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Automation: will robots take our jobs?

The most common questions I am asked today are about automation in one form or another. Closely followed by questions about whether I have a crystal ball, or if I can share next week’s lottery numbers.

As with jokes about my name, everyone thinks they’re the first to make them.

What’s clear is that there is huge confusion about areas of business that can be automated — robots directly replacing people — and those where augmentation can play a huge role.

Bionic business

Augmentation is about expanding the capabilities of individuals. Sometimes this will mean these individuals can do the work of many. Here the lines between automation and augmentation blur: you can argue that all automation is, in fact, augmentation, since there are usually people remaining in the business and those that remain benefit from operating at an improved profit margin since — at least in theory — productivity rises and costs fall.

But other times, augmentation can make individuals better at their jobs, taking their capabilities beyond the human to the superhuman. All without affecting the employment of their colleagues.

Where things get really confusing is where the augmentation saves time: surely that’s the same as replacing people?

Will robots take our jobs?

Our understanding of the potential impact of automation is undermined by a lack of differentiation between jobs and work. Robots can do work but no robot is a direct replacement for a human employee.

There is one characteristic that is more important than any other in humanising the robots we see in science fiction films. It is not the oversized eyes of Wall-e, or the cute little beeps of R2-D2, or the conversational humour of Johnny 5. It is their ability to adapt to different challenges and situations.

If you augment the capabilities of your AI tools, they will achieve more than one ‘pure’ human normally could. But you are not really replacing other people because their work cannot easily be shared across multiple individuals unless those individuals are operating at the same level in the same market with the same influencers.

Will automation replace jobs?

Automation will not replace jobs entirely. In the real world, we tend to build robots for single tasks. We design them to perform those tasks with incredible efficiency. Inside the bounds of these narrowly defined tasks, they can outperform humans by many orders of magnitude in speed, strength, and dexterity. Beyond these narrowly defined tasks though, they are useless. Unless and until they can be reconfigured for the next challenge.

Building flexibility into robots is expensive, both mechanically and computationally. This is why the robots of science fiction are so different and so appealing. R2 can deliver cocktails, hack space stations, fix your space fighter, and even hold down a conversation, if you speak robot whistle. Meanwhile his real-world counterpart can just move steel pressings from one place to another, over and over again.

How robots will affect future generations?

When we employ a human in a job, we count on a degree of flexibility and an array of complementary skills. This differentiation is critical in understanding the impact of robots on the future workforce. Because there is no robot today that is a straight swap for a human being.

They must be able to:

  • Understand variations in the brief and respond to them
  • Access the task location.
  • Communicate with the other human beings around that task: customers, colleagues, partners.

So, when robots enter the workforce, while they absolutely displace people it is never a one-to-one ratio. Rather, the workload of specific tasks is aggregated from multiple people and allocated to one robot. One machine might do 80% of the work of ten different people. That still leaves work for two full time people, but it is now a pair of roles that look very different to before.

Roles where automation could replace jobs

Sometimes those new roles will be very high value. For example, in a professional services environment, the robot might do a lot of the document processing that has traditionally been the domain of junior members of staff.

What is left is the strategic thinking, problem solving and client engagement.

Sometimes what is left might be less engaging. Picture the delivery driver in a self-driving van who just has to get out at the relevant locations and run the parcel to the door (or as is so often the case, throw it over a fence or put it in the paper recycling bin).

Of course, you don’t have to use a human to round-out the robot’s capabilities. You can always change the operating model. In the delivery example, the robot truck is more likely to park up outside and phone the recipient to tell them to come out collect their parcel. It won’t need to put things in odd places because it is in permanent communication with the recipient’s smart device and knows their location and availability.

New jobs

Though the statistic about ‘65% of future jobs not being invented yet’ seems to be itself, completely invented, there will undoubtedly be new jobs created in the future. But it is hard to see what jobs might be created that offer large numbers of people long term security.

So, will robots take our jobs? Alongside the rising perceived value of human work, it is hard to see anything but a decline in the total number of traditional full-time jobs. Jobs that are a mutual contract between employer and employee, trading commitment for security and personal development.

And how will robots affect future generations? The net result is likely to be that the perceived value of humans in the full-time workforce increases. Because humans do the low volume, high value tasks that machines find difficult. This won’t, sadly, overcome our historical underpayment of those in roles like care and teaching. Though the same automation effects may free more of their time to focus on the aspects of their job where they add the most value and relieve some of the time pressure.

Widening the divide

The jobs that remain will be of higher value and – on average – higher pay. The people who don’t get those jobs? There will be the same spread there is now amongst the self-employed and gig economy workers. Many with high value skills will be absolutely fine. But the size of the ‘precariat’ in less secure, freelance and part-time work could grow considerably.

Robots don’t take jobs, but they do take work. And in doing so, they may widen the economic divisions in society.

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Invisible luxury

On stage at the Superyacht Design Symposium this week, I proposed three ways in which technology is going to transform the superyacht in the coming years. You may have no interest in these playthings of the hyperwealthy. But the same trends are going to transform the more mundane world the rest of us inhabit.

