7 days ago
Will 45% Of Work At Moderna Be Completed By AI By 2030? Yes
The rapid automation of high-level cognitive work is underreported and will dramatically transform talent management.
Within two years, 95% of all cognitive tasks performed by humans will be better executed by AI. This prediction, shared by AI experts from DeepMind, Meta and MIT at the MIT AI Day at Davos in January, is stunning, and we are only beginning to realize its profound implications to talent management.
Gen AI now automates high-level cognitive work such as software development (through code-editing tools) and research (via deep research tools) in ways unimaginable just 24 months ago. Early adopters of gen AI are showing us the new definition of talent management as they reimagine and restructure their entire operations around fewer people and more AI technology to drive higher productivity.
Moderna and One Digital: Case Studies in AI Co-workers
Consider Moderna, a highly sophisticated life sciences company, many of whom perform extremely advanced cognitive work. These employees conduct high-value cognitive tasks across many departments:
Moderna is a major user of OpenAI's ChatGPT Enterprise across its 5,000-person workforce and already operates 3,000 GPTs or simple AI agents, according to the Wall Street Journal. To better manage this change, it notably combined its HR and AI efforts into a new role, chief people and digital technology officer, led by Tracey Franklin.
Companies like OneDigital are going as far as naming its software AI co-workers, providing them with job descriptions and training periods, and allowing them to be "fired" if they underperform (as my colleague, John Sviokla, explained in Forbes here).Based on rapid AI improvement trends, strong Moderna leadership and competitive industry pressure, the following cognitive work scenario is possible.
The rapid adoption of gen AI increases the ratio of AI software robots to human workers
Percent of Cognitive Work Done by AI at Moderna
Seem crazy? I don't think so. Just think about how much the frontier of possibility has changed in the last two years, since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT.
These trends represent a fundamental and historic shift in how executives think about workforce composition. "Talent" for high-value cognitive tasks is no longer exclusively human. AI-progressive companies will grow mixed AI-human teams, similar to how modern military operations fully integrate AI with human with all gen AI applications, recognize that AI is probabilistic-based software, and errors or "hallucinations" can occur. Eliminating the associated business risks often involves having a 'human the loop'.
The transformation is already underway. AI progressive firms will be a mix of humans and thousands of AI agents. Leaders are starting on this journey today.
