In Australia, automated dump trucks reliably deliver coal without a driver. Foxconn factories in China plan to replace live Chinese with robots. In the US, the Watson supercomputer diagnoses cancer much better than live oncologists. And specialized programs cope with document processing much better than “office plankton.” And this is not science fiction, but an accomplished fact.
A real robot in the office is a software application (automation of document flow, warehouse accounting, etc.). While business automation has not yet really begun, it is already clear that in mechanical document processing, software is significantly superior to the average employee.
But department and division heads should also worry. This year, CISCO Systems Corporation has laid off 4,000 mid-level managers. And the reason is not at all the desire to save money. The company is doing very well: in the last financial year, the profit was $2.3 billion (18.4% more than the previous year). However, managers (it must be said, really effective ones, without quotation marks) are still being laid off, since the complexity of management tasks is growing, and people cannot ensure the necessary speed and quality in decision-making.
And who will make these decisions? No longer who, but what – systems for automating management work: computer business analytics, Business Intelligence, etc. And experts are already saying that companies that do not replace living brains with electronic ones will give way to more advanced competitors on the market.
It is really funny (and sad at the same time) when a commercial company employs 200-500 people, but at the same time, making any decision takes several days. The bloated hierarchy of managers delegates and coordinates the execution of the task between its branches, and the company comes to the final version in a week, a month, or even a year!
The threat also hangs over such a profession as “driver”. Many are still only experimenting with robo-taxis, but in the iron ore mines of Western Australia, robot trucks have been working reliably since 2008. The robocars of the company “Rio Tinto” are controlled mostly by themselves, moving along the roads with the help of GPS, radar and lasers. Today there are 19 such machines. Within 10 years, the fleet of self-propelled robots should grow to 150 units.
What's better about a driverless car? Firstly, the mines are located in a remote part of Australia. There are few people willing to work there. This was actually the main reason to try to automate the transportation of ore.
Secondly, robot trucks are more productive: they can work 24/7 and are cheaper than human drivers. Finally, a robot is safer: it won’t fall asleep at the wheel, get drunk at a bar, or start a fight with colleagues.
Foxconn, whose city-factories assemble iPhones and other devices, is also planning mass robotization (up to 100,000 new robots) of its conveyors. Why? The answer will surprise you: Chinese workers have become too expensive! Wages, meager even by Russian standards, are becoming unaffordable for efficient production. And China is already moving production to Indonesia and Cambodia. But this is not enough, so they decided to rely on iron workers.
Okay, these were all professions where it is really easy to automate template functions. But can robots take over jobs from, say, doctors? Yes, they can. In February 2013, it turned out that IBM Watson is better at diagnosing lung cancer than a professional American oncologist. The difference is big: 50 percent for people and 90 percent for a computer. The tests were conducted at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Along the way, it turned out that only 20% of the knowledge of oncologists meets the requirements of evidence-based medicine. Already, 90% of the clinic's nurses follow the computer's advice in everything. WellPoint (IBM Watson distributor) plans to equip over 1,500 hospitals with terminals by the end of the year.
Here we can recall the artisans who were displaced by weaving machines. Today, their descendants have a high standard of living in Europe and the USA. Our Luddite ancestors could not even dream of such a thing. But this path to a comfortable existence took more than 200 years. What will happen to us (forced euthanasia of useless individuals or existence on benefits from the state and corporations) – time will tell. But it is hard to believe in the option “robots toil, man is happy”.
