Automation: Your job might be on the line
Since the days of Arthur C Clarke and even The Jetson’s, humans have tried to imagine what a future filled with servant robots. Now, with the advent of Siri, driverless cars and the prospect of Amazon using drones, the future is almost here.
Changes are coming more quickly than we could have imagined. ‘Automation’ will quickly take mover plenty of positions, and could change the very definition of work.
What is automation?
Automation is pretty much what you think it is: the use or introduction of automatic processes to what was previously a human activity.
Automation is already here.
Henry Ford was an early adopter of automation in our industrial history, and the development of production lines has only cemented his ideas through the introduction of hydraulics and electronics.
The next step of automation almost entirely removes human beings from the process. One of the most public examples is the race to build a driverless car - with Google, Uber and others throwing billions of dollars at a solution. The involvement of some of the world’s biggest companies clearly demonstrates that they see automation as a major part of the future economy.
Who is likely to be affected?
Okay, here’s where it gets confronting: automation is likely to take your job. And surprisingly, it looks like anyone in accounting or legal practices might be first up against the wall.
Sound far-fetched? Well, Bloomberg recently cited JPMorgan Chase & Co as an example. The banking giant recently introduced software to analyse and approve numerous and complex financial deals. The algorithm did in seconds what it took staff 360,000 hours per year to achieve – all with a lower error rate.
That’s the equivalent of almost 200 full-time staff at the wage rate paid by one of the world’s most successful banks.
The same goes for lawyers. Proponents for automation expect that thinking machines will soon be able to make defensible decisions based on existing laws and precedents. The need for courts could almost disappear: simply upload the charge and wait a few seconds for the judgement to be delivered. Hell, you could even deliver that off a mobile phone app.
Perhaps courts could be reserved for cases that are decided by a 5% margin, with subsequent resolutions fed back into the model to further improve its decision-making over time.
A future workforce and human endeavours
This leads us to ask: with so many intelligent accountants, bankers and lawyers on the employment heap, what are they going to do with themselves? Humans crave approval, and employment the perfect vehicle to deliver a sense of worth.
So, what happens when that disappears?
Elon Musk, who is quickly becoming the world’s favourite geek, has given visibility to an idea that has swirled through academic circles for the last five years. Will the notion of work evolve to a point where governments will be forced to provide its citizens with a ‘universal basic income’ while it draws drawn revenues from the increased efficiencies that automation promises?
It’s not out of the realm of possibility. The printing press didn’t see an end to the publishing industry, and the loom didn’t destroy the rag trade, but it’s fair to argue that the impacts of those technologies came at a much slower rate than the change we experience today.
Will there be time for new industries to sprout that harness the power of human ingenuity and toil? It’s a challenging question that could have an answer with the next ten years.