Meet Julia Kocher!

Video Transcript

Morghan Jones 0:05 Hello, everyone, my name is Morghan Jones and I'm a member from Cohort 10. And I will have the wonderful opportunity to interview Julia Kocher from Cohort 9, about their Envision 2040 project.

Julia Kocher 0:18 Hi, Morgan, thank you for having me.

Morghan Jones 0:16 Hi, Julia. It's a wonderful opportunity to talk to you today about your project. So we have a few questions for you today. And the first question is, why is Envision 2040 an important project,

Julia Kocher 0:35 I think it's important because it really gives us an insight into what life will look like in 2040, and then how we prepare for that life in the future. And we did this through three main lenses, which were advancement in technology, inclusion, and then human interaction. And doing this project really allowed me to see how overlapping and interconnected all of those three were, which really shows how important each of them is for the future. I really liked this project, because we were able to incorporate the two projects of the last two cohorts into this one, which were embracing change and digital transformation. And we really looked at how we can do those things in the future of 2040. Going a little bit more in depth about each of the three lenses, it's clear that advancements technology will be prevalent in the future, because it is on an exponential curve. And we can clearly see that today. And we tried to look at how technological capabilities will change and affect our daily lives in the future and how we can react to that. And then the second one was inclusion, which I think is a word that most people are familiar with today, because it is becoming more important. And also, we'll just continue to do that in the future. So we tried to look at how diverse 2040 will be, which will include people from all over the world that we're interacting with, and people just with many different backgrounds. And we really just tried to focus on what to do now until 2040. And then from 2040 on in order to establish a more inclusive workplace, and then hopefully, that would translate to just the world in general. And then the last topic we talked about was human interaction, because human interaction may be different and a little bit affected because of technology. So we tried to explore how humans will communicate and how those face-to-face interactions and how those relationships might be changed with technology.

Morghan Jones 2:25 Thank you, Julia, for the response. I really liked how you talked about human interactions, and I appreciate it. My next question for you today is what is the insight that you have gotten in exploring this topic.

Julia Kocher 2:40 So part of the project that I mainly worked on was kind of exploring the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence, we've tried to look at how to prepare for the human level of artificial intelligence and kind of what superintelligence means. And I think probably the most important thing I learned was that artificial intelligence is not enough to overtake humans, because there are so many things that computers can't do that humans can. So like they can't think on their own or be programmed to do so. They can't be creative, and other things like that, which makes soft skills and the things that make humans even more important for the future. And then some of the soft skills that I talked about in the module of our project, were creativity, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, leadership, cultural intelligence, and then having a growth mindset, which is really important for adaptation into the future. And then I feel like just overall, it really showed me that humans should not be afraid of artificial intelligence. And instead, we should just focus on harnessing our unique abilities that make us us and just that will allow us to be best prepared and most successful in 2040.

Morghan Jones 3:55 Thank you for that response, as well. Um, as a computer scientist, I don't like artificial technology. So I love how you said that we should harness and embrace that. And thank you. Our next question is, where are you going to do to prepare for the future?

Julia Kocher 4:16 Yeah, so in general, I feel like a lot of these topics just come back around to being human and just doing things that robots or technology cannot do. And I was really able to see how all three topics of the lenses kind of interact, interact with each other and overlap. As you can even tell from the part that I worked on. It kind of was under one sub section, but really, engulf, all three of them. But I would say overall, I'm going to try to work on my soft skills the most in the future, because I feel like they're going to be most important in 2040 because computers will be able to do a lot of the other things and more technical skills that we are kind of usually focusing on more in today's society. So I guess I'm just trying to focus on relationships with others my communication skills and just really again, I know I'm being repetitive but this is important, just doing the things that computers can't do, because that's what make us special and unique.

Morghan Jones 5:11 Yes, that's what makes humans, humans. Well, thank you so much. You answer all the questions perfectly, gave us good response about your project and I'm so excited to see what you and Cohort 9 would be like your finishing project! And thank you again for speaking with me.

Julia Kocher 5:30 Thank you so much for having me. Have a good day. You too.