Parker has four decades of experience in the technology field. He spoke at ERDA’s quarterly luncheon and annual meeting at Oakwood Country Club.

“He currently serves as vice president of learning innovation at Public Strategies, where he leads initiatives that combine generation AI and learning science to create personalized, transformative learning experiences,” Marcie Mack, ERDA executive director said. “His work helps organizations reimagine workforce development and elevate human potential across diverse industries.”

Parker likened the AI boom to changes in technology that have happened before, using as an example how people used to dig holes with sticks, then shovels and finally huge earth-moving equipment.

“It’s a familiar, disruptive tech lifecycle we’re about to see, but it’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen …,” he said. “We’ve seen this tech shift, these disruptive changes happen many times in history, and the pattern has a lot of similarity as it unfolds.

“Nobody digs any holes of consequence or moves dirt of any size by hand anymore, because the technology revolutionized that activity,” Parker said. “So in that sense, it’s very familiar. We’ve seen this before, and it has unfolded across these multiple domains of human activities. Muscle was one of the early ones. We’d harness animals. We figured out levers, the invention of the wheel. All of those helped us multiply our muscle power, but then we also learned about energy and how to manipulate it.”

Technological advances

He outlined the steps seen during a major technological advance.

“These are the kind of the steps that unfold as we are marking through, exploring, creating, productizing, delivering a new, disruptive technology. In this sense, AI is no different,” he said. “You start over the breakthrough, then you have early applications as it turns into a product, starts to scale up. Then you start to see the disruptions, the old way, the shovel jobs, those get deleted, destroyed. The new way starts to take hold. So pain is felt. This is kind of where we are at the moment with AI, it’s rapid growth in market adoption.”

As the disruptions continue and people recognize the dangers, that’s when regulations start, Parker said.

“You don’t know what to regulate until the dangers have manifested themselves, so regulation always lags, because you don’t know what to regulate or how to protect until the dangers have started to present themselves,” he said. “So that’s coming, not quite here yet, and then it becomes more of a utility and integration into the economy, into all aspects of our lives, and that’s part of what’s going to make AI so impactful is it can touch pretty much every dimension of the economy, our technology, our lives.”

What makes the AI revolution different, he said, is how it is affecting our lives.

“We showed all of those areas where technology magnifies or scales human capability in the past,” Parker said. “This one’s magnifying human cognition. We’ve never had anything like that before. We’ve never had anything that can can scale our reasoning, creativity, communication, learning.

“It’s extending your abilities in ways that otherwise are just not possible. But again, it’s human cognition that is being amplified with this revolution, and all at once. It’s not like each one of these is a separate thread. It’s happening all simultaneously.”

‘How do we react?’

Looking at the past can help us in future, Parker said.

“Let’s think about how do we react?” he said. “One thing I love about studying history is it can provide insights that may be useful for how you react to a novel situation in the future. One thing that has definitely worked in the past is asking the right questions.

“Right now, one of the questions that a lot of people are asking is, ‘Is my job safe, is AI going to take over my job. Do I need to be opposing this? How’s it going to affect my company?’”

That shouldn’t be the only response, Parker said.

“They’re fair questions, but they tend to produce fear instead of really thoughtful, opportunistic action,” he said. “So instead of purely fear-based questions, here’s one good question, how much more capable can I become with AI? And then, what will I do with that capability? That’s one of the really important things we should ask as individuals that I would encourage you to ask as leaders of your organizations, how can it make you more productive? How can it change your business? How can it improve what you do?”

AI can help people and businesses become more productive, Parker said.

“A lot of us are using it for productivity, like any big document I get, I’ll now run it through one of the AI’s, give me a summary, use this lens, ask these questions, and I can now query it instead of reading,” he said. “It’s a shortcut. Sometimes I get burned by that, but it’s so much more productive.

“I’ve changed my workflow now that when things come in, they run through this process … What used to be five-step process, I eliminated two or three of the steps … I’ve cut time out, but it’s now woven into your daily workflow. The level up above that is more of automation, where I’m not getting it bits and bytes at a time, it’s just automating it for me, and the result, the data comes in, the results come out, and then I get to react to it.”

Business leaders need to act like the conductor of an orchestra, he said.

“You’ve got an orchestra filled with ultra-talented cyber in this case, cyber entities that are probably more talented than the conductor on a particular instrument, on a particular narrow skill, but the conductor is the one that has the vision for what we’re going to do,” Parker said. “They’re the one that judges the performance of the orchestra, and the conductor is the one that really owns that whole experience and all the elements that it takes.

“I think that’s an apt metaphor for how we want to contemplate our role going forward. You can be one of the orchestra members, but you’re going to cost more and probably not be as talented as the other members in the orchestra. We’re going to need people that still retain that top level understanding … so be the conductor.”

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