Imagine a world where tasks are assigned in a company by a sophisticated AI (Artifical intelligence) that instead of user preferences for certain employees use an elaborate system of staff selection? It sounds improbable and far-fetched, but is actually real now!
Imagine a very complex engineering project that has multiple areas of work and and work delegation outside of your expertise -- you are the team leader and are a material engineer specialist (Yeh that's what you know and trained -- but now you are the boss) when it comes to electrical issues you are less comfortable on the best employees and most efficient method of doing the job...guess what there is an intelligent system available TODAY for that.
A few months ago I was reading about Ocado that can fill 90% of a grocery order in less than 5 minutes -- while a human would require 30 minutes (after some serious training...) This is not only a very repetitive task it's boring and subject to lots of error, while the robot doesn't get bored and works 24/7 -- great for these night owls who order at 2 am.
What I am getting at here is that humans are quickly being replaced on the workspace. Until now the executive suite thought that their jobs were secured, but I think that this is a false premise. Too many times I observed absolutely stupid actions by CEO/CFO/COO that had less to do about the business and more about the ex-suites own comfort -- and politics.
The number of jobs that are going to take a hit is large. The first will be the medical profession, simply because continual health monitoring is just around the corner (almost here with the iWatch 3) so that medical smart system will be able to analyze hundreds of data points that no doctor can evaluate. Today's medical profession is like submarine drivers -- very few input that leads to certain conclusions. Imagine having 1,000 datapoints over a 100 day period. For a computer that's nothing for a human its impossible, the human will reject some data, he has too, the human brain has limited bandwidth. Moreover, health care costs are rising and the best way to reduce medical costs is to prevent illness before it becomes a problem, and IA can do that rather well (apparently)
Taxi drivers are on their way out -- give it a few years and most decisions will be taken away from them too (in the name of efficiency)
Accounting profession since its too easy to replace rules with systems -- already 80% of all bills are sent electronically..
Mid-level management, secretarial staff is already going out of fashion a
Capital markets have long decided that the way forward is digital -- trading rooms have never been so busy, but the trader population is shrinking -- back and middle office too is getting wiped out!
Could we be seeing the end of work? I don't know but it doesn't look good, and I don't see any profession (aside from scientists) that have a role that an AI cannot do better.
Somewhat depressing if you think that we mostly define ourselves by our work
Imagine a very complex engineering project that has multiple areas of work and and work delegation outside of your expertise -- you are the team leader and are a material engineer specialist (Yeh that's what you know and trained -- but now you are the boss) when it comes to electrical issues you are less comfortable on the best employees and most efficient method of doing the job...guess what there is an intelligent system available TODAY for that.
A few months ago I was reading about Ocado that can fill 90% of a grocery order in less than 5 minutes -- while a human would require 30 minutes (after some serious training...) This is not only a very repetitive task it's boring and subject to lots of error, while the robot doesn't get bored and works 24/7 -- great for these night owls who order at 2 am.
What I am getting at here is that humans are quickly being replaced on the workspace. Until now the executive suite thought that their jobs were secured, but I think that this is a false premise. Too many times I observed absolutely stupid actions by CEO/CFO/COO that had less to do about the business and more about the ex-suites own comfort -- and politics.
The number of jobs that are going to take a hit is large. The first will be the medical profession, simply because continual health monitoring is just around the corner (almost here with the iWatch 3) so that medical smart system will be able to analyze hundreds of data points that no doctor can evaluate. Today's medical profession is like submarine drivers -- very few input that leads to certain conclusions. Imagine having 1,000 datapoints over a 100 day period. For a computer that's nothing for a human its impossible, the human will reject some data, he has too, the human brain has limited bandwidth. Moreover, health care costs are rising and the best way to reduce medical costs is to prevent illness before it becomes a problem, and IA can do that rather well (apparently)
Taxi drivers are on their way out -- give it a few years and most decisions will be taken away from them too (in the name of efficiency)
Accounting profession since its too easy to replace rules with systems -- already 80% of all bills are sent electronically..
Mid-level management, secretarial staff is already going out of fashion a
Capital markets have long decided that the way forward is digital -- trading rooms have never been so busy, but the trader population is shrinking -- back and middle office too is getting wiped out!
Could we be seeing the end of work? I don't know but it doesn't look good, and I don't see any profession (aside from scientists) that have a role that an AI cannot do better.
Somewhat depressing if you think that we mostly define ourselves by our work
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