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The time to prepare to embrace AI

“robots” is NOW
Remember the charming little episode in the latest Google I/O where Sundar Pichai demonstrated how
evolved Google Assistant has become. The machine had a normal conversation with a saloon attendant
and behaved like a ‘human’ and interacted as a human does. It took decisions, just the way a human
does. The audience found it ‘awesome’ and the applause refused to die down. It is outside of the
audience that reservations were stated even the app was derided as misleading, unethical etc. There
was a host of voices against it subsequently, getting Google to issue a statement on how the ‘Google
Assistant’ will address the concerns.

Here is the key, the app is called ‘Google Assistant’. I doubt if anyone in the audience has a ‘Personal
Assistant’ to ‘assist’ in its work and so to have ‘someone’ to do all that work and organizing is indeed
‘welcome’. Also the concept of an ‘Assistant’ is almost defunct, except for a few, so the enormity of the
App did not hit them hard then.

Google, recognizing the potential of AI, and its ‘moral’ dimensions has also issued a set of guidelines on
how to handle AI Projects. Those guidelines are for today, and will surely change as AI progresses. Do
you seriously believe they can stay out of say public surveillance where images are interfaced with crime
records, psychology, social security database, movement pattern analysis to identify possible threats?

Technology is becoming serious now


So far technology was disrupting our lives by doing things more efficiently and effectively. However,
mass implementation of technology was in the way of putting work steps into the machine. No decision
making, or limited decision making ability was programmed into the machines. All decision making was
pre-programmed into the machine. Most of them continue to require active ‘human’ intervention. This
was the time when the concept of ‘clerks’ and ‘operators’ started disappearing. The accounts
departments have shrunk in size, and so has the number of workers on the factory floor. They have
been replaced by systems working in the background or robots working on the factory floor.

The role of the human is now shifted to taking decisions when things don’t happen correctly. With
further advancements, the number of instances of ‘things not happening correctly is reducing, making
the need of the conventional worker to reduce and the role of the knowledge worker to increase.
However, the requirement of the number of knowledge workers is far less than the requirement of
conventional workers. Hence the key economic metric in the developed world is the number of jobs
getting created, as technology has made many redundant, or will be if the economy does not grow fast
enough to accommodate more people entering the job market.

All these machines had ‘intelligence’ built into them and all such intelligence was ‘artificial’ whatever
that means. People ‘programmed’ what these machines could do and nothing more, and once done,
these machines could do it faster and with consistent quality. However, none of these machines could
operate if a new input came into the picture. It would shut down and wait for a human to make
changes to accommodate the new input. In other words, decision making remained with the human.

And all decision making is interpreting the various inputs and arriving at the best course of action.
AI is a way to make machines start taking decisions based on different inputs. Most current machines
are not capable to learn on its own as new situations arose. Ai is essentially changing that. Now AI can
learn from examples and mature in decision making, just like any human.

And it becomes really serious and interesting when the inputs are variable in nature.

Dawn of Artificial Intelligence


It is only logical that evolution will mean that machines will be given the ability to assimilate different
types of input and create an output. In other words Artificial Intelligence is the ability of machines to
integrate disparate information and create an expected behavior pattern.

While we may have enjoyed Sundar’s cameo, what is not highlighted is that machines have started
doing similar things in different fields.

One area where it has advanced is in medical diagnosis, and here it is turning out to be
surprisingly correct. Sometimes with startling results, like a case where it interpreted a person
having cancer when doctors said no, only to be proven correct subsequently. This may be
experiment today, but not for long.

Similarly in the auto sector, it has already made inroads in a limited way (lane assist, auto
braking etc.) and is in an advanced stage of self-driving. It is an active topic now, and most of it
is focused on who is responsible when something goes wrong while the vehicle is self-driving.

Shape of things to come


What is evident is that many of these advantages WILL mean jobs as we know today, will be lost. Those
jobs that are routine will be hit first, followed by the next level and so on.

