Are robots coming for your job? Probably.

Are robots about to overtake everything, including McDonald’s? 

“In my professional work lifetime, do I think I’m going to get my Big Mac from a robot?” asked Dan Cahill of HSD Metrics in Covington. “I’m 100 percent sure I will. Because there will not be another option. There won’t be people.” 

This story is part of our latest super issue, which examines the future of work in Northern Kentucky. Click here to learn more.

This likelihood, the CEO of the workforce data company told LINK nky, will be just one example of a flashpoint created from change and disruption, spurred by everything from technology to generational changes. 

So what will work look like in Northern Kentucky? “When you start to drop in things like transportation and workforce, I don’t know that anyone can give you any sort of projection even about how these things are going to work,” Cahill said. 

Futurist Christopher Rice said that, if Northern Kentucky can get really good at systems thinking, the region is in a favorable position to respond to the demographic, climate and geopolitical challenges ahead. But, Rice said, there’s not one specific factor that’s going to change the way we work, because multiple challenges are arising at the same time.

“We’re in the midst of a polycrisis, and that means that any meaningful forecast about the future has to take those multiple trends and drivers and think about how they interact at a systems level,” Rice said. 

Interested in hearing more from futurist Christopher Rice? He is speaking at our next Community Conversation about the future of work in Northern Kentucky. Find more information at RSVP here.

Here at LINK nky, we like a good challenge, so we set out to find out what the future holds for work in Northern Kentucky. How will tariffs, unemployment and the evolution of AI change the way we work? How will the way we get to work change? What about how we’re trained? What about the workforce itself? 

As much as Cahill says nobody knows what’s coming, he may be better equipped than most to make these predictions because his company collects and analyzes data that looks into everything from generational differences in workplace values to how companies are planning for the future. 

Generations and AI

The baby boom generation, Cahill said, had a very traditional sense of workplace values: Boomers expected to start a career with one company, work up the chain into a high-paying management job, then retire. They want to work in an office and expect younger workers to go through the challenges they did as new employees before earning higher salaries and better hours. 

Then you’ve got millennials, which started out as a more disruptive generation until waves of financial crises molded their workplace values to be more traditional. That is, with the exception of working from home. Millennials want that because, for those who did have children, day care is a sudden impossibility.  

Gen Zers, Cahill said, like to go to the office, but they don’t want management roles, and they don’t want traditional values in a workplace. 

Even outside of the office, the differences will be obvious as time goes on. 

“The millennials are probably the last folks who want to live in the suburbs or can even afford that housing,” Cahill said. 

While millennials are having kids, they are having them at much lower rates than previous generations. “People aren’t making babies, and it started with the Millennials,” Cahill said. “So there is a shortage of bodies. There’s probably 3 million fewer people working this generation.” 

How can Northern Kentucky use that systemic thinking to prepare? 

Rice, the futurist, said training is going to be key as the workforce ages. “We have to think about supporting, training and retaining older workers,” he said.

That’s where AI comes in. “Companies paused in their hiring because they said, ‘Now wait a minute, before we go hire anyone else, can AI fix this?’” Cahill said.

The problem, he said, is that AI won’t actually be able to solve those kinds of problems for three to five years. 

“I think nobody knows what is going to happen now,” Cahill said. “It’s a Molotov cocktail of change and disruption, from technology to generational differences.” 

During those years, though, Cahill said there will be a gradual digestion of change and disruption. “We’ll get back to work, and we’ll grow and we’ll continue to solve things incrementally.” he said. 

It’s possible, Rice said, that generative AI might not end up having a huge impact beyond software, customer service and marketing. “However, other forms of AI could lead to some significant advances in robotics, agricultural drones and medical advances,” he said. 

What other factors may play in? 

“By 2040, there will not be a majority ethnicity in our country,” Cahill said. “All of the evolution of these different ethnicities will come together, so I don’t think people can predict how this will affect work.” 

Education and training

There’s also the fight we’re seeing at the university level for students. 

“The four-year degree isn’t what it once was,” Cahill said. “Now kids are looking at the trades and other alternatives.” 

What the public decides to do about funding colleges and universities will have a major impact on the quality of our workforce, Rice said. 

“I’ve never seen a time of more budgetary and strategic uncertainty in higher ed than I see right now,” Rice said. “One of the U.S.’s great engines of innovation and competitiveness globally has been our system of higher education, so that’s going to be a big impact.” 

One thing that would help, he said, is for the state of Kentucky to step up to continue to support institutions like Northern Kentucky University and the Kentucky Community & Technical College System, of which Gateway is a part. 

Training departments within companies are likely to see change, too. Cahill said he was talking to a local Fortune 500 company that has a huge training department. 

“We figure in a year all of that will go away and it will be AI based,” he said. “As training companies bubble up, people are more or less figuring that, rather than training, they will just have an AI assistant as a regular part of their job.” 

Not only that, but Rice said AI is having a big impact on being able to verify whether learners are actually acquiring the needed skills. He said he saw someone use Perplexity AI’s Comet browser to complete a compliance training without actually watching the videos that included the training in them. 

“So it’s a big challenge,” Rice said. “My general impression is that there’s going to be a big push for more in-person training and assessment where employers can see employees and job applicants actually prove their skills.” 

What does all of this mean for the future of work? 

“The nature of the generations accepting totally different principles and values; the technology; and then the nature of how employers will need to approach these individuals” are all things that will shape what our future looks like here. 

With companies looking at not having enough people anyway, will they look to technology to help fill those voids? 

“That’s what will shape everything else you’re talking about,” Cahill said. 

Cahill said most large companies have one business plan that is their normal SOP and another that includes some of the changes we’re talking about. “It’s going to be a while before companies will be able to operate with one business plan,” Cahill said. 

For Northern Kentucky, it’ll come down to the local community and leaders, Rice said: 

“Leaders in NKY will have to work closely with partners like Amazon and other AI-forward businesses to ensure the needs of the local communities and workers are taken into account during this transition.” 

Dan Cahill is a member of LINK nky’s Managing Board, which oversees the business operations at LINK but has no say in editorial matters.