The Next Rung: Why AI is breaking the career ladder, and how to find your next step [9781805760740]

Overview

Why the ladder you were climbing has come apart, and what to do about it.

Every previous technological revolution carried within it opportunities for displaced workers. The AI revolution is different: it’s not a specific tool, but a general labour replacement, and it performs best at exactly the cognitive work that has until now formed the career path for knowledge workers. Put simply, from this point on, businesses need fewer people. The ladder itself is dissolving, and those in the middle of it can feel the change.

The Next Rung speaks to anyone who senses that the explanations from the top about how work is shifting don’t match what they are seeing. It doesn’t just help them understand what’s happening, it sets out the specific moves they can make to future-proof their own role, household and family this week.

Discover:

• Why 3 to 4 million UK knowledge jobs are at serious risk by the mid-2030s, and the mechanism behind the number

• The four-tier exposure map: which roles are already gone, which are consolidating, which are being enhanced and which are protected

• How to run an honest audit of your own role, your household and your runway

• The positioning framework for those with time to prepare, and those without it

• What the new institutions being built right now (community wealth funds, cooperatives, skills-first hiring) mean for what comes after.

Chris Simmance is one of those building the AI tools that are doing the displacing. He advises the business owners making the decisions about how to structure their workforce, and educates the children who will inherit what is left. Uncomfortable, honest, yet ultimately constructive, The Next Rung is essential reading for anyone ready to face the reality of the future of work.