Take the medical field. The role of the General practitioner is almost gone with easy availability of
diagnosis machines. Soon to follow will be specialist doctors, many of the surgery cases. Thus what will
be left will be outlier situations in the medical field for humans to intervene, and research into new
diseases.

Same is likely to happen in self driving cars, delivery people etc. Those functions will no longer require
humans in volumes as is today. Humans will be required only in outlier situations, and inevitably jobs
will be lost.

Sundar’s presentation of the assistant has evoked keen interest in the Call Center industry. What will be
required are humans to take a decision on how to handle a call when something very different is asked,
and the machine is yet to ‘learn’ how to handle it.

The list can be increased almost infinitely.

What it means is that humans will need to move up the expertise ladder to remain relevant. Think of
your role, and ask yourself how much time is spent on routine decision making and how much time is
spent in handling outlier events. You will know what you will need to do.
Jobs will be lost or jobs will be downgraded
Yes many jobs will be lost, or similar new jobs won’t get created. At this time, most of the regular work
will start to disappear. More and more, humans will be required to handle exceptional situations only.
That will mean less and less jobs for humans, or more on concentration of handling exceptions.

Take the example of Delhi Metro. In about a matter of a decade, they have done away with
motormen. All the new lines are driverless trains. No new motormen jobs were created with
the expansion. It is a matter of time that existing motormen will become defunct. Their new
system has a level of intelligence built in, actively supported by the control room.

Expect a scenario where most medical diagnosis will be done by machines, so jobs for new
doctors will be less and less and requirement from a Doctor will be with more and more
knowledge.

Increasingly security systems are getting automated with capabilities of handling visuals,
imagery, both moving and still, and deciding the security response and alerting action. The
project Maven is this at the next level of sophistication. You won’t need people gazing into CCD
screens and deciding what is happening.

The scenario of Uber using driverless vehicles is an ever increasing possibility. No new drivers
will be required for the taxi aggregator, although taxis on the roads will increase.

This list will go on as ever increasing.

The role of humans is morphing into handling situations requiring deeper analysis into the problem.

On the other side, till such time machines are not developed to handle physical objects in a non-
standard environment (like a service engineering function), the role of the human is likely to become
subservient to the machine, doing physical actions at the instruction of the accompanying machine.

What can be done?


You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. You may try to postpone as much, but that will only divert
your attention and make you less productive. Accept the fact that people will have to go up the
intelligence scale to handle outlier situations, and that will require better education, better problem
solving skills and better cognitive skills. The age of ‘super-humans’ is arriving, at the same time humans
will be downgraded to taking instructions from machines.

Accept that change is inevitable and start the process to move up in small steps so that the pain of
transformation is lessened as you will not have to make a quantum jump.

Incremental steps will also mean the ability to embrace the change with less disruptions and errors in
implementation. This is an important issue to consider.

It also means training methods will have to change. Now training will need to focus on solving problems
instead of imparting knowledge. The individual will have to have the responsibility of acquiring the
knowledge.
There will be a need to understand what are the routine decisions, ones that repeat, and what are
outlier events governing decisions. Decisions such as selecting candidates, approving expenditure,
clearing travel expenses and such are routine decisions.

Corporate will need to become more responsible towards its employees. Move from an environment of
expecting to get the maximum out of an employee to improve the problem solving abilities of the
employees.

It will also need to invest in AI systems that can handle routine decisions.

The need for a new metric


A new metric for organization effectiveness will need to evolve; one that measures the intelligence level
covering the areas of problem solving, strategizing etc. From an average of 60 percent time spent on
routine decisions by senior managers, that will automatically reduce, and so such Managers will need to
work on it, on how to spend their time differently.

Start the process now


Start with small steps today to be prepared for the future. People like me, who are able to visualize the
future today, can guide you through the process. It is better to attempt to increase the intelligence of
the company today. Start measuring the state of intelligence and improve upon it every year in a
planned way.

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