I spent Saturday evening looking at the stars.
A few friends, a fire and a clear night sky.
At some point, somebody got their phone out and we started trying to work out what we were looking at.
Stars that were tens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of light years away.
It's quite difficult to get your head around.
Some of that light began its journey towards Earth long before any of us were born.
And there we were, standing in a garden, looking up at it.
I love moments like that.
They have a way of putting things into perspective.
The problems that seemed so important at work on Friday suddenly don't feel quite so significant.
I've always found myself thinking about the bigger picture.
Not just what happens tomorrow, but what happens further down the line.
How the decisions we make affect other people.
And sometimes, when I look up at the night sky, those thoughts go a little further.
I start wondering about humanity itself.
How far we've come.
What we might achieve.
And what the world might look like in another hundred or even a thousand years.
Will humanity still be here?
What will we have discovered?
And how different will our lives be?
It's impossible to know, of course.
But there's something else I find myself thinking about.
How do we make sure humanity has a future worth looking forward to?
Because our future won't just depend on what we discover or the technology we develop.
It will depend on the decisions we make along the way.
How we govern ourselves.
How we choose our leaders.
How we respond to challenges.
And whether we're capable of thinking beyond our own immediate interests.
Something I heard recently really struck me.
It was an observation about democracy and the importance of education.
The idea was simple.
Democracy depends on people having the knowledge and understanding to make informed decisions.
And when you think about it, that's quite a profound observation.
Because democracy plays an important role in determining who leads us and the direction our societies take.
But for people to participate meaningfully, they need to be able to understand information.
Question what they're told.
Consider different perspectives.
And exercise their own judgement.
Education doesn't guarantee good decisions, of course.
But it helps develop the capabilities needed to make informed ones.
And that's where my thoughts about humanity's future took another turn.
We're entering a period where technology may become capable of performing more and more of the intellectual work we've traditionally done ourselves.
Analysing information.
Solving problems.
Forming arguments.
Making recommendations.
Perhaps eventually doing things we can barely imagine today.
The possibilities are extraordinary.
But it raises a question.
If we increasingly rely on technology to think for us, how do we ensure future generations retain the ability to think for themselves?
Because the consequences of that question extend far beyond the workplace.
They could influence how we educate our children.
How we make decisions.
How we choose our leaders.
And ultimately, how humanity navigates its future.
A little while ago, I attended a business seminar where one of the guest speakers was discussing artificial intelligence.
He was incredibly enthusiastic.
And why wouldn't he be?
The potential is extraordinary.
He talked about what AI could do, how quickly it was developing and the opportunities it might create.
He also referred to his own daughter when talking about how different the future could be for the next generation.
During the questions, I asked him something.
As a parent myself, I'd been thinking about what all of this might mean for my own children.
Are we doing enough through education to prepare our children for the world AI is creating?
I don't think it was quite the question he expected.
He acknowledged that what we're currently doing in schools isn't good enough.
And I found that interesting.
Here was somebody incredibly optimistic about the technology.
Yet when we started talking about preparing the next generation for it, the conversation became a little less certain.
But I wasn't really asking whether children should be learning how to use AI.
I'm sure they'll work that out.
I was thinking about something more fundamental.
What should education actually be preparing them to become?
Think about the world a hundred years from now.
It's almost impossible to imagine.
Artificial intelligence might help humanity make extraordinary scientific discoveries.
It could transform medicine.
Accelerate research.
Improve how we manage resources.
Help us understand things that today seem beyond our reach.
Perhaps it will even play an important role in taking humanity further into space.
I find those possibilities exciting.
And I certainly don't think we should resist technological progress simply because it changes how we've always done things.
But there's another possibility worth considering.
What if we become so good at developing technology to perform intellectual tasks that we gradually stop developing some of those capabilities ourselves?
What if future generations grow up with answers to almost everything immediately available?
What if researching, analysing, writing, calculating and even forming arguments become activities that technology routinely performs on our behalf?
Would that make us more capable?
Quite possibly.
But would it necessarily make us more understanding?
I'm not so sure.
Having access to an answer isn't the same as understanding it.
And understanding something isn't always the same as knowing what to do with it.
There's an old principle I remember from my years of training.
If it's not your core competency, outsource it.
I always liked that.
It's simple.
Logical.
And from a business perspective, often very sensible.
Why spend time developing a capability that somebody else can provide more effectively?
Focus on what you're good at.
Let the specialists handle the rest.
I've spent much of my career working in supply chain and procurement.
Outsourcing is hardly an unfamiliar concept.
Manufacturing.
Logistics.
Warehousing.
Technology.
Specialist services.
Businesses outsource activities for all sorts of good reasons.
And when it's done properly, it can be enormously successful.
But after more than twenty-five years working across different industries, I've started to question whether that old principle is quite as straightforward as it sounds.
Not because outsourcing is wrong.
Because I've seen how important it is to understand what you're giving away.
Imagine a business that decides to outsource a manufacturing process.
The decision makes sense.
The supplier has better equipment.
More expertise.
Lower costs.
Perhaps the quality even improves.
Everybody's happy.
Over time, the organisation stops investing in the people and knowledge required to perform that process internally.
The experienced engineers move on.
The technical understanding gradually disappears.
The organisation becomes increasingly dependent on its supplier.
And then something goes wrong.
Perhaps there's a quality problem.
Perhaps the supplier can't deliver.
Perhaps a technical change becomes necessary.
The supplier explains what's happening.
But there's a problem.
Nobody inside the business really understands the process well enough to challenge the explanation.
Now, I'm not suggesting every outsourced operation ends up like this.
Far from it.
Many organisations manage outsourced relationships exceptionally well.
But there's a distinction that matters.
