Robots: When will they take your job?

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Robots: When will they take your job?

March 07, 2013

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Robots are coming fast and furious, and they are after your job. Robots are not just replacing manual jobs such as assembly line workers but now they have their eyes on doctors, pilots and journalists too!

Companies are making massive investments in robots. Take Apple, they have recently announced a multi-billion dollar investment into robots to replace many of the 700,000 people involved in the production of its iPhones, iPads and Macs. Machines rather than people will make the next generations of their products. You might think why should I be worried, I am not a worker in China and I have skills and jobs that robots can’t do. I invite you to think again for a minute or so.

What we are now witnessing is a revolution that will transform our lives forever. The last time we saw something similar was during the industrial revolution when machines delivered massive productivity gains. However, that time it gave people who primarily worked on farms new job opportunities in factories. What seems to be different now is that machines will take our jobs without giving us the same level of new opportunities and jobs (unless I can't see it).

I was in Silicon Valley last week advising executives of leading tech companies on big data analytics and enterprise performance. When I was in my car from the airport to the hotel I saw Google’s ‘self-driving car’ on the freeway. I was exited to see this on the road and asked the driver to slow down so I could take a photo on my phone. When we then drove on I chatted to the driver about the car and his response was ‘Looks like Google will take my job soon!’ This conversation actually prompted me to write this piece.

What we a seeing now are ‘intelligent’ robots and machines that leverage our ever-increasing ability to analyze enormous and unstructured datasets (what we call big data analytics) to perform human jobs. Here are just a few very real examples (and there are endless others):

• Pilots: We know that autopilots have been assisting pilots to fly planes for many years. However, the latest commercial airlines are now able to fly the plane unaided. They can take off and land you safely (and arguably more safely than humans as most air disasters are down to human error). We just have to look at the military where now unmanned aircrafts (so called drone) are taking over. Fighter jet pilots will be Air Force history soon.

• Doctors: Robots are already assisting surgeons to perform operations and doctors use large-scale databases of medical information to inform their decisions. However, soon robots will be able to make a diagnosis and perform operations without human input. Robots could scan your body and then based all previous medical knowledge (as well as data on your own medical history, DNA code, etc.) make a solid diagnosis and even remove a brain tumor with better results than even the best brain surgeon could.

• Call center worker: We all know about the irritating automated answering systems in call centers that give you options and then route your call to the supposedly right person. What we are now seeing is the rise of natural language systems that are able to have a conversation with humans. IBM has developed Watson – a computer that recently challenged two of the all-time best Jeopardy! players. Without access to the Internet, Watson won the game by interpreting natural language questions and answering back after analyzing its massive data memory (that included a copy of the entire Wikipedia database). This means that when you ring any call center you will always speak to the ‘right person’ – only that the person is a robot instead.

• Journalist: A company called Narrative Science recently launched a software product that can write newspaper stories about sports games directly from the games’ statistics. The same software can now be used to automatically write an overview of a company’s business performance using information available on the web. It uses algorithms to turn the information into attractive articles. Newspapers of the future could be fully automated.

• Manual Labor: Obviously, if you do any sort of manual or lower-skilled labor you should be worried as many of those jobs could be replaced without much underlying analysis or artificial intelligence capabilities.

This leaves me with the questions – what will we do with all our time once robots take over? How will society change and function? What do you think? Are you scared? Are you excited about the potential opportunities? I am interested to hear your thoughts on this - please share this post in your network and leave a comment to generate a discussion on this important topic.

Also, feel free to follow me on Twitter and learn more about my book on the topic of data-driven decison-making: The Intelligent Company.