A couple of years ago I changed career path. There were a few reasons why I did this, but the primary motivation was to develop my Operations skill set and (eventually) support an EA-aligned organisation.
My initial aim was to expand my skill set as broadly as possible, as generally speaking, Operations roles at EA organisations appeared to require working across a variety of different areas, such as:
Events Management
Project Management
Office Management
Accounting/budgeting
HR
Recruitment
I am currently working as a Programme Coordinator at an educational non-profit, which has allowed me to gain experience in Events and Project Management.
With the upcoming exponential development and deployment of Large Language Models and “Gollem-Class” AIs, it appears that there are going to be unprecedented changes to the employment landscape over the coming decades.
I am now left wondering which areas of Operations are likely to become redundant within the next ten years, and which areas are likely to require the involvement of us mere mortals for the foreseeable future.
Ultimately, I would love to know how I should expand my Operations skill set over the next five years, so that I can maximise the impact I will have in the long-term.
I acknowledge that no one will have a crystal ball, but any advice would be greatly appreciated! Additionally, if you think I have any major misconceptions, or have made any errors, please point these out in the comments!
Ops seems like a field that is not super threatened by AI, in that it requires both detailed planning and non-trivial engagement with humans.
I expect that none of them will be fully automated in the next decade or two, although I expect some of them will be partially automated. I think recruitment is already partially automated at big companies, for example, by using AI to scout through linkedin for candidates.
Events managemant, office management and HR seem like the safest, requiring significant human interaction of the kind not easily done by a chatbot. Accounting would seem like the most automatable, however the consequences of AI hallucinations could be quite high, so I think most places would need a human to check the work.