 Hello everyone and thank you for joining us. What a pleasure to be part of this event and to see beautiful, familiar faces in the audience. Thank you very much for joining us today. It's, I think, a common knowledge that the demand for professional skills has grown significantly, mainly in the light of the rapid advancement in technology and automation, along with the emergence of new industries and refined ways of working that require for sure a fresh skill set. A set that is different from the one that was dominant for years. The entire landscape of jobs has vastly changed and the word now is calling to equip younger generations with skills and talent that they need to acquire employment. That is the core of our discussion today. So, without further ado, I would like to introduce our distinguished speakers for today. Mikaella Mantenga, the TED Fellow and Universidad de San Andrés in Argentina. Marta Arsovesca, Tomovesca, you're the Director of Digitalization Office of the Prime Minister of Serbia. Thank you for joining us. Lee Sang Hong, you're the Director of the Employment Policy Department, International Labor Organization. Thank you for joining us. And Mr. Eric Parrado, Chief Economist, General Manager, Research Department, Inter-American Development Bank, and you are also a young global leader. Thank you for joining us. I'm going to start with the title of the panel, Marta. You helped put the title of the panel, Abu Gamers. Can you explain to us what does that mean? Absolutely. And thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with all of you here today. And I think Abu Gamers, primarily, it wasn't mean to explain to my parents what I do. Because at some point I was, I'm a lawyer by training. I'm a corporate lawyer. And at some point I tried to connect my passion for video games with the law. And in Spanish, I'm from Argentina, abogado and abogada means lawyer. So Abu Gamer means like the video game lawyer. So that's the explanation for that. So primarily it's a way to explain to my parents what I do. Eric, you have something to add here. Yes, I found it really cool because it's a way to be hidden from AI and not to be replaced because you don't have a regular occupation. So from now on, I'm going to be called eco-developer because I'm an economist that cares about development. So now I'm going to have a new occupation, eco-developer. So probably I'm going to be hidden from AI from some time. No, we probably need to go to the labor organization to put a ranking for the wages because I think they've been struggling with all the new jobs that has been created by AI. Marta, let me bring you here. The first question that probably comes to mind to what extent have the rapid development of macro trends including of course digitalization, AI and of course the transition to green economy and green energy has widened the gap between where the workforce should be and where it is now. I would like to refer back to, let's say, almost 30 years ago when I was studying electrical engineering. That time we didn't have computers, there was no commercial internet and now from this perspective, majority, most of the jobs, big portion of the jobs are related to ICT on the side of creating the technology like we have professions, we all know like programmers, coders, system architects, cyber security engineers, digital marketers, e-commerce. So there were jobs that did not exist that time and we kind of survived in a sense that if you see the global unemployment rates 30 years ago and today are almost the same. Only one percentage, we have almost one percentage bigger unemployment now than 30 years ago, but I guess that is a result of some situations in history. There are two peaks only in the trend. It was the global economic crisis back in 2008 and the pandemics. Otherwise it would be almost stable. So if we just think on the trends and the history, we would say that we are safe. But the thing is that AI, especially general purpose AI, which somebody say, I mean, I was listening to a professor today who said that it is here already. I guess future is here, definitely, but it's not well distributed. We'll lead to machine intelligence surpassing our human intelligence and that might lead to replacing us. So we have to think about what do we want to achieve because we are the ones that are creating the technology. Now we need to think what we want to achieve because we are, and I'm as I said engineer and 30 years working in technology domain. We are, like we were before, overly excited about the general purpose AI. Maybe we are very curious what can we achieve with that, which limits we can go. Maybe we are also driven by profit. I mean not we, but companies are driven by profit. And maybe we would see some outcome that we won't like. Not to mention what are the dangers of these because at the end I was thinking at some point, I will be very short, that this human evolution and the Darwin saw only the first part of it but didn't see the second part of it, which is either we are evolving to cyborgs or maybe to Wallis, the movie. So we are not working at all. And then if the machines are doing the job and we are not working, then we won't have problem with the labor market because it will be, I don't know, maybe we will think about extinction of humankind or something similar. An extreme scenario in this case. Let me bring the idea of artificial intelligence taking over. Isn't it a bit of a very extreme scenario that will probably not happen? That's the difficult question. Before getting to that, I want to characterize how difficult the current situation is when it comes to skill scale. In the way of responding to your question. The new schools, the younger generations need. Absolutely. I mean three aspects. The job scale is increasingly complicated. The five or six years ago we talked about just digital technology and blockchain issues. We were talking about the GPT chat. So every year we are talking about different technologies. So this actually requires a new set of skills on top of the unfilled skills we have been talking about. That's a more global picture. Second for individuals, it's really challenging. I don't know what to learn now. I mean, okay, I'm doing something on the artificial intelligence, but three or four years later when you are actually putting yourself in the label market, the whole landscape for the technology may be different. So now you don't have a full understanding of the core and important skills that the new generation should acquire? Really? Not really actually. So for example now, because there are big push for the new technology, artificial intelligence, etc. But at the same time, you are also equally taught, you have to learn the basic skills as well, the medic skills, the literacy skills, etc. So the individual