paper<\/a>\u00a0published in 2014, Autor presented many points suggesting automation is a good thing for society.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
He cautioned that human capital investment \u201cmust be at the heart of any long-term strategy for producing skills that are complemented rather than substituted by technology.\u201d He argued that job polarization will eventually disappear because \u201cmany of the middle skill jobs that persist in the future will combine routine technical tasks with the set of non-routine tasks in which workers hold comparative advantage\u201d including behavioral attributes such as adaptability, problem-solving, interpersonal interaction and flexibility.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Perhaps the future Autor describes has already arrived.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Autonomous haulage is beginning to take shape in the harsh climate of Northern Alberta throughout the oil sands. Gigantic $150 million trucks are not only expensive, they can be dangerous. A lot can go wrong when 8000 tonnes of dirt is moved 365 days a year by humans. Before self-driving trucks, there were normally four human drivers for each truck, and one mechanic for every 4-6 trucks. It was labour intensive, risky work.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My organization, TELUS,\u00a0a $12 billion Canadian telecommunications firm,\u00a0has been working with the oil companies to create pervasive wireless coverage that permits self-driving trucks to operate in those harsh conditions all-day, every day. This has decreased collisions, rollovers and accidents because the autonomous driving error rates are lower than humans.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Improving safety has been a key motivator for the oil companies – not the elimination of jobs. In fact, oil companies encourage workers to achieve their mechanic’s license \u2013to safeguard the 24-hour cycle needed to keep the new trucks running. Perhaps this is an example of Autor’s point about comparative advantage. It is not as though a mechanic’s role can be automated. The oil companies need humans to fix an offline truck resulting in driver jobs being shifted to mechanic jobs.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Within TELUS, \u201cautomation for the people\u201d is being meshed with the \u201cautomatic for the people\u201d customer service ethos that Dexter Weaver defined earlier.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The team behind much of our client experience processes developed \u201cNext Best Action\u201d that uses a combination of big data, artificial intelligence and automation to improve the entire customer experience.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cNext Best Action\u201d ensures call center agents and team members in our face-to-face stores have the details to be far more proactive \u2013 and arguably human \u2013 with a customer\u2019s inquiry than ever before. For example, if a client calls into the customer care team, there is automated logic that then routes the call to the right person in the right department saving time for both sides. Data is constantly being fed into a predictive analyzer which speeds up the potential to solve a customer issue. The opportunity is to merge automation and artificial\u00a0intelligence\u00a0with a far more customized human touch.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The goal is not to replace call center or store agents with automation; it is using the advanced technologies we continue to develop and invest in to further improve the overarching customer experience with our team members.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But might those computers ever completely take over?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I asked David Autor if organizations should be worried about the so-called technological singularity, where computers and robots might learn how to redesign and improve their existing functionality, to ultimately become better than humans. His response said it all. \u201cNo, they should not be worried,\u201d Autor said. \u201cThe machines work for us. If they can ultimately do our jobs for us, then we are richer not poorer as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Autor also introduced me to the observations of economist, computer scientist, and Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, who wrote in 1966 during another time of automation anxiety: \u201cInsofar as they are economic problems at all, the world\u2019s problems in this generation and the next are problems of scarcity, not of intolerable abundance. The bogeyman of automation consumes worrying capacity that should be saved for real problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Put differently, \u201cautomation for the people\u201d has been around for a long time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I have never visited Weaver D’s Delicious Fine Foods restaurant yet, but when I do get there, I know there will be a smiling human being serving me. Indeed, \u201cautomatic for<\/i> the people\u201d will be sticking around in perpetuity, most likely assisted by \u201cautomation with<\/i> the people\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Athens, Georgia, based restaurant Weaver D’s Delicious Fine Foods was once honored by an American Classics awards to recognize \u201cgood,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":""},"categories":[144],"tags":[99,89],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=999"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1001,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions\/1001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}