Jul 7, 2026 · 41 min · 10 segments
In the final part of our 500th anniversary 'Eras Tour' retrospective, we conclude by saying farewell to our human co-workers and embracing the technology that will ultimately destroy us all…
So today, we are, uh, concluding our Eras tour with our, um, our farewell to human coworkers as we, uh, uh, joyfully embrace the technology that will ultimately destroy us all, uh, artificial intelligence.
Um, AI has, uh, been topping Don's Global Sentiment Survey for a few years now, and as I looked back at, at past surveys going back the 10 years that we've had you on this show, Don, it's always been floating kind of near the top.
Um, of all the topics though, Don, that have topped the survey in the past, which one are you most embarrassed by in hindsight, and what's the honest probability that AI joins them?
I mean, the ones that, the one that I'm most embarrassed we've included on the survey is the metaverse because that, I, I completely missed the boat on that one.
Um, in terms of topping it, uh, I, I think this might sound a bit, a bit radical, but I think reskilling and upskilling because I think it sounds right.
When you think about it, what's the job of learning and development? It is to reskill and upskill people, so of course it should be number one.
And I'm kind of annoyed that I put it on there at all, but the thing is it was undergoing this complete surge in popularity.
It was a phrase you could not ignore, which was largely as a result of a paper released in, I think, January 2020 by the World Economic Forum about the need to skill people up.
And there was, there were, there were a couple of papers beforehand and conferences run in the EU that stimulated this.
But as soon as that paper came out, there was a whole series of papers that came out from consultancies talking about the need to reskill, upskill.
But what happened was, it started off being we need to reskill, upskill because of changing economic circumstances.
Then it became, oh, COVID, we have to reskill, upskill because we've got a whole new way of working now.
Now, all of these may be true, but it does sound desperately like it's a phrase in search of a problem, and I'm, I'm kind of embarrassed-
So today, we are, uh, concluding our Eras tour with our, um, our farewell to human coworkers as we, uh, uh, joyfully embrace the technology that will ultimately destroy us all, uh, artificial intelligence.
Um, AI has, uh, been topping Don's Global Sentiment Survey for a few years now, and as I looked back at, at past surveys going back the 10 years that we've had you on this show, Don, it's always been floating kind of near the top.
Um, of all the topics though, Don, that have topped the survey in the past, which one are you most embarrassed by in hindsight, and what's the honest probability that AI joins them?
I mean, the ones that, the one that I'm most embarrassed we've included on the survey is the metaverse because that, I, I completely missed the boat on that one.
Um, in terms of topping it, uh, I, I think this might sound a bit, a bit radical, but I think reskilling and upskilling because I think it sounds right.
When you think about it, what's the job of learning and development? It is to reskill and upskill people, so of course it should be number one.
And I'm kind of annoyed that I put it on there at all, but the thing is it was undergoing this complete surge in popularity.
It was a phrase you could not ignore, which was largely as a result of a paper released in, I think, January 2020 by the World Economic Forum about the need to skill people up.
And there was, there were, there were a couple of papers beforehand and conferences run in the EU that stimulated this.
But as soon as that paper came out, there was a whole series of papers that came out from consultancies talking about the need to reskill, upskill.
But what happened was, it started off being we need to reskill, upskill because of changing economic circumstances.
Then it became, oh, COVID, we have to reskill, upskill because we've got a whole new way of working now.
Now, all of these may be true, but it does sound desperately like it's a phrase in search of a problem, and I'm, I'm kind of embarrassed-
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