Work - Vivek Srinivasan

Most jobs that you see around the world monetise a specific knowledge that a person possesses. An accountant knows to account and you pay him/her to do it. This knowledge is transferable, the work is pretty repetitive and can be easily turned into an algorithm.

Do you know the kind of knowledge that is hardest to monetise? Creative skills. Take a writer or a painter. Their work is not repetitive, their knowledge cannot be easily transferred and each time they take a risk.

Risk aversion is built into everything that we do. Therefore, we make it harder for those who are willing to take the risk.

Even in the repetitive, transferrable job of an accountant, there is more than just the knowledge that they bring to the table. If you want to see how creative accountants can be, you need to look no further than Enron, or perhaps the Indian government! They make things better, influence another human and raise the game.

The capitalistic system necessitates standardisation and repeatability. Standardisation brings scale. This, in turn, means that you strip the human of their creativity and turn them into cogs that are doing repetitive work. All of this is pursued in the name of productivity and greater efficiency.

In this pursuit, we have stripped education of encouraging and imbibing curiosity. Education today only plays the role of setting a person up to be a perfect mule. All creativity is stripped out of a person over 15 years systematically.

Almost every service we use sucks because people do not contribute as humans. They are contributing as a replaceable cog who is uninspired to do better.

And the capitalists that have brought this fate upon millions on humans, now, dare to replace them with code. AI systems that are great Cogs. They are not inspired or creative. They will do a said repeatable task efficiently.

Where does this take us?

A creative revolution. A revolution where humans will discover that they were capable of a lot more than what they were holding themselves back to. A place where capitalists will realise that the value lost to creativity is greater than standardised repeat work. A renaissance where we see some amazing leaps in politics, arts, sciences that open the doors for a new phase of humanity.

Will be let AI replace us and agree to live on the alms that capitalists give away in the name of Universal Basic Income.

I hope it is the former

So last weekend, we had chosen “Overestimation” as a theme for our Startups Club meeting. We were expecting the meeting to be rather dull since the topic was not something that could generate a great deal of debate. Just as a last minute thing, we decided to throw in a game into the meet.

So the game played out like this. Two teams of 5 members were created. In each team, one member was assigned a leader. The leader from each team was asked to bid. What was on auction was a bunch of exercises: Push-Ups, Lunges, Iron-Man and Balancing on a Leg. The team with the winning bid had to perform the exercise, else, the same was passed onto the other team.

As bidding commenced, the meeting got extremely exciting! More than we could have hoped or dreamt. Each team had won two bids, and each was able to accomplish what they had bid. Hence a tie-break; Sit-Ups was introduced. Bidding went on a different gear, but again the team with the winning bid was able to accomplish the task. At this point, we raised the stakes and asked the losing team if they were willing to do 50% more to take the game away. They took up the challenge and accomplished it!

I realised; often times we over-estimate the work at hand. We really do not know the boundaries of our own capabilities and would not ever come to know unless we are pushed to reach them. People; Intelligent people like to be pushed to reach these boundaries. They may crib while they are being forced to reach these peaks but every time they discover a new peak – They are happy; they feel a sense of accomplishment. This fact alone allows leaders to find extremely talented individuals who would put in their blood, sweat and tears into a job that seems impossible to achieve. What is described by many as Steve Jobs’ “Reality Distortion Field” is just a manifestation of the process of finding this peak.

I myself was a part of a team in my first job where we were worked incredibly hard by our boss. We were expected to put in 18 hour days on weekends. (Especially on weekends) We all used to crib, but we would deliver one way or the other. To date, wherever any of us, who was a part of that team meet up, we fondly remember those days! We were performing at our peak; it may have been tiring but it felt good.

Today, my partner pushes me to achieve things that I would never think possible.

Don’t overestimate the goals which lie ahead of you. Work desperately towards it. You may surprise yourself by achieving it!