Conference Presentation, Panel
The Future of Human Performance
Milken InstituteJared Carney, Jurgen Heitmann, Alison Levine, Vivienne Ming, Andy Walshe, Vivian Ming
- Human performance research aims to democratize elite-level insights to benefit the broader population, aggregating intelligence through a "cottage industry" model to make high-level science accessible to youth and communities.
- Long-term data tracking over "very long time periods" is expected to forecast career trajectories for up to 430,000 employees, identifying specific intervention points to drive better outcomes.
- A return on investment of 14% annually is anticipated from investing in children, positioning them as the economic backbone of the world.
- Cognitive traits related to working memory span, attention, and literacy are expected to become "pretty fixed epigenetically" by ages 5 to 8, necessitating critical early intervention strategies.
- Juergen Heitmann predicts that the "cognitive load" on decision-makers will become "overwhelming" in battle spaces due to the rapid integration of robotic dog swarms and other autonomous systems.
- The integration of robotics into teams is projected to become a "reality very, very quickly," requiring new psychological and scientific approaches to human-robot team dynamics.
- Virtual reality and immersive video experiences are expected to shape future experiential learning for children, potentially replacing the current 8 to 10 hours of daily screen time with purposeful training.
- An "exponential growth of learning" is forecasted to continue accelerating, requiring new methods to democratize knowledge and adapt to rapid technological shifts.
- Within 10 years, AI is predicted to master coding, rendering the vast majority of code not written by humans and making traditional programming education insufficient for the future workforce.
- Future economies will require a transformation of individuals who lack creative, adaptive problem-solving skills within the next 10 to 20 years to ensure they retain economic value.
- The current educational system is criticized for failing to build the "creative performers and explorers" necessary for an economy where AI replaces traditional jobs.
- Fundamental, humanistic factors are anticipated to have a larger impact than complex technology as the primary method for passing knowledge to the youth.
- The barrier for human performance is expected to keep rising as communities share information, with the immediate competitive goal being to outperform the individual next to you.
- The integration of "Ready Player One" style experiences into learning curricula is seen as a key development for shaping the next generation of thinkers.
- AI and augmented learning present significant challenges to maintaining critical human factors as these technologies become ubiquitous in future workflows.