workers, if you put yourself in the individual workers, it's almost mission impossible. You have to learn all kinds of skills, and on top of that you have to learn some of the artificial intelligence. So this is a bit of a big issue for individuals. Globally speaking, another challenge is that as you said, where the workforce is and where the skills are needed, right now the typically we have been addressing that issue through the global migration. So we are moving some skilled workers from one places to where actually they are needed. But simply because of the difficult geopolitical situation right now, difficult domestic policies at the moment, the global flow of the talents or skills is increasingly difficult right now. So if we put all these together, you can imagine how complex actually the overall landscape of the skills gap is. And artificial intelligence is coming on top of this. In our, basically, I asked the artificial intelligence, I just asked the post that question in the GPT chat. So the artificial intelligence will create a job. The answer is, they don't know. So probably they are trying to be more, probably more modest in their answer. Simply they don't know. But they are also indicating both good side on the positive side and the negative side all together. But it's based up to us. That's what actually the GPT chat is about. So evolving so fast that you really can't have a set of skills that you would probably publish and say to the youth, this is what you need to learn. It's that complicated. It's very difficult. I don't know. But if you, some young people are coming to me, so I'm going to have a good job in five years of time. So what kind of skills I need? I say probably I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I'm a bit exaggerating, but that is kind of the speed of the technological changes and changes and skills required. Thank you. Michaela, let me turn to you. We've been discussing AI. And if you look at AI alone, while it's anticipated to impact over 25% of the existing jobs globally, of course, it's also projected that AI will be able to create jobs. We're talking about 90 million new jobs by 2025. Do you view this as a transitional period in the global jobs landscape, or it's a change that is here to stay? First, I want to take a step back to something that Marta was saying, because I find it interesting that some of the debates around AI today are focused on existential risks and long-term risks. And maybe we need to take a step back to take and talk about the actual and current risk about bias, misinformation, data extraction, and I remember back in the day, the Obama administration had a report and they also were considering the long-term risk of AI, but we need to focus on the now, the things about the jobs that are being replaced. We were talking about ghost work, because it's not just about AI taking your job, but also when you are doing the job to train the AI as a replacement for your job. And that is interesting because there is a lot of automation that makes invisible the work that is being done. For example, when you go to a cashier, to a supermarket, and you have a machine that you as a consumer have to pay through that machine, that is a replacement of labor because the corporation is not paying to an employee to do that job, but at the same time you're putting your own work to do that. But it's not just that invisibilization of labor, but something that Mary and Ray treated very well in a book that's called ghost work, that is also how this kind of meaningful, not meaningful task and a small task that you need to train a system, because another myth about AI is that AI is kind of like super-intelligent or intelligent or infallible, and the thing is like a lot of the problems we see with AI today are due to that the systems are not robust enough to deal in terms, for example, for computer vision and facial recognition, and they see in terms of statistics. So when a computer says that this person is that person, for example, in a security camera, that's a probability. And in the middle there is a lot of invisible labor of, for example, people categorizing images to train AI generative systems that are being paid like very little to do that. So it's not just thinking about the future in terms of all the works that are going to disappear. And of course, I wanted to comment on using like the transformation of work. For me it's interesting because coming from video games we have like really interesting examples of new shops that are being created by technology. How many of you would believe like 10 years ago or 15 years ago that being a professional esport player, a content creator, an influencer, a gamer, a streamer could be a shop. So it's interesting to see how we adapt into that technology and also how younger generations are building skills maybe not in the formal way, going to a university, but going to YouTube, Twitch, or maybe amongst their peers. There are now schools that are teaching people how to stream, how to play a game. So that's an interesting development in terms of shops. So I'm going to go back again to the skills that needed. I think it's very important also to discuss this and my question to you, do you have in mind a clear idea of skills that younger generations really need to use, to acquire employment going forward and especially related to the global force that actually emerged the last two, three years? I think labour markets are evolving really quickly because of the technological change, but the skills gap is huge. So we spend a lot of time talking about the stranded assets and we have to think about the stranded people because we have to change how we teach kids, we have to change education, and we have to do training for our workers and we're not doing that. So you said change of education? Of course, in several countries around the world we are living an education crisis. You don't see it because it's long term. You can see other types of crises, geopolitical crises that we have here in Ukraine and now in Israel. But nobody talks about education. What is the crisis and education that needs to be fixed? The skills gap is huge and governments and the private sector are running different races. And the businesses is very short term, 100 meters. The government is the marathon, but probably we don't have much time for a marathon and we need to run something in the middle, a 10K and try to find grounds in terms of providing the right education for these changes. And we need to be flexible. So, for instance, and John, he said probably we don't know what to learn now, but we have to be flexible enough to be trained all the time, constantly. Not just having an undergrad title or a master's or a PhD, we need to train constantly. And that's the change that we