This year's Knowledge Management Society Conference was focussed on the impact of Artifical Intelligence on knowledge management. There was a wide diversity of speakers from Dion Wiggins, whose company produces subtitles for films in several Asian languages using AI alorithms; to Anthony Tasgal, who beleives we are all semavores (consumers of meaning) who communicate in stories, via Professor Eric Tsui and Larry Campbell..

My key takeaways for the session were twofold; just as the last few generations have grown up in a world with data at their fingertip via the internet, so the next generations will grow up dealing with AI systems just as comfortably (if not more so) than with human beings. I already see this at the local fastfood outlet with touch screen ordering systems. My kids would rather walk a longer distance to the outlet with the automated ordering than to the closer one where they have to interact with humans. 

The second takeaway came during the discussion session where some of the questions revolved around what we need our kids to learn in order to survive in the future, and what jobs would still be available in the future. It seems many jobs will be replaced by AI, just as many industrial-age jobs were take over by automation. Sitting next to each other on the panel were Dion and "Tas" and I realised the jobs that will survive into the future will be either feeding and looking after the computers (i.e. data and programming related jobs) or "feeding" and looking after people (i.e. helping people related to each other or themselves).

All-in-all a thought provoking day with a number of good insights.