 Yn y ffawr am yw, mae'n gweithio i'w fath o'r heridi'n gwybod, byddwn i'ch trio ar gyfer gyda CEO ac yn cyd-rhyw bwysig CPL. Anna wedi'u gweithio am yma, yma'n mynd yma, yw'r yw beithio'r yw pwysig CPLC. Mae'n bwysig i'r ymddangosol, ac mae'n rhaid i'r gwneud wrth fy nghymru yn 2006, ac mae'n cymdeithasol ar gyfer y program ar y cyfnod ar gyfer, Rhaid i'n gweithio ar gyfer 2016. Rhaid i'n fawr. Rhaid i'n fawr i'n gweithio i Bec, oedd mae'r pryddyn nhw. Mae CPL i wneud yn cael ei wneud yn cael ei wneud yn cael ei cymdeithasol yn y cwntrae. Rwy'n cael 12,000 oedd ymddangos yn ymddangos CPL yn y cyfnodau cyfnodau. Rwy'n cael 32 oes. Rwy'n cael rhaid i'n rhaid i'n rhaid i'n rhaid i'n cwntrae. Mae gennym yn ffordd, mae'n ffordd, ac mae'n ffordd o'r ffordd, a'r tynbeth, ac mae'n gweithio i'r ysgol. Mae'n ffordd o'r tynbeth yn ffordd, a'r ffordd o'r tynbeth. Mae Ann yn y ffordd ymddangos i'n cydnod o'r ffordd o'r ffordd. I'm delighted and that you'll be talking to us about the artificial intelligence, the precariat and the future of work and we look forward to your presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you Joyce. Good afternoon. I'm delighted to be with you this afternoon and Joyce, thank you very much for the invitation. I suppose we're all familiar with the headlines that we're seeing regularly now, which is really focusing on the whole rise of the robots and the rise of artificial intelligence and I suppose we worry about will the machines ultimately take our jobs and I think we worry also about the time when artificial intelligence will surpass human cognition and what will that mean for us? Is it going to mean the death of work or how are we going to cope when that happens? Now I don't think it will mean the death of work because there's also an alternative view out there and the alternative view is fantastic. The robots are coming, bring it on, they're going to take away the drudgery out of my job, it's going to be automated and I'm going to be free to do much more interesting and creative work. Now whichever view you take I think there's no doubt that artificial intelligence and robotics is going to massively impact the future of work and indeed the workforce and for the most part it feels to me like we're very unprepared for this. I think even the term future work is a little bit misleading because it suggests that that change is way out there somewhere in the future but actually what we're seeing is the changes are happening here and now right in front of us and I think the truth is that many of the changes that are driven by artificial intelligence are going to have huge implications both for the individual, for our organisations but also for public policy as well and I think that what's getting lost in all the noise and the media headlines is the reality that the future work encompasses a very broad range of challenges. Now today I'm just going to look at three of those challenges that I see and the first is the impact of technology and the use of robotics and artificial intelligence on the workplace. I mean we know that technology is transforming the nature of work and it's forcing us businesses to think about jobs in a totally different way. I think the second thing I'd like to talk about is the need for the education system to modernise to meet the challenges that are presented by a workplace that's driven by technology. In the new world work I think your success is really going to depend largely on your appetite to continue learning and to constantly reskill. And then thirdly I'd like to focus on how the relationship between the employer and the employee is changing. I mean we're seeing the growth of alternative for atypical employment arrangements and a lot of these are brought about by the sharing economy. Some of these arrangements are causing a certain amount of anxiety about the quality of jobs and the lack of security that that might bring along for some people. So I suppose first of all I talk about the impact of technology on the workplace and I think it's fair to say that we're starting to see that whole industries now are being disrupted and if we think about how we consume media, how we buy books, how we listen to music that has just all changed for us you know without us almost even thinking too much about it. If we think about the hotel industry I was really struck and that the CEO of Marriott was making a presentation to investors about their growth prospects for the next three years and he said that they were going to open 25,000 rooms over the next three years. Some of that will be in new build hotels and some of it would be through the acquisition of hotels and as the chief executive of Airbnb heard that he said but we can create 25,000 rooms over the weekend. So it just shows what companies are dealing with and I'm interested to see the other day on the news that the Marriott are fighting back and they've just gotten a robot and they've just put a robot into reception in their hotel in London and that robot can speak 17 languages or can interface with people in 17 languages and you know he can bring coffee to the room and do a bit of room service and all that sort of stuff and the thing that I found really amusing was that the designer, the engineering designer who designed the robot, he was being interviewed and he said that he really recognised that it was hard for people to change and so one of the things they've done is to make the robot cute and he said apparently it's a survival strategy for the robot and they want people to really embrace the robot to like him and I think it's him yeah yeah yeah so they want us to embrace him anyway Joyce and to bring him into that you know bring for us to bring him into our lives and you know so when you kind of speak to the robot or you say thank you