much AI have you been using, how much can you use in your job. If you're AI-bilingual, it's an assumption you're highly effective.

On starting a side hustle at 40-something while keeping your main job: yes, it's doable. The side hustle doesn't have to be a literal business, it could be working for another company or helping someone else for free, just to try it out. After work, 7 to 10pm, is where you try. You need to find that time. Test whether that's what you want to pivot to, test whether you actually have the competency, because you already know your interest and that it energizes you, but are you really good?

Quick fire round:

Be a specialist or be a generalist? Specialist.

One skill everyone should learn in the next five years? Self-awareness. It's so rare, it's painfully rare. It's a skill you can learn: asking yourself questions, asking people to rate you. Am I really good? Am I angry when I do this? How do I feel, how do I sound?

Finish the sentence: the most future-proofed person is someone who... doubles down on their strengths.

Jason Ho, thank you so much for being with us. If people want to contact you, how do they get to you? You can go to strengthsschool.com or coachjasonho.com.