Hidden Intelligence

The first transformation is the ubiquity of connected computing combined with highly powerful AIs. The history of computing is a history of shrinking devices with ever-improving user interfaces, taking us from alien mainframes that forced us to communicate on their terms, to sensor-laden devices that try to interpret our behaviours. The next obvious step is devices that vanish into the environment around us and interact by anticipating our needs and responding without any manual intervention.

In a yacht context this likely means smaller crews, as in every other field of work. But it also means much more responsive machines. Spaces that transform themselves, fully autonomous lighting, heating and entertainment — all increasingly normal as part of any smart home. But imagine a boat that automatically orients itself to the sunset based on where you’re sat.

Energy Revolution

My research into energy for a report I’m assembling with the law firm Nabarro, has made it abundantly clear that the future is solar and electric. Combining next generation solar cells with advanced battery technologies makes for incredible changes in the possibilities of yacht design.

Metal-air batteries will have energy densities comparable to fossil fuels. With high performance solar cells, much smaller reserves of energy will be required. And what there is will be much more flexible in terms of layout. No more fuel tanks — sometimes measuring hundreds of thousands of litres. Instead batteries can be incorporated into the structure and distributed throughout the hull. Motors too can me much more efficiently placed, will be lighter, quieter and simpler to maintain.

There are solar yachts right now but they are the G-Whizz’s of the water-born world. What’s coming is more like a Tesla.

New Materials

Perhaps the most exciting opportunity is in new materials. Like other industries focused on high performance, the yacht industry has been fast to adopt new carbon-based materials. But these are a mere first step towards the incredible possibilities presented by various forms of graphene, and other recently-discovered and nano-engineered materials.

Integrated functions like heating, or panel displays, will save huge amounts of space and weight. Exponential increases in strength to weight will enable the realisation of incredible designs, to date unfeasible.

Invisible luxury

Together these three technological transformations will change the perceived impact of technology on the design and operation of superyachts, as it will on the infrastructure of all our lives.

Technology today is intrusive: garish screens, noisy engines, over-sized structures. Tomorrow’s technology is not only finer, lighter, and quieter, it actively works to get out of our way. It doesn’t need manual control to work on our behalf.

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Why I Hated the iPhone, and What Amazon Can Learn from It

Ten years ago, Apple launched the iPhone. Not long after, Apple offered to loan me an iPhone for review. I hated it.

By this point, I was a few years into smartphone ownership. Not only that, I had helped to launch a smartphone that was pretty revolutionary in its own right.

Working on the marketing campaigns of a range of tech firms, I had attended the enormous Mobile World Congress conference for probably five or six consecutive years. One of our clients there provided the OS for a new smartphone from a Finnish start-up. This phone combined a full touch display, gyroscopic controls, and a browser that neatly handled full web pages. So many of the things that would go on to form part of the iPhone story.

This was 2003.

For all our efforts, the MyOrigo MyDevice, as it was called, flopped. It couldn’t get approval to run on enough mobile networks (a slow and painful process then) before the start-up ran out of cash. But it set my expectations for what a smartphone should be.

Without this device, I stuck with Handspring Treos. Bulky, but very effective business tools. There were even a few games for them thanks to their extensive Palm heritage.

Then the iPhone arrived.

By 2007 I was used to having two key features on my smartphones: 3G connectivity and the ability to add new apps. The iPhone I tested had some clear benefits. The touch screen was great, the software was slick and the design was slim. But no apps? No 3G? This seemed like a massive retrograde step. I was happy to stick with my chunky Treo, and later chose a SonyEricsson P1 over the iPhone because of the lack of these — to me, at least — core features.

Of course, eighteen months after the launch of the first iPhone, Apple had introduced the 3G version and the App Store, not just addressing my objections but crushing them. The App Store particularly has been revolutionary, giving anyone a simple, trustable experience in installing additional software.

Steve Jobs initial assertion of ‘desktop class’ apps may have been slightly overselling it. But from that point the iPhone became a serious productivity tool and entertainment device. And now the smartphone, that has always followed this initial template, is the primary platform for all our computing interactions.

What’s next?

It’s interesting to examine Amazon’s Echo/Alexa in the light of these objections. What needs to be added to take Echo from an interesting and clearly popular product, to the template for a class of device that may reach smartphone scale?

I think there are three problems to solve.

1. Connectivity

This time it’s not about data, it’s about interaction. The smart home is a very clunky construct at the moment. If Amazon can smooth the interactions with a wider range of devices, it would be welcome. This is not unconnected to…

2. Apps

Alexa seems to be reaching the scale where everyone will want/need to be part of its app/skill store. This would be hugely beneficial to users. Finally, there will be one interface to unite the disparate devices around the home. And the many services we have become used to accessing through distinct apps.

3. Discovery

Of course, none of these capabilities have any value unless people know they are there. How do you discover skills and interconnection options on a screenless device? It feels to me like there is an Alexa-initiated conversational element missing here. It would need to know who is in the room, not just that someone is there. But imagine a conversation like: “Hi Tom, I’ve detected a Fibaro home automation system on your network. Would you like me to connect?” That would be much more satisfying than the current app-driven controls.