This book predicts the decline of today's professions and introduces the people and systems that will replace them. In an internet-enhanced society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others, to work as they did in the 20th century.
The Future of the Professions explains how increasingly capable technologies - from telepresence to artificial intelligence - will place the 'practical expertise' of the finest specialists at the fingertips of everyone, often at no or low cost and without face-to-face interaction.
The authors challenge the 'grand bargain' - the arrangement that grants various monopolies to today's professionals. They argue that our current professions are antiquated, opaque and no longer affordable, and that the expertise of their best is enjoyed only by a few. In their place, they propose five new models for producing and distributing expertise in society.
The book raises profound policy issues, not least about employment (they envisage a new generation of 'open-collared workers') and about control over online expertise (they warn of new 'gatekeepers') - in an era when machines become more capable than human beings at most tasks.
With a new preface exploring recent critical developments, this updated edition builds on the authors' groundbreaking research into more than a dozen professions. Illustrated with numerous examples from each, this is the first book to assess and question the relevance of the professions in the 21st century.
Author(s): Richard Susskind, Daniel Susskind
Edition: 2
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 588
City: Oxford
Cover
THE FUTURE OF THE PROFESSIONS: HOW TECHNOLOGY WI LL TRANSFORM THE WORK OF HUMAN EXPERTS
Copyright
Dedication
PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION
A Note from Richard
A Note from Daniel
As Co-Authors
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Epilogue
CONTENTS
LIST OF BOXES AND FIGURES
NEW PREFACE – AN UPDATE
Relevant Developments (2015 onwards)
Technological Advance
Covid-19
Recurrent Questions
Innovation in Professional Firms
A Framework for Thinking about Innovation
A final thought
Introduction
Our broad argument
The professions as one object of study
The structure of the book
PART I: Change
1: The Grand Bargain
1.1. Everyday conceptions
1.2. The scope of the professions
1.3. Historical context
1.4. The bargain explained
1.5. Theories of the professions
Alternative theories
Exclusivity and conspiracy
The influence of Karl Marx
Returning to the grand bargain
1.6. Four central questions
1.7. Disconcerting problems
1.8. A new mindset
1.9. Some common biases
2: From the Vanguard
2.1. Health
2.2. Education
2.3. Divinity
2.4. Law
2.5. Journalism
2.6. Management consulting
2.7. Tax and audit
2.8. Architecture
3: Patterns across the Professions
3.1. An early challenge
3.2. The end of an era
The move from bespoke service
The bypassed gatekeepers
Shift from reactive to proactive
The more-for-less challenge
3.3. Transformation by technology
Automation
Innovation
3.4. Emerging skills and competences
Different ways of communicating
Mastery of data
New relationships with technology
Diversification
3.5. Professional work reconfigured
Routinization
Disintermediation and reintermediation
Decomposition
3.6. New labour models
Labour arbitrage
Para-professionalization and delegation
Flexible self-employment
New specialists
Users
Machines
3.7. More options for recipients
Online selection
Online self-help
Personalization and mass customization
Embedded knowledge
Online collaboration
Realization of latent demand
3.8. Preoccupations of professional firms
Liberalization
Globalization
Specialization
New business models
Fewer partnerships and consolidation
3.9. Demystification
PART II: Theory
4: Information and Technology
4.1. Information substructure
4.2. Pre-print and print-based communities
4.3. Technology-based Internet society
4.4. Future impact
4.5. Exponential growth in information technology
4.6. Increasingly capable machines
Big Data
IBM’s Watson
Robotics
Affective computing
4.7. Increasingly pervasive devices
4.8. Increasingly connected humans
4.9. A fifty-year overview
5: Production and Distribution of Knowledge
5.1. The economic characteristics of knowledge
5.2. Knowledge and the professions
5.3. The evolution of professional work
5.4. The drive towards externalization
5.5. The liberation of expertise: from craft to commons?
5.6. The decomposition of professional work
5.7. Production and distribution of expertise: seven models
The traditional model
The networked experts model
The para-professional model
The knowledge engineering model
The communities of experience model
The embedded knowledge model
The machine-generated model
PART III: Implications
6: Objections and Anxieties
6.1. Trust, reliability, quasi-trust
Trust
Reliability
Quasi-trust
6.2. The moral limits of markets
Professional norms and market norms
Sandel’s arguments
Responding to the objections
6.3. Lost craft
Lessons from coffee-making
Process or outcomes?
Comparing human and machine performance
6.4. Personal interaction
6.5. Empathy
6.6. Good work
6.7. Becoming expert
Maintaining a pipeline of experts
What are we training young professionals to become?
6.8. No future roles
6.9. Three underlying mistakes
7: After the Professions
7.1. Increasingly capable, non-thinking machines
7.2. The need for human beings
The capabilities of professionals and machines
Moral constraints
7.3. Technological unemployment?
Hotdogs
Three central questions
7.4. The impact of technology on professional work
Technological unemployment in the professions
Why we might be wrong
7.5. The question of feasibility
The further problems of the ‘commons’
Arguments in favour of feasibility
Exclusivity revisited
Conclusion: What Future Should We Want?
ENDNOTES
New Preface – An Update
Introduction
1. The Grand Bargain
2. From the Vanguard
3. Patterns across the Professions
4. Information and Technology
5. Production and Distribution of Knowledge
6. Objections and Anxieties
7. After the Professions
Conclusion
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
