Louis Arias – Tech Writer
Individuals who take responsibility for their future can manage it. Those who do not will be managed by that same future.
This awareness is crucial when considering the impact that Automation + AI will have on work in the next years, months and, for some, weeks. The age of Intelligent Automation has arrived.
According to the Brookings Institute’s January 2019 report on Automation and Artificial Intelligence, automation workforce trends are a mixture of real opportunities and equally real threats. The report focuses on areas of potential occupational change, rather than net employment losses or gains. And it concludes that men, young people, less educated workers and underrepresented groups will probably have to deal with significantly more serious challenges from automation in the future. Youth and Hispanics will be especially affected.
At this year’s Daytona State College Advanced Technical Center’s Spring Open House, Larry Rosenberg, Production Development Manager from ABB Installation Products of Ormond Beach, was asked about the company’s current use and future plans regarding automation.
Rosenberg replied, “We are already using robotic devices to automate some of our production and we’re planning to add several more. It’s a win-win situation. Employees are freed of mind-numbing repetitive tasks and we get the advantage of lower costs. Also, automated product inspection devices don’t have bad days, occasionally glance away or lose their concentration and miss a defective unit.”
Dr. Nabeel Yousef designed DSC’s Megatronics program. It focuses on integrating mechanical, electronic and computerized components and is part of the $1.2 million grant the college was awarded by Florida’s Job Growth Grant Fund initiative. Illustrating what the future production workplace might look like as automation becomes more implemented, he said, “Before you know it, a production employee will be in their homes and get woken up the sound of a text message on their smartphones. When he or she sees an automated message informing him or her that the temperature in one of the plant’s processes has exceeded a pre-set level, settings will be remotely adjusted on some of the equipment right from their phone. After confirming that the issue has been resolved, they will go right back to sleep.”
The dynamics of the future’s workforce composition is complex and will be affected by a number of other variables. Another billion people are entering the world’s consuming class. The planet’s general population is getting older and requires more healthcare workers. Changes in the energy mix are inevitable. These are but a few of the other factors that need to be considered when looking at workforce transitions as intelligent automation increases.
While robots destroy people’s manufacturing jobs, the demand for labor-intensive services soars. Etsy is a good example. The online marketplace’s main selling point is that its products are not mass-produced. Similarly, there is also a growing demand for eateries with organic ingredients from local sources that often come from smaller, less mechanized farms. Acknowledging reality and taking advantage of the opportunities it has to offer is a determining factor in organizations’ and people’s futures.
Companies are looking to AI plus technologies such as Augmented Reality, or AR, to bring new skills and tools to help their people do new jobs and reinvent themselves and their organizations. It is a nightmare in the making for those who ignore change or believe it will not affect them.
Neil Jacobstein, Chair of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Track at Singularity University on the NASA Research Park campus in Mountain View, Calif., said it well: “It’s not artificial intelligence I’m worried about, it’s human stupidity.”
