Future of Work - AI, Business and You

You’re sitting at your desk, sipping your coffee and dreaming of your next vacation. Just as you think about that, reality kicks in and suddenly you realize that’s the same dream you’ve had for the past few years! But you never did. Partially because you can’t afford it with your current compensation, and your current skills aren’t that valued in the market anymore. You’re obviously not done with the weekly data report, and the system is waiting your input so that it can process next steps in the workflow.

A cog in a machine dreaming of taking off to a beautiful location.

Does this strange story feel familiar?

So many jobs today assume repetitive tasks or better put - predictable tasks. It’s not the first time in history, neither the last time, but we’re certainly starting to see the end of them. Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are taking recurring runs at managing all routine activities.

Widespread impact of intelligent technology

There’s certainly a business case for it. From an economical standpoint, it’s not hard to imagine how increased productivity through intelligent technology can sway many owners and executives to adopt it at the expense of human resources. We’re looking at higher profit margins. There’s no need for breaks, vacation, team building, sleep or food. Otherwise, maintenance cost for technology has become  mostly affordable. We expect and pay for reliability, 24/7 support and backup plans.

On the other hand according to the World Economic Forum, by 2020 over 5 million jobs will be lost in 15 major developed and emerging economies due to technology advancement and that will never be substituted. That number is a result of 7 million displaced jobs and only 2 million gained as a result of technological change (Oxford Martin School in 2013 predicted 50% of the US is under threat to be automated).

Until now, technology used to disrupt certain/specific employment sectors at a time (i.e. the steam engine or the telegraph), others were created instead providing an alternative for those professionals who remained without a job to up-skill for a new one.

Today, technology is impacting multiple industries at the same time. Some examples include the food industry (i.e. automated gourmet food preparation burgers - Momentum Machines), entertainment industry (i.e. Kinect optical motion sensor),  cloud robotics (i.e. Echo from Amazon - valued at a potential $1 trillion business), or Agriculture (agro-machines working automatically based on GPS data, or machines selecting strawberries by level of ripe/determined by subtle color variation).

Martin Ford, in his famous “Rise of the Robots” book, writes about the hourglass-shaped workforce and income distribution as a result of significant number of jobs being automated. The people that benefit the most are either using the robots or building them. Workers are being displaced by machines and are being pushed upwards if they can up-skill through training or otherwise downwards.

Myopia is a serious business

While taken altogether, one might say that there are more benefits than downsides to automation. It’s easy to focus only on how technology enables progress, better profit margins, and stronger market shares.

What we fail to see is that the people that will be left without a job have lost half (considering unemployment support) or more of their purchasing power in the process. The same people that companies will send into unemployment are the ones that eventually won’t be able to afford their products and services.

Can’t think of a better counter-example than Henry Ford that more than doubled the minimum hourly wage because he wanted all of his employees to afford Ford’s Model T.

Into their pockets and back into the company’s accounts!

What can you do, as a business, to prepare for the new era of AI?

That’s probably one of the most strategic questions that you can ask yourself as a decision maker in your business.

First off don’t be in a hurry to think that all of the AI technologies will make it to the mainstream. Some will and you should take note and start thinking automation is the name of the game in today's marketplace. For instance, if you are in the manufacturing business, certainly you’ve heard of 3D printing and you can expect serious implications due to it. 

Secondly, you’ll be challenged to create the right environment for man-machine collaboration. Take that as a leadership challenge! Rather than completely eliminating all human work, most experts agree that automation will push people to work side by side with robots, algorithms or other machines. Technology will keep its main purpose of enhancing human abilities instead of replacing them.

Thirdly, while current working AI is focused on (quasi-)autonomous decision making based on access to loads of data, it’s good to remember that creativity and innovation are still products of the human mind. The market isn’t going to stop changing, adapting or evolving, which is why people (for the foreseeable future) are extremely valuable not just as resources but also as catalyst factors for your business’ growth.

Lastly, purely from a business rationale standpoint, as I mentioned above: you need people to buy your products and services, so make sure you hire some of them!