AI and the Future of Work
There have been a large number of articles on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, the narrative ranges from business benefits to societal concern regarding the loss of jobs.
Will we lose most of our jobs to machines? Yes.
Should we be concerned? No.
The wide-scale shift to AI will be incremental over a generation, this provides time to consider and plan for the change.
Which jobs will be first?
This largely depends on what is available and cost. The first cab off the rank is Robotic Process Automation (RPA). RPA is simply the use of software to automate processes and interfaces between systems.
The concept isn’t new, it is more a build on task automation, think scripts and macro’s with a wider scope.
Repeatable tasks or processes, effectively back-office positions will be the first impacted by RPA. At the moment, exceptions to any process will be flagged for human intervention, very much like an escalation to a team leader. Adoption won’t be limited to a functional area, it will be limited to roles based on repeatable processes.
RPA is currently being deployed into larger enterprises and forward-thinking consulting firms are building RPA practices. Generally speaking, the companies that most need to reduce the cost to serve will be the last to adopt RPA, namely medium-sized manufacturers and retailers. The reason being that they will wait until a solution is cost-effective.
Next, Knowledge Workers. This change will be more gradual. Machine Learning used in conjunction with RPA to remove repetitive tasks such as monthly reports or enable the personalisation of a direct marketing campaign.
Machine Learning is used to detect, correlate, and recognise patterns in systems, interactions and data. It can be used to effectively determine the probability of an outcome.
Sound boring? Machine Learning is currently used by Netflix to make content recommendations. Netflix estimates the value of the solution at $1B USD annually from customer retention related revenue.
Note: Effective use of RPA and Machine Learning will require clean data entered into the process being automated, a lower level of data quality will be like feeding an RPA solution junk food all day. Poor data quality will be likened to giving the solution a regular dose of hallucinogens and alcohol.
The Machine Learning bolstered RPA solution will initially streamline the role of the knowledge worker. As the Cognitive Computing capability increases, so too will the amount of workload offloaded. This solution will be able to make informed decisions through the sensing, analysis, and understanding of information collected. Furthermore, the solution will be able to adapt to a situation based on experience that will support the management of process exceptions.
Combine automation, machine learning, and cognitive computing, we have the basis of Artificial Intelligence.
What exactly is Artificial Intelligence?
This is a tricky question that has no definitive answer, first, we need to consider, what is intelligence? More reading on the definition of AI is linked at the bottom of the post.
The first industrial revolution wasn’t an overnight occurrence, it happened over approximately 80 years, the second nearly 40. Based on this trend, it could be reasoned that the next major shift will occur over a period of 20 years.
This would indicate that methods of education used from primary through to tertiary will need to change. Education that enables analytical, detailed research-based thinking may give way to creative, strategic outcome-based thinking. Furthermore, the way we measure intelligence may also change.
This post is based on current innovation combined with future possibilities. Your thoughts are always welcomed.
