Luis Aquino is teaching his 7- and 6-year-old basic bookkeeping. He’s starting to wonder if he’s wasting his time.
Aquino, an accountant, asked the question plenty of parents are thinking about during the audience Q&A at a fireside chat on AI in the workplace at the SAX Symposium, held late last month at MetLife Stadium.
“As I teach them, I’m almost feeling the information is so outdated,” he said. “And by the time they graduate, should they even be considering accounting, finance as a career?
“What are we telling them? How are we shaping them up for their careers?”
The three experts on stage, all parents, offered insights:
1. The basics are still the bedrock
Rob Owen, Chief Information Officer and a Partner at SAX, said the basics still matter, even if a computer can do the math.
“There’s a ton of value in learning how to read. There’s a ton of value in learning how to do math,” he said. “It’s not about the fact that you’re going to need to do every single computation for the rest of your life manually on a piece of paper. You’re training your brain to think critically.”
He said his kids, 14 and 12, are still learning to read, do math and be creative. But they’re also learning to use AI.
“We’re going to use AI like crazy, because it’s going to give you a huge advantage over your peers that do not,” he said. “So, embrace it. … It’s just another tool to use to get things done.”
Owen said he’d have loved this kind of tool when he started out, working on a CRT monitor with a loud keyboard and slow everything.
“This is way better now,” he said.
2. As a general rule, learn about everything
Maria Koller, Vice President of AI & Edge Infrastructure Growth at Verizon Business, said the jobs that win in the next decade may look different from the ones parents know.
“I actually think the next 10, 15 years of what we’re going to see is the folks that are generalists that can solve the gray are the ones that are actually going to succeed over just a pure subject matter expert,” she said.
AI will supply the expertise, she said. It will lay out the rules. People will have to figure out what to do with them.
“So, yes, you can be an accountant, but if you can’t leverage and solve complex gray problems … I think you’re really going to be at a disadvantage,” she said.
Koller doesn’t think the next generation needs to be coders. But they do need to know how to use AI.
“You use it as a tool. You use it to get smarter,” she said. “You use it as a way to get yourself more marketable when you start going into work.”
3. Curiosity remains king
Leon Grassi, a SAX Partner who moderated the session, said the key is curiosity.
“This is world-changing technology, and the way I approach it with my children is I want them to be curious,” he said.
When his daughter runs a search on ChatGPT, he sits down with her and explains what happened to produce the answer.
“I don’t want her to just take it and roll with it and not have wonder,” he said. “I think that’s what a lot of these kids are missing, is that sense of wonder.”
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For all the talk of grit and critical thinking, the panelists admitted there’s at least one subject where they lean on AI themselves: their kids’ math homework.
Grassi said earlier in the session that it’s one of the ways he uses AI.
“They changed math,” he said. “I don’t understand.”
Koller wasn’t any help.
“I have my MBA and I can’t figure it,” she said. “But I always tell my kids, ask ChatGPT.”
Aquino may want to keep teaching that bookkeeping after all.