have to do in every country. And the challenge is huge and we don't have much time. I wrote a blog recently about that, telling all the challenges, but also the opportunities. And we have to make that change fast. Thank you, Eric. Eric said that we have alternatives. Just to Eric's great point, I think probably this is something we have to actually remember because we're the crime forum for example, having advocated for the investment in skills and people for more than 10 years I believe. The irony is that despite all the strong rhetoric here and also the other places, actual investment in skills and training has been declining in many countries. Good point. So that is really paradox. Whenever you look at the newspapers, TV, all the debate, it looks like we're actually investing trillions of dollars all the time in skills and especially young generation, but that's not happening. So that's Eric's point. We have failed to create a system in which the people who need training in response to new technology, they are not able to access to the training opportunity. That's why there is a strong tendency right now. The responsibility for the training skills is becoming a little individualism rather than a matter of the social sport. This is an important dilemma that we have to work on. I would like to add, we were thinking about what skills next generations should have. We might think about what are the professions that might exist, I mean, survive or the new one emerge. So we train them in that direction. And the idea was that AI would replace these manual tasks, these simple jobs, repetitive tasks. But now what we see with the generative AI is that some of the creative tasks, some of the creative jobs are disappearing, really, because, you know, I've seen an example of two people setting a company in 15 minutes, not necessarily meaning that they registered the company, but they really took the entrepreneurship part, which many consultants, experts were doing before, so the creative workers. So what they did, they had an idea. They run through a program which designed their products and services. Then they put another program, they prepared their marketing plan. Then they put another program, designed their website. Then they put another program. So e-commerce distribution was done. So there are so many aspects. So we have to think what are the jobs, if we can say that will stay, and what are the jobs that will be replaced in the near future. Because in the far future, we don't know whether all the jobs will be replaced or not. So in the near future, you can think about what jobs we would like to stay, because it's up to us in a sense that we want to keep these jobs that relate to some interpersonal skills that we have. We have to keep, for example, our therapies and our babysitters. We might think about, I don't know, in production robotic lines, we might think about distribution, we might think about cashiers, that we can go to a cashier without having a person there. But still, those are the skills, which I think that should stay, and we should work on developing them, and that are interpersonal skills, which is communication, which is problem-solving, which is decision-making, which is empathy. Empathy is the most important one. Not to mention the others, but why is empathy very important? Because we want to teach our kids, for the beginning, values, what are the most important values for humans and what the systems that we are going to design, even if they become engineers and programmers, the systems that they are going to design are saved by design. And not we design something, some Frankenstein, let's say, again, and then it comes and destroys us. So these are the skills that I think that are basic skills. We should get to the basics, to the roots. It will provide a better world for all of us. Thank you. Marta raised a very interesting point because automation replace job with repetitive tasks. AI can replace cognitive jobs that require cognitive actions. And this is very important because it's interesting because to prepare for this panel, we get all the data from occupation from the OCD, all the survey to employers, and we try to come up with a measure of resilience against AI. And we found out that developing countries are much more resilient to AI than OCD countries. Absolutely. Because OCD are more advanced, they are much closer in terms of digitalization. So this is very interesting in terms that the skills gap is not only on regular jobs, but also on these more advanced jobs. So that's an open question. Just to add something here. So even today, 30 years after the commercial internet, half of the world population, 3.9 billion, are not connected to internet. So we are talking about AI and robots and drones and 5G. It's impossible. So then in that sense, the labor market will change differently in the global south and global north. That's an interesting question. Yes, please. Just a quick intersection. But for me, also about the skill sets, I agree with empathy and agree with that kind of skills. But also thinking about curiosity and critical thinking. Because that are the things that today might not be replaced. And thinking in terms of shops, the shops that are more at risk are those that have a large corpus of knowledge behind that machines can learn. So for me, and this is more like an intuition from my research, that when you have like these weird combinations of shops, like that's kind of like micro different skills and specializations that are the shops that are going to be harder to replace. Or when you have to combine a cognitive skill with a manual skill, for example, I used to show that hairdresser is going to be one of the most difficult tasks to replace because they have to have like not only the cognitive knowledge on how to do things, but also like interpreting the data of each client. So it's going to be like professional shops, but also these particular skill sets and mix of skill sets that might not be apparent to the system because they don't have enough data to have learned from that. And I wanted to comment on something you were saying about this polarization and redistribution. Because there is a very interesting book from many years ago that's called Human Needs to Not Apply. I was thinking about when you have this replacement of shops, for example, like Robo Taxis or non-pilot vehicles, the thing is like you are creating a new font of wealth and that person is able to buy a second car and put like a second car to work and you are kind of like bridging in the gap. So we are creating this very, very far away society in terms of how do we redistribute wealth. So many years ago one of the things that we were talking about when we were starting to talk about the robot revolution is about introducing a robot