This is not another alarmist note. The world of work is changing, it is a fact, but it will hardly be as headlines and press headlines predict every day, every hour. In reality, it is difficult to make extreme hypotheses about something that is just beginning. It is enough to turn to the past, to the next, to think about the future. If you look closely, for example, the Internet, as we know it, is not so much with us; the smartphones They are relatively new gadgets that have not stopped improving since their appearance. And that does not mean that job positions declined, on the contrary: new ones appeared; others evolved. It seems that this is forgotten with the arrival of artificial intelligence (AI), which has been presented almost as the panacea of the century, the new production mecca.
“We have to be aware of the moment we are living in. They are great structural changes at an economic, technological and social level, at rates that I do not remember humanity having experienced,” Freddy Vega, founder and CEO of Platzithe largest technology education platform in Latin America. Vega has been recognized as one of the most outstanding young innovators by the MIT Technology Review in 2020, and was named one of the most influential Latinos in the tech industry by CNET. He also won the award The One Young World Entrepreneur 2022. Today he talks with WIRED in Spanish about AI, education and the labor market, topics that have kept many on the edge of their seats in this great scenario that some call the future.
According to a recent study by the World Economic Forum (WEF), work will be impacted by new technologies, automation and sustainability policies. That’s true. But the report mentions that, although some positions can be automated in the world of AI, new fields will be created in parallel. In fact, some disciplines have already been inaugurated that have the objective of commanding this technology in a professional way. The FEM has also pointed out the skills that will be necessary for these contexts that, even in their infancy, can already be observed. “People believe that what is going to happen is a massive amount of unemployment and then we are going to stay in poverty or something like that, but historically automation tools have been a multiplier of human capacity,” says Freddy.
Proof of this, says Vega, is that since the industrial revolution and until today, unemployment has only decreased and the quality of life has only increased. It has not happened that a particular technology has generated a gap in unemployment or the creation of misery.
“I am very positive and very optimistic and what I see is that humanity never stands still, and when it has an impressive and massive problem, it solves it. And I believe that the solution to this is going to be a cultural change, both on the government side, as well as on the part of schools and companies.” Platzi, the company he runs, is the largest professional education platform in the Spanish-speaking world and one of the most important online communities specialized in technology and digital skills in Latin America. It is on the list of the best EdTech companies in the world mentioned in the magazine TIME. The company has served more than five million students from more than 85 countries and works with more than 3,500 companies to train and upskill their workforce.
Freddy Vega lives face to face with this new “problem”, digitalization, the scope of AI in the academic and work world. With more than a decade at the helm of the company, immersed in the advances that he not only promotes but also adapts and incorporates into his platform, he has become an authorized voice to guide and direct said conversation in an objective and well-argued way. Although he himself admits that “we are at the point where it is impossible to predict what is going to happen,” he also supports the idea that technology has the peculiarity that when it arrives it is unstoppable. “That’s what happened, for example, with mobile phones, and it doesn’t matter what cultural rejection there is. When the improvement is so high, it is impossible to stop it.”
Today we have the creation of a super intelligence, different from the way humans think, but capable of processing and synthesizing all human knowledge and culture. AI is a force that will reorganize, restructure and reform all roles and all jobs, “and we must surrender to the resistance because there is no doubt what AI will be capable of doing; the power it has and the changes that are coming. And there is also no doubt how it is making new companies grow,” adds Vega.
Education and social networks
For some the panorama is seen as a challenge. Changing the paradigm of traditional education is the first thing. It is not easy, but in the new environment, constant updating will be the basis for remaining active. “We have to be renewing our knowledge all the time. This is the most important condition of the present. Right now the social contract dictates that you study once and then you can upgrade, and that will be your life and identity, and that will be your job and what you will be. But this is no longer true. Understanding it well is going to be a painful and inevitable process,” explains Vega.
The problem is that for half a century, all of humanity, over five generations or more, was convinced that through a gigantic effort of five years, that is, completing a university degree, life would be easy: no longer there would be a return to the classrooms. “And now it’s the other way around: today I have to make an effort that is not gigantic, but constant, to rebuild the structure of my brain, because the things that we previously took for granted are no longer true,” adds the winner of the award. Latin America Education Medal 2024the medal awarded by T4 Education and HP Inc to leaders who have demonstrated impact, leadership and vocation in the educational field.
The report indicates that TikTok managed to determine the exact number of views it takes for a person to become obsessed with the app.
According to Vega, one of the problems in education is that extremely addictive digital drugs are being built with the ability to destroy focus. The addiction to the short video format, for example, mainly represented by TikTok, but also present on Instagram and YouTube Shorts, is making it very difficult for people to concentrate. “As it is an addiction, what happens with all addictions is going to happen: people are going to feel guilty, but they are not going to know how to get out of this dependence. It will only cause them more pain. Then we will have to create rehabilitation centers against TikTok. And this is similar to other addictions, it is not generational. You see 75-year-olds addicted to TikTok, 40-year-olds addicted to it. “You see everyone, in all ages, in all genders, in all social classes, addicted to TikTok.”
Freddy’s biggest concern is that we are going to realize this problem very late, and that is going to make many people suffer a typical reaction that addicted people have. “There will be those who say ‘I learn that way’, or ‘it’s useful for me to learn that way, because the other way is very boring’, etc. But in essence, learning is always applying what you learn. If you do not apply what you have learned, you do not learn, and that is not possible in a short 30-second video that you will forget when you see the next short 30-second video,” he says.
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