GEAB 190

According to Aaron Holmes[1], Microsoft is now pitching “Spend less on people”. While AI is certainly the next stage in the long process of optimising human resources in the production apparatus – enabling more to be produced with constant HR – it also means, above all, that humans are going to become increasingly valuable. We even anticipate that they will cease to be interchangeable, which will constitute a major change in the human-company relationship. Companies that plan to still be around in 2035 therefore have every interest in taking good care of their employees and creating the conditions for their development into super-collaborators.

As part of the work carried out by students, teachers and companies, the LEAP think tank is analysing the transformations in business brought about by the use of generative AI, with a horizon set at 2035.

As these tools have the potential to provide everyone with an ultra-high-performance personal assistant, this work has led us to envision the figure of the “super-collaborator”—an indispensable, highly informed, connected, well-equipped, valued, and well-compensated individual in tomorrow’s workforce.

This little memo, designed to give a clearer picture of the characteristics of this super-collaborator in the company in 2035, is designed to help everyone optimise their adaptation and training strategies, and to help the company put in place the eco-system and mechanisms that will enable it to optimise its human capital.

Become the super-sponsor of your super-AI

The super-collaborator will above all be the one who has built up a virtual super-assistant.

In fact, in the hybrid professional world that is already taking shape, the AI infrastructure will not only be the one provided by the company, but also all these second personal brains that some, better than others, will be able to add according to their specific needs. Each AIssistant will be as unique as its designer, both reflecting and complementing the latter, the two constantly reinforcing each other. Human intelligence, in the economic sphere at any rate, will therefore also be a “good intelligence of Artificial Intelligence”.

Raising awareness by taking part in conferences and debates, learning through real training, exchanging ideas with peers and, above all, practising… is therefore a priority that has to fit in with all the other priorities that make up an employee’s day. To achieve this, they will need help from their company. And school should/could be the place where these new habits are acquired.

Base our acculturation on what is most human about us

Upstream of this “AI trainer” capacity, there are certainly technical skills (how to use?) but above all there is a whole range of knowledge, understanding, soft skills, etc. (for what purpose?) which are more a matter for the human sciences:

• Courage to find out about the know-how of the various AIs accessible to all
• Critical analytical ability to understand your work and identify what can be done by AI
• A spirit of discovery to start using it
• Self-criticism to identify what you could do better in your daily tasks
• Ability to question (critically) AI proposals
• Creativity to discover ways of making AI produce value
• Imagination to create ad hoc information tools – with the help of AI – to provide a better understanding of the world and enable contextualisation.
• Ease of working with others, based on an understanding of individual limitations and the benefits of collective intelligence
• A sense of language as a means of connecting with different human beings (always with a view to understanding better and being able to ask questions)
• Ability to develop a real vision (world, company, self)
• Sense of decision…
• ..

All this so that you have a chance to remain in control of your AIssistant… and grow with it.

We begin to understand just how human this super-assisted super-collaborator really is. As a result, the thinking that needs to be done and the qualities that need to be cultivated focus on a better understanding of what makes the human being human, something that the production machine has often buried in a form of mechanisation of the employee, who can now begin to free himself from his chains.

Become the hub of a human Internet

Whereas technologies have tended to isolate, tomorrow’s Super-Collaborator will be an ultra-connected and “super-collaborative” individual: with AI, with his peers, with his hierarchy (top and bottom), with his entire professional ecosystem (customers, service providers, etc.). In a multi-nodal world, each component of a company’s human eco-system must become a hub for the whole organisation. In a way, tomorrow’s high-performance human collectives will be organised according to the same fractal logic as the internet, with each point both unique and integral to the whole. Tomorrow’s Super-Collaborator will therefore be “collectively intelligent”, aware that with today’s tools and methods, we are more intelligent together than alone, and that the most collaborative will therefore be the most intelligent. In fact, connecting human brains (with the help of AI) is probably the only way to stay competitive with the interconnected computers that are the basis of AI. In short, now that humans have served as the model for creating machines, it’s time for humans to look at their creation and learn how to function better while remaining human.

This imperative to collaborate does not exclude the need to compete, as the super-collaborator must also want to be better than the others in order to pull the group upwards. They will therefore be super-“cooperative”.

Preparing to join “armies of generals”

The essential human element of tomorrow’s intelligent company will probably find itself drawn into a high sphere of the company, bringing together a vast ecosystem of very complete super-collaborators (generalist-experts), participating – with the help of AI – in a renewed governance of the company. This sort of super-COMEX will no longer be made up of a few units of managers, but in the case of large companies, of hundreds or even thousands of employees integrated into AI information-debate-proposal platforms dedicated to instructing a decision-making system integrating and bringing together all the decision-making perimeters.

In the context of the idea that the company is currently acquiring the characteristics of a state (see our article on this subject in the April issue[2]), these super-Comexes will fulfil the function of innovative corporate parliaments – from which states would do well to draw inspiration in laying the foundations of functional democracies.

This does not mean that there will be no more field managers among these super-collaborators, quite the contrary: middle management will not disappear, but as the organisation flattens out, it will sit at the same level as top management.

The super-collaborator of tomorrow must therefore have all the qualities of a leader: he or she has a 360° vision, participates organically in the major decisions but above all in the company’s micro-decisional system, is therefore a strategist, inspires,… and is responsible for his or her actions (in the event of a dispute, it is he or she who will go before the judge, not his or her AI).

Ultimately, through their super-powers, humans are able to direct the powerful technological infrastructure of production and administration of the company. In much the same way as governments (politics) guide states (public administration).

Re-learning the importance of loyalty

Inevitably, the super-collaborator of tomorrow will be invaluable, and his map of skills and knowledge, like that of AI, will increasingly reflect the image of each company. In a break with the past 30 years, we can therefore imagine that loyalty will once again become a decisive quality for a company to place its trust in an employee and help him or her transform into a super-collaborator. If this is true, companies will have to implement powerful strategies to make themselves attractive and retain the talent they have attracted in order to counter the current trend towards high volatility among young professionals. They have the power to do this, and can present themselves as areas for lifelong learning, understanding of the world, levers for action… all human needs that individual citizens are no longer really capable of developing, and that civil society organisations do not have the resources to build. The company’s strong anchoring in reality is an asset in the quest for lucidity and influence on the part of individuals that the company, in its concern to retain its valuable employees (by 2035), can make the most of… in its own interest moreover: in fact, given the negative pressures on the growth of a vast fabric of companies that will have to learn to survive in lean times, it is the human creativity boosted by AI and the collective intelligence of each company that will decide its capacity to change paradigm. This is a good reason to position the social contract between a company and its employees on the feudal notion of mutual loyalty.

The Never-Ending journey of Learning

Despite all these super-powers, the super-collaborator doesn’t have to be perfect. To error is human! And it’s our mistakes that make us progress. On the other hand, learning to spot, accept and capitalise on these mistakes will be an asset in the hybrid world that is emerging.

To become this “super-collaborator,” and in response to the real demand for support in driving change that has emerged from our work, forums for exchange and feedback are essential. They allow individuals to “acculturate” to the future and develop a clearer vision of the company and its operations, enabling everyone to adapt more naturally. Ongoing training and a culture of curiosity are now critical to the successful transformation of businesses. So, paradoxically, AI is going to bring the enterprise back to people.

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[1] Source: The Information, 09/12/2024

[2] Post-ChatGPT Corporation: Accelerating the emergence of the corporate-state. Source: GEAB, 15/04/2024