Gen Alpha won’t write emails when they join the workforce in 2030—research reveals they’ll sent voice notes to their boss instead

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 audiovisual tech company 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, told Fortune. 

In the not-so-distant future, he predicts typing will be used only as an afterthought.

“They’ll talk to write, then type to refine,” he explained. “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 2025 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........

© Fortune