Wherever I turn, I see very similar headlines nowadays. It's often about the shortage of personnel in various sectors - including healthcare, where I recently read an article focusing on people choosing other professions, which has become common.

The second thing I read about is AI.

My observation is that these are connected.

Dr. Johan Sundström, a professor in Epidemiology and cardiologist in Uppsala, says in the podcast Forskarpodden (from Uppsala University):

"AI will not replace doctors, but doctors who use AI will outcompete doctors who don't."

We are in a time where everyone is talking about AI.

For those familiar with hype cycles, you understand where we are now. Not a day goes by without someone being concerned or wanting to see more of AI - and then there's a lot else to write about - which explains the hype. It's about the Spinning Jenny. It's about finding one's context. And I think it's about competence supply, competence development, continuous education - and, not least, someone else recognizing the value in their role.

When faced with complexity, we have two choices: to trust or to take control.

In most organizations, the latter happens. It leads to more administrators and more strategists - whose efforts increase complexity and drive development in the wrong direction.

Look at healthcare. But not just there.

I did a little digging a few years ago. After reading countless articles about shortages of this or that, I decided to check if it's true. I looked at three years - when we had about 8 million inhabitants in Sweden, 9 million, and then 10 million - modest percentage increases in healthcare recipients. There was a certain growth between these, as there were 26 years between the first two years and then only 13 years to the third. The number of nurses increased from 31,000 to 70,000 to 135,000, and the number of doctors at the same time went from 8,500 to 24,000 to 50,000 - a doubling in both cases for each additional million inhabitants, and in half the time between the last two.

If we extrapolate the curves, in just another 7 years, we would need 270,000 nurses and 100,000 doctors. Everyone understands the absurdity of that. And if we genuinely feel that way - yes, then I understand that we think we have a shortage. Between the first two time points, we also reduced the number of hospital beds to one-fifth. Then we haven't looked at the number of administrative personnel! And as a disclaimer, we don't need to scrutinize the numbers, just acknowledge that even if they are close to the truth, it's still a significant acceleration.

How does this come about?

We add a few factors.

You don't need to know many people working in public to understand a few things:

• The digitization we undergo personally in our private lives, we leave at the door when we go to work.
• We have an enormous technical debt that not only hampers - but complicates - and has a negative effect that we need to compensate for.
• We still produce loads of information that we don't have time to extract value from - and it increases exponentially with new inputs - and also the documentation from all administration.
• We administer lots of things we didn't administer before - not saying it shouldn't be done - possibly that it could be done differently.
• At the same time, lots of new demands emerge, and the needs are insatiable - regardless of the number of inhabitants we have.

I come back to Johan and his statement:

"AI will not replace doctors, but doctors who use AI will outcompete doctors who don't."

If we replace doctors with "person," we get:

"AI will not replace people, but people who use AI will outcompete people who don't."

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The same activity has different values for the individual and the organization. Where the individual wants secure livelihood and control over their existence, the organization wants to streamline time and cost. We have seen lots of efficiencies throughout history - especially those linked to major technological leaps - like how we moved from the fields and sat in the tractor instead.

I think it was Bodil Jönsson who noted that our household appliances, like dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, and washing machines, have saved us 1.5 hours of work per day - but we are quick to create new tasks and needs that fill that time. Humans are clever that way. Even if the pay for working in the fields in agricultural societies was minimal, the work was slow and costly compared to how fewer people could perform the same task with a tractor.

The tractor, AI, or dishwasher may have a high initial cost, but they soon pay off and cost almost nothing afterward. The same robot can also perform new tasks through a simple update, which can be applied to several robots simultaneously for the same result. We humans, on the other hand, are complex and contribute to increased complexity. That's where humans become a bottleneck.

The roles and professions that will be valuable tomorrow are those where humans contribute more than they cost and also do not hinder development. Compare manual tasks with cognitive ones - or routine tasks with creative ones. Manual and routine tasks can and should be automated, while cognitive and creative tasks drive development forward and still require human abilities.

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Further analyses also show that many skills and knowledge are being turned over faster than we can create new educational programs. If the approach to meeting needs is a reactive action and all strategies are only aimed at solving the challenges we already face, we will only push the problems ahead.

To truly be successful, we need to, to a greater extent, develop the ability to learn and relearn - before the acquisition of specific knowledge. Here, the school and education system have a significant transformation to undergo.

I, like many of you listening, have tested both ChatGPT and MidJourney, or other AI tools that create images. Quickly, you understand the power of the simple prompts used to inspire AI. But you also quickly realize that you can create very sophisticated prompts that, in turn, provide better precision in desired results versus actual results. Those who become skilled in this will also outperform or compete with the less skilled. The journey has only just begun. Learn prompts!

So, if we're going to address the competence supply issue, we should avoid tackling complexity by adding more people who create additional complexity. Instead, we should address complexity with tools that simplify it and extract value from complexity - just as AI can do if used correctly.

That doesn't mean we don't need personnel - but I genuinely believe that just like those who went to the fields in agriculture eventually learned to appreciate the tractor, the same applies to other tools that simplify. The challenge that it creates problems and concerns with new innovations and changed work methods is rooted in something entirely different and needs to be solved with completely different tools.

Futurist Alvin Toffler argued (freely translated) that the illiterates of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read or write but rather those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. It is clear that he refers to an increased ability to understand that knowledge and truths change, and we need to be open to learning new things.

We listen to Johan again and think person instead of a doctor:

"AI will not replace people, but people who use AI will outcompete people who don't."

Learn to prompt.

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In the project BRIGHT (Beyond tRansformative dIGitalisation of HealTh clusters) we have for two years worked with our ecosystems to find tools and services that will transform the actor's performance and competitiveness. It has become obvious that the adoption of AI will be a game changer.