tax and sometimes it's how do we redistribute wealth and how do we create new means of wealth to create the society that we want to see. Thank you. Sangon, I think we cannot do anything unless we work together. There is a lot we have to do actually. And my question to you, what is the role of both governments and businesses in implementing the re-skilling needed to meet the demand of today? Okay. I'm saying a lot of bluntly here because we're talking about this curious demand and et cetera as if this is something everybody should do but if you put yourself in the situation of the ordinary worker this is really demanding. We are putting lots of things on them without actually much support from the society and the business and the government and from the public policies. So if for the cognitive skills it's very easy to say, okay, okay, on top of all of this you need the cognitive skills. That's great. But many young people simply don't understand why they need a cognitive skill when actually job opportunities are not very clear for them. Why do you think it's not clear? Because the cognitive skill is good but it's very genetic skills then actually you don't associate these skills with specific, very practical, concrete job opportunities. They simply fail to see why these kinds of skills are needed as a part of the job search in a difficult labor market situation. So this also is very important to remember all of us. The training and the acquisition requires time and money, investment from individuals. So my point is we will have to make sure these workers, people, individuals, whoever needs a training skills proper support should be provided fully from the society, government and the business not once a time. It should be provided over the lifetime. We are talking about life from learning all the time but which means we have to provide all the support whenever they need it at different stages of life. Do we have money for that? Yes, we do because we see how much money we have during the pandemic. So we put a lot of training dollars in actually providing simple income support for those people who are affected. So if the society interests in mobile line resources to support that process then we certainly can make it happen. But I think the question here, do we have the political will actually to make this money accessible and to be used for training and other purposes in order to equip the younger generation to make it happen? Yes. I was thinking about something that I have seen happening in the web-tree space and also it's not just the training of the skillset that has changed but also the process of engagement from employers and employees. A lot of people have been getting shots in this court because you create a community, you start a project, people start to get involved in this project, you learn on the shop the skills that you need and that's why I was thinking about curiosity because it's that motivation to learning what you are doing in this space and co-creating the space that has lent people the place to get a new show. So for me it's interesting also how people are going to adapt to these new relationships and how do you certify your skills. Because sometimes these new spaces that don't have the same type of certifications that universities regularly do. And so it's interesting also it's not only changing in terms of skills but it's also in the processes of how you engage to contract people for the shop. We know more or less what to do. So this reminds me a story of San Diego's team before being a saint he enjoyed life. He lived a very hedonistic life and he committed all type of sins. But one day he wanted to convert and he knelt and prayed to God give me chastity and continuance but not yet. And this is the problem of our policies. We know what to do but we're not doing it. And let me give you an example. Again with the education example our careers are really long in several countries and they know that they have to change, they have to shorten them and they are not doing that. So I think the government has to be more flexible in terms of adapting to legal matters. And the retirement age, you mean? Exactly. And the business sector of course have to provide upskilling, reskilling and try to provide some information to change the type of education that we're getting. If I may add to this because I'm representing government. There are many things that government can do definitely. I mean so many things. I'm thinking what we have done for example in Serbia to prepare even young generations but also reskilling the workers already existing on the market. So when it starts for children we have run for many years this program of training the kids to code but now they are learning artificial intelligence the application of artificial intelligence and algorithm thinking from the first grade in their elementary schools. So we have already several generations of kids that already know how to deal with this digital world. We have, which is very interesting for what we've done as a government for the government employees and for the business sector. We prepared a training it's called Introduction to the Fourth Industrial Revolution but it has eight of the latest trends having the artificial intelligence I don't know virtual reality blockchain platform economy cloud and so on and so on. So we really prepared a curricula which is very interesting for them so everybody can go through it it's very basic explanation of the technology but it's more focused on the application why do we need this for government employees because not only that they can use these technologies or have ideas that certain government agency can use them but because they are regulating the space so they know how to regulate the new technology autonomous driving Uber, platform economy everything that is coming this is also to business sector that they have advanced training government incentivize everything the last thing that we started it's very interesting it's training for the blind people to use generative AI so they can make pictures on a prompt for example and then sell these pictures and earn some money we are going to print their pictures on 3D printers so people can buy them and then this is how they can earn money so there are many innovative way how government can support and I'm really glad that the government I work for it's very innovative in that sense and really helps everyone so the kids the school children and the elders of course doing this digital caravans for digital literacy for seniors because this is the way that they have to understand the technology first and I think that's a good example that other governments should really consider on that positive note because we ran out of time thank you for joining us and thank you also for our audience here