Over the past few years, while applying for security and risk-related roles, I noticed a pattern that surprised me: many background screening vendors only asked for a few years of employment history, minimal address information, minimal educational verification, and returned results within one or two days. In contrast, I also noticed that industries with higher regulatory standards, such as finance and transportation, conduct far deeper checks that can span from weeks to months.
The soaring valuations of AI companies aren't just a bet on better software. They're a wager on who will control human labor in the future, according to Roman Yampolskiy, a University of Louisville computer science professor who was one of the first academics to warn about AI's risks. As artificial intelligence moves from tools to increasingly autonomous agents, Yampolskiy said markets are pricing in a radical shift: machines providing "free labor" at scale.
That doesn't mean a jobs cliff is imminent, said James Ransom, a research fellow at University College London, who studies the impact of AI on work. But it does mean the rules of entry into the job market are changing fast - and the smartest move isn't to chase prestigious titles, he said, but to understand the tasks inside those jobs, then show how you can supervise and scale AI to do them more effectively.
A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is often something that many professionals do not pay close attention to. History has shown us that even industry giants can be humbled and collapse or lose significant income when they overlook critical vulnerabilities in their preparation for crises. This can range from overconfidence in their abilities and technologies used to geopolitical unawareness. If the blind spots are not managed carefully, severe crises can be escalated, which can even threaten the future of the business.