“Please press 1 for banking, press 2 for loans, press 3 for credit cards…..” - sounds familiar right? Yes it does. These are typically the menu options that you hear when you contact your bank’s customer care. In a different era in the past, a human would answer the phone. Now, that guy has been sacked; sacked and replaced by the “Interactive voice response system”. Will the guy ever get this job back? No, never – that job has disappeared and will never resurface again.
This is just one example among thousands, where human jobs have been lost to machines. Take
a look around you and you will see plenty of people in those jobs that are
vulnerable to automation. The “low level” or “repetitive task type” jobs are among the endangered species.
Needless to say, the future of these jobs looks bleak and these people better
upgrade their skills, else ……..
Ok, we understand that there are certain jobs vulnerable to
automation. What about those that need a considerable amount of human
intervention/intelligence? The answer to this is simple. Automation will
destroy existing jobs in phases. First, the ones that we read above, and next
will be the “currently hard to automate”
jobs, which will gradually disappear with the evolution of artificial intelligence.
As for the economy, do not be surprised to see a phase where unemployment and
the economic condition of a country may rise simultaneously. How? Businesses
will be profitable by replacing humans with technology; the efficiencies are terrific.
However, these two variables may not
continue their correlation for long. Businesses need customers and in due
course, the unemployed workforce will not have sufficient buying power. What
will happen then? No idea, please ask
the guys at Freakonomics!!!!
Opponents of change have always downplayed the power of
automation. They simply cannot acknowledge its disruptive nature. The common argument
is “you will always require human intervention, at least for the last mile”.
Maybe true, but do they realize that many jobs before the last mile will easily
disappear.
Two recent developments that should give everyone a cause
for concern are Watson and Eliza. For the uninitiated, these are high-end
technological innovations by IBM and IPsoft respectively. Watson is a Robot that
beat humans in the game of Jeopardy (a TV quiz show) and Eliza is a Blond …..(wait,
let me complete)… a blond humanoid whom you can see on your computer/device
screens and who plays the role of a service desk employee. With such serious developments,
we now have some direction as to where automation is heading.
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| Machines in a winning mood - IBM's Watson at Jeopardy |
It is very difficult to predict what the future holds. However,
it would do the human race a lot of good in being prepared before this disruptive
force sweeps us off our feet on a massive scale.
Having said all this, automation should be ideally able to
perform tasks as well as humans. Does that happen all the time – not really. Most
of us would have learnt this while reaching out to call centres. So until we
have better technologies and machine intelligence in place, you may have to
continue to press 1 for frustration, 2 for increasing blood pressure, press 3 for
banging your head on the wall.
