March of the machines
THE Saudi Arabians caused a stir last year by giving citizenship to Sophia, one of the world’s most sophisticated robots and the first to be given a nationality. Sophia, who doesn’t wear a hijab, is modelled on Audrey Hepburn. She uses Artificial Intelligence (AI), visual data processing and facial recognition to make contact with humans and will, it is claimed, become cleverer over time as her wiring analyses conversations to allow her to improve responses.
Scary, or what? Created by Hanson Robotics, Sophia was designed to be a companion to the elderly in care homes or to work as a guide at events or in parks.
The Danes are also streets ahead in the AI game: the Nordea bank has ‘chatbots’ called Nova and Nora which deal with everyday customer questions.
Amazon is testing Amazon Scout, a delivery-man style robot despatching packages to customers in Washington while China’s mega online retailer, JD, is close to operating fully automated warehouses with robots running the show.
As someone wise once said, the future is already here but it is not evenly distributed yet. These are just a few of the examples of the types of robots and AI applications that exist, and which, according to the doomsayers, will eventually gobble up our jobs.
Some of the predictions are deeply worrying. Recent research from the McKinsey global Institute forecasts that 30pc of all existing jobs – that’s 800m people – will be wiped out by automation by 2030.
Others say this is a conservative estimate, that up to half of all work as we know it will disappear. As well as transforming blue-collar production work, AI is also making thousands of jobs in the legal, accounting and marketing sectors redundant.
Or so they say. A new report from PA Consulting, ‘People and machines: from hype to reality’, takes the contrarian view. It claims that all the media hype that ‘robots will take our jobs’ is hugely exaggerated. No surprise there. PA argues the reverse. It says that UK companies adopting new technologies are already hiring more people than firing, and that the tech shift is creating new roles while old jobs become more fulfilling.
For example, robots are now being used to dispense medicines in hospitals thus freeing time for pharmacists to concentrate on more vital issues.
On production lines, engineers who would have operated the machines can now switch to oversight over the process.
PA’s Katharine Henley says the research, based on extensive interviews with 797 companies, showed work has also improved as a consequence of emerging technologies, and that more new jobs are being created.
Automation brings freedom. If introduced properly, using the latest in AI or machinelearning gives people more control over their time. That means more time spent on more interesting learning and developmental work.
There are jobs that a Sophia or Amazon Scout will never be able to do. They are the more complex roles, like being a systems leader in the NHS, someone who has to collaborate with many different and sophisticated functions at one time.
And the safest jobs of all? Ironically, they are the ones that careers advisers would once have steered people away from as being the most insecure. These are the creative, more emotional roles of artist or athlete, music composer or chef, ones which machines can’t replicate.
For now, anyway.
Buyers for Bombardier
BOMBARDIER’S Belfast bombshell could not have come at a worse time with the uncertainties over Brexit.
The five Belfast plants employ around 4,000 people directly, and another 12,000 jobs are involved in the supply chain. Airbus is the most obvious potential buyer because Bombardier also makes the wings for the C Series plane, which is selling well.
Spirit Aerosystems, Triumph and gKN, less likely now because it’s owned by Melrose, have also been mooted.
Other options include private equity bids but those canny financiers might be put off by the pension fund liabilities which are bound to be substantial. If the government wants to show it has even the semblance of an industrial strategy, or indeed a heart, Belfast is the place to start.
Depending on the order book, trade unions and managers should also be discussing a buy-out and encouraged to do so with government backing.
Everything has a price.