or you're nice to him apparently he does a little dance and he and you know so people love him now in the UNA but I think what the chief executive of the Marriott then was making clear at this point was that this will of course free existing staff to do other work and I'm sure it will but it's hard to see that it also won't impact jobs and then this morning we hear in the news that Walmart have a robot now for cleaning floors they're testing that out on a number of of their shops and there's a little bit more anxiety coming through from the people who would have been doing those jobs they don't see it quite in the same way that it's going to enhance their role and so I think like almost every day we're hearing about some company that's doing something additional with artificial intelligence or robotics and Frey and Osborne two of the I suppose experts in this field and in the research in 2013 they forecast that 40 47% of total US jobs were at risk for motivation within the next few years and the European Brugel Institute then took that and applied it to Europe and they said that as much as 60% of jobs in Europe are at risk now I suppose we know throughout history that people have lost their jobs to machines it started off with manual jobs and then it was clerical jobs but I think the thing that's a little bit different now is that it's the knowledge workers are the professions that are also impacted by the rise of the robot and I think you know we've seen lots of change before American society went from something like 85% of the population or the workforce where farmers in the 1800s it's 2% today but I think also you know we've seen automation transforming employment in the car industry as well and you know before we ever start to think about driverless cars or anything automation is well up and running within the car manufacturing industry I went I was in Munich last year and I went for a tour of the BMW factory there and it's actually well worth doing it is fascinating but hardly a person on the production line I never saw anybody but interestingly you know when you talk to them and question them much more jobs for engineers designers supply chain people sales people and so other jobs were being created and I think if history is any guide new industries and new jobs will be created just as they were in the past but the difference I think in the past was the changes happened over a longer period of time they happened over decades or centuries and I think the challenge for us now is not that it's not that we'll have a world without work but we'll have a world where work is changing constantly and I think it's the pace of this change that's the real worry and real thing that we have to look out for and the question is can we adapt quickly enough what do we need to do at an individual level at a business level and also at a government and public policy level to address the challenges that lie ahead and I suppose that really brings me to the my second theme which is can the the need for the education system to modernise and meet the challenges that are presented by a workplace that is driven by technology because I think all our companies now regardless of what you do are technology companies in some form or another and I think the reality of that is that change that's happening is that individuals need to be able to continually learn new skills to be employable Deloitte found in their 2014 study that even specific technology skills become obsolete within two and a half years now I think that really shows us that in the new world of work our success is going to largely depend on our appetite to continually learn and up skill throughout our whole life and I think in Ireland we really need to take lifelong learning much more seriously the lifelong learning rate in Ireland currently sits at 7% which is behind the EU benchmark a child today can expect to change jobs at least 10 times over the course of their lives and five of those jobs probably haven't been created yet now our education system in my view seems unsuited to preparing people for the pace and the level of changes that are happening in the workplace but take my daughter Amy as an example she did her leaving start four years ago and I have to say it was horrified by the approach taken by students by both the students and the teachers I mean the students are thought to the exam and it's all about how can I maximise what the points are that I get and it's a game and you know the kids nowadays are so clever about figuring out what are the subjects that they can achieve the points and to get what they want and then you hear the universities saying you know you will hear from the university saying that you know they get these fabulous young people in and they don't have any critical thinking skills they're not independent minded and I just think that's that's a real challenge for us and I suppose one of the things we hear praised about the leaving start is this notion in some way that it's fair well I just think it's anything but fair because the reality we know is that people who can afford to get their kids grinds and who can play to the system play to that and then other people you know that doesn't that's not a level playing field in any sort of way and I think that government and policy makers face a significant challenge to really rethink our education strategy we have to move away from rhod learning and start to focus on transferable skills I mean transferable skills really are where it's at and we have to be able to draw out a student's create a creative ability our education institutions have changed very little in the last 100 years and they were set up to provide mass education for stable jobs and stable careers this will not prepare us for the future that we're facing into