The weird world of future work: brain reading headphones, longevity tests and digital twins

In last month’s piece, I asked if we are in the middle of squandering the future of work gains made during the pandemic. I closed with the statement that climate change, falling fertility rates, and more complex geopolitical issues are going to create some interesting (and some potentially quite dark) realities and conditions for workplaces in the near future, and that leaders are going to need to make decisions and policies on topics that they haven’t ever considered before now.

Here are some of the strange but possible work futures we might see in the next decade, which we should be having the more interesting conversations about right now.

Mind your thoughts

Forget swipe card monitoring, what if your corporate overlords were also monitoring your thoughts? 

A new set of headphones by Neurable and Master & Dynamic read your brain waves to track when you lose focus. They then either suggest you take a break, or use their helpful Spotify integration to play a focus-inducing playlist.

The company is working towards a ChatGPT integration with the brain-reading model. This would mean that if a distracting email or text pops up when you’re deep at work, the headphones will read from your brainwaves what you want to reply to that message, and reply for you, without you having to stop the task you’re in the middle of.

Wild.

Obviously there’s some incredible utility to this, but it quickly becomes pretty dark if we imagine how certain workplaces might use this.

Imagine the scene: you’re called in to see HR. With a serious look on their face, they sit you down and explain that you’re being issued with a written warning. You’re surprised. You know your brain focus stats are great; you’ve been microdosing a stimulant mix that your friend recommended. It’s not strictly ‘legal’, but it does increase your focus, which shows up favourably on your workplace-issued focus headphones.

But no, it’s not your focus stats, HR explains. They pull up a screen showing your Slack DMs with your manager. You immediately see the problem, in full HD on the meeting room screen.

It turns out those headphones have gotten a little too good at reading the thoughts that go through your mind when your manager sends you DMs during your deep work time. And clearly this particular reply went out without going through your auto-message review pile.

But, you protest, people have been thinking these things about the people they work with since the beginning of time. Surely they can’t start performance managing our thoughts!

Or can they?

(Side note: I can imagine certain companies issuing everyone with an iPad, linked to their headphones, showing your real-time focus stats, and inner thoughts, at all times, for everyone to see. For the sake of radical transparency, of course).

Is there enough life left in you?

Tally Health’s simple cheek swab can determine when you might die (or at least how well you are aging). This type of technology might add a whole new layer to your job applications or performance reviews.

Might your performance metrics start to include your sleep stats, your average ‘lifting’ accuracy score, your weight, or the amount of life you have left in you?

We’re already seeing versions of this with some organisations encouraging staff to wear rings, wristbands, and watches that track sleep and recovery, or using exoskeletons and monitors for those in physically demanding roles.

Of course, there are a lot of legitimately good uses of this technology. It might stop a driver falling asleep at the wheel, a stressed manager from having a heart attack, or save a care worker from a debilitating back injury. These benefits shouldn’t be ignored. 

But has anyone had the conversation about the line we shouldn’t cross when it comes to having our health data sit with our employers?

Is this likely to (further) penalise people with chronic health conditions and disabilities, dilute ‘health’ into unreliable and unscientific numbers (eg BMI) for the sake of having something easy to track, and stray into risky territory when it comes to topics like reproductive rights, certain stigmatised health conditions, race, and gender transition?

Almost certainly.

And frankly, are managers really equipped to have a health conversation with an employee?

Absolutely not.

If you’re being courted by suppliers pitching this type of technology – even if it has a genuine safety use – your HR and exec team should most definitely be running some scenarios. Talk about the unintended consequences, possible misuses of this data and how it might creep into problematic territory, and what positions or decisions you need to take and make now, before these become the norm, and you’re trying to reverse a problematic path.

Beware of zombies

Digital twin technology is already making headlines: from the tragic story of a teenager who developed a relationship with a CharacterAI chatbot, to the deep fakes appearing everywhere from political campaigns to porn.

At work, most of us dream of sending our digital twin to brain-numbing update meetings, or have them tackle our most dreary tasks whilst we get stuck into something far more interesting.

But in order for our digital twins to be useful, we’ll need to train them. And keep training them. Which means that while you might never have to fill in our own timesheet again, you may instead spend hours working out what to feed your information-hungry mini-me.

Thinking of taking a new job? Not so fast. Did you see that line in your contract that states any data your digital twin has ingested while you’ve been working here must be deleted upon your resignation? Enjoy doing all of that re-training.

There’s some good news though; when you shuffle off this mortal coil, your digital twin could keep working, providing an ongoing income to your family. Of course, this does mean that when applying for a job, the people you’re up against might not all be alive, and you may find yourself working alongside some zombies.

Which does make Friday drinks a little more interesting.

Working 5 to 9

It’s 2035, and in the four months of the year where it’s regularly tipping 45C outside across most of Australia, and fires are more frequent, employers cannot legally ask people to come to offices for anything other than truly essential work.

Even then, most of these essential workplaces (hospitals, care homes, supermarkets, food production factories), have added onsite worker accommodation to reduce the risk of heat-related injury or fire disruption during commutes to their daytime workforce.

The 24-hour economy fully comes to life in this future, particularly during these hotter months. More people opt to work in the cooler, nighttime temperatures. Cafes open at 9pm, and close at 4am. Breakfast is the new dinner. Public transport runs all day and all night. Sporting events happen at 5am. All outdoor construction and manual labour work can only legally happen overnight.

This is a win for the chronoworkers; they’ve been finding ways to hack the outdated industrial revolution work pattern for over a decade, and this forced flip of how people live and work as a result of climate change has made it mainstream. Now everyone can work at a time that best suits their circadian rhythm, and enjoy the work and life benefits from doing so.

What should we be talking about?

It’s easy to come across as a bit of a doomer when it comes to some of these topics. But if the last two decades of technological advances have taught us anything, it is (or should be) that we need to spend more time thinking about the longer-term possible futures that might play out from the decisions we make today.

What unintended consequences might you inadvertently create? Or might you at least send us down a path towards, in turn creating a future you might not want?

While some of these might feel ‘way off’ when it comes to what’s possible, most of them are closer than you might think. The technologies are already being developed, and the outcomes (good, bad, and ugly) are already being experienced.

As business owners, leaders, and citizens, it is absolutely our responsibility to exercise our imaginations and have more of these more expansive, ‘what if’ conversations, on a more regular basis.

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