Using AI and Blockchain Technology to Increase the Value of Our Work

Esko Kilpi, founder of the research and strategy group Esko Kilpi Company, is bold enough to defy the consensus of all of our other Future of Work interviews and argue that work is, in fact, not changing. “Work has always been the same thing and work is always going to be the same thing,” Kilpi says. “Work is solving other people’s problems. The way we solve problems, the way we define the problems—that is changing.” Kilpi believes that technology, and smartphones in particular, are significantly elevating human capability and potential.

This trend will continue, Kilpi suggests, powered by the increasing integration of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence (AI). Blockchain is going to help us make sales today that wouldn’t have made sense a few years ago, Kilpi says, pointing to blockchain-based technology’s ability to lower the price of trust and of transactions. Low transaction costs mean that it makes more sense for corporations to connect things than make things, Kilpi says. And as for AI—Kilpi believes that it will be “the necessary ingredient in the future of work.” In a just a few years, according to Kilpi, we will have far more robust community-building and communication-enabling tools, all powered by AI.

Kilpi thinks that the relevance of corporations is going to continue to fade. In the future, Kilpi says, people will work on “three types of settings”: long-term collectives, shorter-term communities, and quick response flash networks. “Then the duration of how long you work with somebody doesn’t really matter that much anymore,” Kilpi says. “You are able to understand your own investment portfolio [and decide] how you want to invest your human capital and how you take responsibility for your own process of learning.”

Kilpi says we failed at a societal-level when initially structuring our post-industrial economy. It’s impossible to create value in some occupations, which is no reflection on the work ethic or intelligence of the workers, says Kilpi—these occupations have been poorly planned. We need to re-plan the work in order for it to create more value, according to Kilpi. He believes AI is one of the tools which can help us do that. Ultimately, Kilpi argues, value lies not in the product, but in the customer’s experience. “There is no high-value work or low-value work,” Kilpi says, “there is just work. Everything we do can be done in a more valuable way.”