Hi Everyone, thanks for joining me!
I recently came across this article called, “Hello AI, Goodbye Radiology as We Know It”. It’s written by a radiologist named Robert Schier, MD in the publication Radiology Business from February 18, 2020.
He discusses an artificial intelligence, or AI, system developed by Google that can beat radiologists in interpreting breast cancer screening mammograms! This development is amazing, and will do wonders for delivering faster, better, and more equitable patient care.
However, this development is also a harsh reminder that no career is immune to technological disruption. Radiologists have a very hard job – they are medical doctors that specialize in diagnosing diseases by examining medical images. They are rewarded handsomely for their efforts, with a quick Google search revealing that their salaries range from $320K-$560K dollars per year in the United States.
In the rest of this episode, I will talk about what you should and should NOT do when planning your career in the face of technological disruption.
I’ll start with things you SHOULD NOT do
The first thing you should NOT do is
(1) Assume that what you do is too complicated for technology to replace. Radiologists have a very difficult, high paying job that requires many years of training and they still got outperformed by Google’s system. Think about how primitive the first automobiles were relative to what we have now. When the historic Ford Model T was released in 1908, it only took about 20 years for cars to outnumber horse-and-buggies as a mode of transportation.
I’m old enough to remember the AOL dial up internet connection being so slow and cumbersome that regular mail, telephone calls, and fax were the main forms of communication. Using the internet for much more than chatting or visiting websites for amusement was unthinkable. Now we can’t imagine conducting our lives, socializing, work, and businesses without lightning fast internet.
The second thing you should NOT do is
(2) Assume that your employer won’t replace you. You might work for a great company, or have a nice relationship with your manager and colleagues, and that’s great. However, my career has been long enough that I’ve seen so many great people get laid off and reorganized unexpectedly for all sorts of reasons including technological replacement. Even if you feel comfortable, well-liked, and successful in your job, at the end of the day senior leaders are always searching for ways to make the business more cost effective. Unfortunately, because human labor is one of the biggest business costs, you should never assume your job is safe forever.
Now, I’ll continue with things you SHOULD do
In my opinion, there are three options for planning your career in the face of technological disruption.
The first thing you should do is
(1) Be an early adopter of the new technology. Experiment with the new technology to understand how it works and how you can use it to augment your capabilities. Will it make you faster at what you do? More accurate? Will it allow you to free up more time to focus on other important aspects of your job? Become an expert on how you can leverage this new technology in your domain effectively, and become indispensable to your colleagues and employer by educating them on what you learn.
Although technological disruption happens and it happens quickly, that does not mean it will eliminate professions overnight. In the case of the radiologists, I highly doubt that just because Google developed an AI system that can outperform them that they are all suddenly going to get fired. If I were a radiologist right now, I would be thinking about how I could leverage this new technology to make me more effective in my role in the near and medium term.
The second thing you should do is
(2) Understand which aspects of your profession cannot be easily disrupted and specialize further in those aspects. Be proactive about networking with and talking to the technologists building the systems threatening your career. You can use LinkedIn to find and reach out to the relevant professionals. You can conduct informational interviews with them to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and applications of their technologies. You should be particularly interested to learn where in your area of expertise it is too hard to apply their technologies and why that’s the case. This reveals possible areas of sub-specialization in your field that you can focus on that may be more immune to disruption and potentially more high value.
So if I were a radiologist, I’d be talking to AI scientists and engineers to understand the limitations of their technology. Are there any image types or diseases the AI professionals believe are too complex to tackle with AI? Are there any radiology areas where the AI professionals believe it will take a long time to build an AI system for? These are the areas I’d choose to learn about and focus on if I were a radiologist.
The third thing you should do is
(3) Join a company working on a technology that is threatening your career. In order to build a technology to automate a job, tech companies need domain expertise related to that job. In the example of the AI radiology system, Google most likely worked with radiologists themselves to build it. AI requires loads and loads of properly labeled data in order to work, which would have required the domain expertise of radiologists. You can explore opportunities to work as a subject matter expert in tech companies disrupting your domain, which may open up exciting new career opportunities for you that you may never have thought of!
Well, that’s all I have for today! I hope you follow tech trends.
Thanks again so much for joining me, and ‘til next time! Bye for now!
Innovate and Improve 