The relationship between people and technologies, tools, environments, and human-systems integration, automation and robotics, for more effective outcomes.
Technology is automating work, as artificial intelligence, sensors, and robotics come into play.
Recent research surveys indicate that up to 45% of employees are concerned that robots will take their job or at best will end up relying on robots.
According to Gartner’s report, The Future Is a Digital Thing, by 2018 more than 3 million workers will have a ‘robo-boss’ and nearly 50% of the fastest-growing companies will have more smart machines than employees.
This will change the role of the knowledge worker at a functional level.
Alex Stratis, research analyst at IDC says: “Jobs are going to be outdated and roles are going to disappear, but we should also be thinking what new things will develop.”
According to Frank Lansink, chief executive for Europe at IPsoft, one of the largest telecoms companies in the world is using his company’s virtual assistant, Amelia, to replace human employees in its customer service function. Amelia’s ability to understand natural language and take advantage of people’s emotions to guide her decision-making, does the same job as humans more cheaply, she also does it better.
Luminance AI has ambitions to revolutionise the time-consuming task of documentation analysis in legal due diligence.
And the impact in the next 18 months will be significant with hundreds of thousands of jobs that will be repurposed.
Alistair Cox, chief executive of global recruiter Hays, says:
“We have an opportunity here to challenge the status quo of how we work. AI and robotics are merely a channel for us to establish a faster and smarter way of working. Far from signalling the end of the workplace as we know it, we firmly believe it could be a genuinely positive thing for the global labour market. Furthermore, robots have their limitations, namely no creativity, innovation nor leadership. Some jobs are therefore less at risk than others.”