Spending hours typing away at emails, making sure the tone treads the right balance of not too blunt or too casual (or that you’ve not sent a single typo to a boss), could soon be a thing of the past; The London School of Economics has warned that the days of the keyboard are numbered.
The science specialist university, together with Jabra, studied how voice technology will impact the future of work, and the scientists predicted that by 2028, voice AI will become the default way of working.
In the next few years, the study says workers will be talking to their phones or laptops, instead of typing, thanks to the explosion of AI.
“By the time Gen Alpha enters the workforce, AI will be fully embedded, and their work will be spoken long before it’s ever typed,” Paul Sephton, global head of brand communications at Jabra tells Fortune.
In the not-so-distant future, he predicts that typing will be used only as an afterthought. “They’ll talk to write, then type to refine,” he explains. “And they’ll direct work, not just draft it. Typing becomes editing, not thinking. The first draft of the future is spoken.”
“This isn’t the distant future,” the report cautioned. “This is the next generation of how we will interact with Generative AI. It’s powered by voice, and it’s coming sooner than we think.”
It’s not just Gen Alpha who are set to win from the shift to voice tech too
Born from 2010 onwards, the oldest of the Gen Alpha cohort is set to join the workforce by 2030. So in theory, they may never know what life at the office was like before voice technology came along. But, of course, they’re not the only generation that’ll benefit from dictating work instead of typing it.
Sephton explains that the shift is coming because “speaking replaces typing because it matches how we think: fast, iterative, conversational.” Essential, convenience and efficiency always win. For workers, both current and future, it’ll mean being able to work more creatively.
“Our best ideas often don’t happen when we’re sitting at our desk,” Sephton says, adding that being able to have an AI teammate instead of needing to stop to jot ideas down will help capture every lightbulb moment better.
It’s also a huge enabler for inclusion, he says. For parents on the go, for example, it’s perhaps easier to juggle talking on the phone for work when your hands are needed, than having to type.
Voice tech in the workplace: A threat to productivity, inclusion and accountability
Of course, an audio and video conferencing company may be optimistic that the future of work involves their tech. So Fortune also tapped separate professors to weigh in.
Fabrice Cavarretta, associate professor of management at ESSEC Business School isn’t totally convinced. “Voice notes will not fully replace email for several reasons,” she says, adding that reading text is faster than listening to audio and more efficient when searching for keywords. “Scanning an email beats playing a voice message.”
But while he thinks those on the receiving end of emails and messages will continue to favor reading text over listening to their peers’ thoughts, Cavarretta agrees that voice technology could supersede typing for those sending the messages.
“My anticipation is that voice will increasingly serve as an input method but be systematically transcribed into text within organizations using AI tools,” Cavarretta adds. So we will use voice tech to have AI write the emails, but they’ll be converted to text and read as a traditional email—sort of rendering keyboards useless as predicted by LSE and Jabra.
And that’s a key differentiator. Dr Bertrand Audrins, assistant professor in human resource management and organizational behavior at EHL Hospitality Business School warns that unless voice notes are specifically transcribed to text, they can accidentally make the sender absolved of “responsibility and accountability.” When someone sends lots of voice notes on Slack or Teams, for example, it can be hard to trace back exactly what was said and when.
“With voice notes, you lose a part of the ‘set in stone’ dimension you get with written text,” Audrins explains. “If you need to reference an old decision months later, it’s a lot harder to browse through audio than to search through emails or documents.”
Plus, the very nature of recording your live stream of thoughts means a lot of editing later down the line.
If you’re sending as a casual voice note, it may mean re-recording to get the tone and message just right. Even if it’s being transcribed, it’ll still need someone to cut out the “umms” and any tangents. For non-native speakers or those with speaking impediments, Audrins says it’s an even bigger hassle.
And ironically, what’s supposed to make work easier might just make it harder. “The sheer fact that voice notes are easy to record and share can represent a threat to productivity, as this can lead to a communication overload.”