Is craft the future?
The nature of work is changing. And so naturally, what we want from people at work is changing. How will we value work, and workers in the future? I think ‘craft’ is part of the answer.
How much will AI and robots replace people in the workplace? It’s a question I am asked all the time - one just about every leader is wrestling with right now.
For some roles, the answer might appear to be complete replacement. Like the oft-used example of horses. There are probably still a few working horses on farms, but not enough to be statistically significant versus the percentage that have been replaced by tractors and other farm machinery.
You might say the same about the office as the farm. After all, how many businesses still employ typists? But the situation here is a bit more nuanced. The job of the typist may have disappeared but a lot of the work remains. It is now just distributed differently across the workforce. A group of team members were replaced by tools that redistributed the work.
Tools and Team Members
I think this distinction between tools and team members - and the nuanced difference between jobs and work - is crucial when thinking about the effects of AI and robotics on the workplace. Rarely is a machine a one-for-one replacement for a human. Instead we are better off thinking about machines as existing on a sliding scale between tool and team member.
Tool: Augments the capability of a human to do their work
Team Member: Over-seen by a human but functions autonomously for much of the working day
Which roles will be mostly be augmented by tools and which will be dominated by digital team members depends very much on the characteristics of that role.
Three C Lens
My idea of the Three Cs as critical skills for the future is a useful lens through which to consider these characteristics.
Curation: How much novel information discovery is involved in the role? Does it require qualification and quantification?
However useful machines are as tools for research and discovery, I would argue that they remain largely tools in this domain. You can program an AI platform to accelerate protein folding for drug discovery, or to look at new material formations. But that program, and the qualification of the output, requires a lot of human knowledge. Machines in this context are a powerful tool, but still a tool. They might allow a small team to do the work of a larger team from the past. And once prompted, the machines might operate with a level of autonomy. But the setting the inputs, defining the guardrails, and qualifying the outputs still requires a lot of human expertise.
Lots of jobs don’t require a new knowledge base. Customer service roles, for example, are driven to a large extent by an expected set of behaviours, responses, and stored information. At least at the lower levels - more on this below. Here we might expect to see more digital team members.
Creativity: How much does success in the role require repeating what has been done before in the same manner? And how much does it require original thinking?
Some jobs explicitly require you to repeat what has been done before. Manufacturing is the obvious example. You absolutely want each can of Pepsi to look and taste exactly the same as the last.
But formulating a new soft drink? That’s a very different question, from the flavour, to the brand, to the tin. AI can help, but these are ultimately human choices and inventions.
Communication: How much does the customer or collaborator value a human face and voice as their interface?
We have come to accept self-service as the default form of service now. In many ways, this is the greatest con-job that capitalism ever pulled, saving the supplier time while we manage our own orders and problems via web interfaces and apps. But this creates a great differentiator for those products and services that are not delivered by a machine. Human service is now the exception, and one we recognise as premium.
One really fascinating anecdotal example of this is the relationship between young people and restaurants. Because they are so used to self-service systems in fast food joints, anywhere with table service suddenly seems fancy by comparison, even if it’s just Pizza Express.
C+C+C = Craft
In its most basic definition, craft is something made by hand, usually with a measure of skill. But what if we were to expand that definition. What does it take to craft something successfully?
I would argue it starts with discovery. What does the customer want, or the muse demand? This falls under the first of my three Cs, Curation.
Then it’s about Creativity, realising a vision through the skill of production.
And finally it’s about Communication. Part of the value in having something crafted is the interaction with the artisan who made it.
We value craft because of these things. Because we can see someone has taken the time to understand something, to make something, and because we can interact in some way with the process. It’s why we’re willing to spend money on art, on tailored clothes, on fine food and wine.
These things aren’t always perfect and that might be part of their charm. Flaws in the wood grain. An excess bit of char. A wonky label on the wine bottle. These things make them unique, make them ours. And they tell a story of endeavour.
Valuing Craft
The more things are made by machine, the fewer will feel ‘crafted’. I think that’s probably true for anything that leverages the current mode of LLM-based AI platforms, since each one will be based on the way things have been done in the past and they trend towards a common approach to solving problems and answering questions.
That’s not to say craftspeople can’t use tools, AI-powered or otherwise. But simply that whether something is crafted or not is not a simple binary, it’s a sliding scale. The more something is wholly made by machines, the less we might ultimately value it.
This isn’t novel. A hand-built Bentley or Morgan is worth much more than a mass-produced Kia or Ford. But I think it’s nonetheless useful to consider it in terms of human work in an age of automation. I think that we will come to value things made by people, and by extension, the people who make them, more and more, as we are flooded by an ever greater percentage of things that are made by machines. And not just made by machines but to a greater and greater extent, designed by machines and sold to us by machines.
Does this mean that craft is the way to get mega-rich? No. The route to extreme wealth is probably to own the machines doing the producing. But again, this isn’t a binary. I believe the system will leave lots of space for humans who craft, and not just in food, jewellery or hand-made cars.