The future is bright, the future is hybrid.

Standing in a queue at my local station to collect my train tickets from the self-service machines, I notice the person in front of me becoming rather irate when their tickets wouldn’t print as the machine broke down. It appears that at mine along with other smaller stations machines are rapidly replacing people as it is more efficient and cost effective, but what happens when the machines are broken?

We are left with a pretty serious problem.

Luckily, on two counts, I had enough time visit the ticket desk and speak to the one customer service agent that happened to be coming on shift. She was incredibly helpful in sorting my ticket, explaining this was a problem almost every day and telling me that many of her colleagues had moved to other roles in the business or left completely as slowly but surely replacing humans, and she does have a point. 

Is it really more efficient though? Journalist and BBC broadcaster Jenni Murray timed how long it took to buy the same items at both staffed and self-service machines in eight major spots around London. In every instance, the staff checkout was faster and more practical. But organisations aren’t looking at it that way. Having customers put in some extra effort means less overhead. At airport check-ins the price to process a passenger through the self-service electronic terminal is 0.12p which is a fraction of what it costs the airline with a staffed desk at ￡2.30 per person.

According to Oxford University analysis, close to half of all jobs will be taken over by machines or “robots” (also known as artificial intelligence, AI ) in the next 25 years, and a predicted loss of up to 47% within 50 years. So those helpful people working in customer service could well be out of a job soon enough, with commuters and tourists having to rely purely on the machines. Having said that I think it’s both a companies’ jobs to provide clear training development and upskilling of employees if automation is likely to affect their job and arguably it’s also the employee’s responsibility to elect to learn to remain current (with the latest studies showing many of us now will have 5 careers, not 5 jobs). You hear talk of horizontal development, enabling employees with the skills to do new jobs, and vertical development allowing workers to increase their levels of authority, liked to the rapid change in the working culture partnering with “machines” can strategically see people adapt their skill sets to new role; some of which we don’t even know exist yet!

Ultimately a workforce utilising technology and enabling engaged employees will become more competitive in the market. I heard someone say recently ‘with Technology changing at the pace it is soon the only differentiator in our business will be people’ and I don’t think they are wrong. 

Just look at rail, shortly after the end of World War II, the American workforce totalled 44 million. About 1.35 million workers were employed in the railroad industry. The revenue ton-miles of freight moved by Class I railroads that year totalled 655 billion dollars. By 2014, Class I railroads carried 1.85 trillion ton-miles, an increase of 182%, while employing only 187,000 workers, a reduction of 86% since 1947. Because of this staggering improvement in productivity, the inflation-adjusted price for moving a ton-mile of freight has fallen by 55% since 1947, a drop saving shippers about 90 billion dollars. 

I don’t think anyone should be alarmed about the prospect of AI working with or taking over human roles. The best way to look at AI is not from a machine versus human perspective but more from a human PLUS machine, so the goal of AI isn’t replacement but augmentation. This is the future of work: enabling humans to partner with high performing Artificial Intelligence to solve difficult problems, creating new possibilities, generating jobs and transforming businesses. The “robot” or machine after all still needs an operator, a maintenance technician, a manufacture, a software manager, a sales manager and quite possibly a trainer too! According to The Gaudian, AI would have created 7 million jobs in healthcare, education and science by 2037. The robotic revolution isn’t some sudden futuristic shock that is there to threaten society. It is in fact something that has been around for hundreds of years, as far back as the first industrial revolution and we are now entering the 4th! 

 A recent study from Gartner research states that while 1.8 million jobs may be lost by 2020, 2.3 million new jobs will be created. Our own personal hard drive of increased training will ultimately improve our skills in these new roles within the working environment. The future is in our hands as much as the machines, as they say change is tough, irrelevance is harder!

I think we can safely say our future is more “Short Circuit” than it is “The Terminator”.

If you want to know more why not read our latest thought leadership “human to hybrid” where we focus on Digital, there are two more due this year on People and on Data. 

https://content.capitapeoplesolutions.co.uk/insights/wp-human-to-hybrid

Pete