Outsourcing an activity doesn't mean you should surrender the ability to understand it.
You might not need to manufacture the product yourself.
But you still need enough knowledge to ask the right questions.
To understand the risks.
To recognise when something isn't right.
And ultimately, to remain responsible for the decisions you're making.
Which brings me back to that old principle.
If it's not your core competency, outsource it.
I'm beginning to wonder whether we always spend enough time deciding what our core competencies actually are.
And whether something we consider non-core today might become essential tomorrow.
Now take that thought beyond business.
What happens when the activity we're delegating is thinking?
Or, more precisely, the intellectual work that helps us develop understanding and judgement?
We already delegate plenty of tasks to technology.
And generally, that's a good thing.
I don't need to perform every calculation manually.
I don't need to memorise every fact.
I don't need to navigate everywhere using a paper map.
Technology has freed us from all sorts of activities and allowed us to do things previous generations could barely imagine.
AI could take that much further.
And perhaps it should.
But I wonder whether there's a difference between delegating a task and gradually losing the ability to understand the decisions being made on our behalf.
Because if a system gives you an answer, how do you know whether it's right?
If it recommends a course of action, how do you evaluate the consequences?
If it presents an argument, how do you recognise what's missing?
And if it becomes increasingly convincing, do you become more likely to trust it?
Or less inclined to question it?
I don't know.
But I think those are questions worth asking.
Particularly when we consider what might happen over several generations.
And this is where I come back to education.
When I asked that question at the seminar, I wasn't really thinking about whether schools should introduce an AI lesson on a Tuesday afternoon.
I was thinking about what education needs to become.
Because perhaps the purpose of education will change.
Or perhaps some of its most important purposes will become even more important.
Curiosity.
Understanding.
Reasoning.
The ability to evaluate evidence.
The confidence to challenge something.
The willingness to admit you're wrong.
The ability to consider consequences beyond your own immediate interests.
Compassion.
Judgement.
None of those things requires us to reject technology.
In fact, AI could become one of the most powerful educational tools humanity has ever developed.
Imagine every child having access to a patient, knowledgeable tutor.
Imagine being able to explore almost any subject, in almost any language, at a pace that suits you.
Imagine the opportunities that could create.
That's an extraordinary prospect.
But I'd hope we're using that technology to help children develop their understanding.
Not simply to remove the need for it.
There's a difference between using technology to help somebody think and using it so they don't have to.
And perhaps the way we approach that distinction will become one of the most important educational decisions we make.
I keep coming back to something.
We spend an enormous amount of time asking what artificial intelligence might become.
And understandably so.
The possibilities are remarkable.
But perhaps we should spend a little more time asking what we want humanity to become alongside it.
What capabilities do we want future generations to possess?
What should we continue teaching, even when technology can perform the task better?
What decisions should people remain capable of understanding?
And what should we never become so dependent on that we lose the ability to question it?
I don't think the answer is to preserve every skill we have today.
Humanity has always evolved.
The things we need to know and do have changed throughout history.
They'll continue to change.
But I do think we need to be deliberate about what we retain.
And perhaps that's the lesson I've taken from all those years working with outsourcing.
The work can be delegated. The responsibility cannot.
In business, that means retaining enough knowledge and judgement to remain accountable for the outcome.
For humanity, perhaps it means something similar.
Embracing extraordinary technological capability while continuing to develop the understanding required to guide it.
I think about my children.
They're growing up in a world that's already very different from the one I knew at their age.
And by the time they're my age, I suspect it will be almost unrecognisable.
I want them to have access to the very best technology.
The very best education.
Opportunities I could never have imagined.
But I also want them to be curious.
To ask questions.
To challenge things.
To think about other people.
To recognise that the decisions they make can have consequences far beyond themselves.
And to have the confidence to form their own opinions.
I don't know what the world will look like in a hundred years.
I certainly don't know what humanity will look like in a thousand.
But I hope we'll still be asking questions.
Still learning.
Still trying to understand.
And still capable of deciding what kind of future we want to create.
Because ultimately, that future won't belong to us.
It will belong to generations we'll never meet.
And that brings me back to Saturday night.
Standing outside with friends, looking at the stars.
Somewhere up there, light is travelling towards Earth that won't arrive for hundreds or thousands of years.
Long after we're gone.
It's a strange thought.
The universe will carry on regardless of whatever problems occupied our working week.
But the decisions humanity makes today will influence what happens here long after we're gone.
And perhaps that's why I find myself thinking about the bigger picture.
Because progress isn't just about what we can achieve.
It's also about what we choose to become.
And if there's one capability I hope humanity never loses, it's the ability to look at something extraordinary, question what we're seeing, and wonder what might come next.
Perhaps independent thought is the last thing we should ever outsource.
Theme
Human Judgement
Signal
Independent thought is the last thing we should ever outsource.
Reflection
For decades, businesses have been encouraged to focus on their core competencies and outsource everything else.
It's often good advice.
But outsourcing an activity and surrendering the knowledge required to understand it are two very different things.
As technology becomes increasingly capable of performing intellectual work, humanity may face a similar challenge.
We can embrace automation without abandoning understanding.
We can delegate tasks without surrendering responsibility.
And we can use AI to expand human capability rather than simply replace the need to exercise it.
Education will play an important role in determining what that future looks like.
Not simply by teaching people to use new technology, but by developing the curiosity, reasoning, judgement and independence needed to question it.
Because the future of humanity shouldn't be measured only by the capabilities of the technology we create.
It should also be measured by the capabilities we continue to develop in ourselves.
Question
As technology becomes more capable, what human abilities should we work hardest to preserve?
The Demand Signal
Lessons from the front line of supply chain.