and the other thing is from a competitive perspective other countries are ahead of us if you take Finland for example they've recently switched their national curriculum to a phenomenon based approach to education so by 2020 the traditional classroom subjects in Finland will be gone and they'll be replaced by a topical approach to learning and highlighting the four Cs which are essentially communication creativity critical thinking and collaboration and these are the skills that equip students to be problem solvers to be independent thinkers and to adapt to the fast pace of change that you know they're going to face I think it was Charles Darwin who said it's not the strongest of the species that survive but the one who's most adaptable to change and I think actually aren't our have Ireland been voted in can in terms of the workforce number one in terms of adaptability have we flexibility isn't it yeah which is good but like if you think about it in a world of uncertainty the skill you need is the ability to adapt and to get back on your feet when things go wrong and I know that's you coming from an education point of view Joyce I know that's something that's hard to teach but it can't be beyond us to include it in some shape or form in our curriculum and finally the relationship between the employer and the employee is changing it's now clear that the tradition of a single job with a single employer for life is now the exception rather than the rule highly skilled workers of course are absolutely delighted with this and certainly one of the things that we see in CPL is that they want exposure to diverse projects and projects that help them to develop faster than if they were with a single employer. But they all you know these highly skilled people also on flexibility and autonomy and they prefer to engage directly with their employer on their terms of employment rather than have collectively bargained or universal terms and conditions. Now there is another site of this story which is the whole gig economy and particularly where the gig economy has become associated with precarious work and I suppose we're starting to see that relatively new term the uberisation of work and I think the gig economy sometimes sees people working at a customer's convenience often on zero hour contracts. The workers in question don't receive holiday pay basic employment rights they've no protection against unfair dismissal they've no right to redundancy payments they've no right to receive a national minimum wage or paid holidays our sickness our sickness pay. Of course this can lead to social problems and anxiety depression you know higher stress levels and so on and I think that the real danger that we have is that we'll see a polarisation of the workforce and how we respond to these issues in a lot of ways will determine the future of our society. I was struck by a quote of Paul Krugman recently in the New York Times when he called out that inequality and the falling fortunes of Americans workers are now a choice not a destiny imposed by the gods of the market so to some extent finding solutions for these kind of issues are in our own hands but one of the big concerns that I have is that these type of arrangements you know where there aren't proper contracts and so on are often talked about under the banner of flexibility or temporary work and as a result flexibility is getting a bad rap and I really think it's time to reset the narrative around flexible working flexible hours temporary work part-time working as a poorly paid an undesirable or precarious type of work. Many many workers choose to work in sectors where they have flexible hours and they work in those sectors for myriad of reasons sometimes it can be a work-life balance issue sometimes it's a great way of transitioning people into the workforce and there are lots of different reasons why people want to work and have flexibility and the other thing is that the advantage of flexible working and part-time contracts are significant for both the employers and the employees. I believe that our focus should be on providing well-designed and stable but flexible working arrangements that create opportunities for decent work for those who wish to have that flexibility. All the evidence shows that good labour market policies that support flexibility also have a really strong positive impact on employment creation and just look at the difference between Ireland and France as an example where we've some flexibility in our labour market and they have very little. Denmark is another good example of an economy that has combined high flexibility with a social security net called Flex Security. Workers have flexibility to transition in and out of work but actually in this new world we're going to have to be able to transition in and out of education to some extent also but the result is they have very high job turnover but very low unemployment and the most important thing of all is that this model allows the Danish economy to adapt to the global changes that are taking place. So to conclude I really believe that it's in our hands to develop strong and bold employment and education policies. I'm concerned about some of the current legislation that's coming before the doll for example there's a zero hour contract legislation coming before the doll and my concern is that the way it's drafted at the moment is going to have unintended consequences and particularly for the precariat. We shouldn't rush to legislate without carefully considering what the future looks like and what regulation will be appropriate in a circumstance where the future workplace is driven by technology. I hope that our government can see that. Please take every opportunity to let them know and do remind them that robots don't vote. Thank you.