Will robots take our jobs?

In his keynote speech at Cogx 17, Lord Young, a former UK Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, was keen to point out that workers should not worry about being made unemployed by robots because, he said, most jobs that would be killed off were miserable anyway.

He told the conference that more jobs than ever would be automated in the future but that this should be welcomed. “When the Spinning Jenny first came in it was almost exactly the same,” he said. “They thought it was going to kill employment. We may have a problem one day if the Googles of this world continue to get bigger and the Amazons spread into all sorts of things, but government has the power to regulate that, has the power to break it up.

“I’m not the slightest worried about it,” he continued. “Most of the jobs are miserable jobs. What technology has to do is get rid of all the nasty jobs.”

It’s certainly an interesting analogy, comparing the current tech and AI revolution to the Industrial Revolution. It’s hard to disagree that just as the proliferation of machines in the 18th and 19th centuries helped create new jobs and wealth, AI is likely to do the same. There is undoubtedly a bigger question around regulation and who’s in charge of this new landscape, however.

Transportation and smart cities

CogX 17 also threw up some fascinating panel discussions about transportation and smart cities. Panellists including M.C. Srivas, Uber’s chief data scientist, and Huawei’s CTO, Ayush Sharma, talked at length about the necessity of self-driving cars in our towns and cities which have become mobile ‘jails’ where commuters ‘do time’ as they sit in traffic on their way to and from work. And that’s without delving into issues of safety and pollution.

Kenneth Cukier, The Economist’s Big Data expert asked the audience whether they thought autonomous cars were likely to hit our cities in the space of either 5, 10 or 15 years. The vast majority of those in attendance, along with the panel, agreed that we should expect to see autonomous cars becoming the norm in the next 10 to 15 years, with clear legislation set to come in around 2023.

However – and this is something that affects Sherpa directly – the panel was in agreement that although the mass manufacturing of self-driving cars is still a few years off, intelligent assistants for smart cars are imminent and likely to become standard within the next couple of years. Voice offers countless possibilities in the automotive space. While enabling the safe use of existing controls such as in-car entertainment systems or heating/air conditioning, it also offers GPS functionality as well as control over the vehicle’s mechanics.

Manufacturing

The session on Industry 4.0 kicked off by attempting to make sense of a term that has been used for several years. The general consensus was that ‘automating manufacturing’ was the best way to define this expression that originated in a report by the German government. Industrial companies have to become automated to survive, and many are building highly integrated engines to capture data from their machines. The market for smart manufacturing tools is expected to hit $250bn by 2018.

It’s well known that robotics are already used in manufacturing to handle larger and more dangerous work. What was also discussed on the panel are the possibilities AI throws up by offering, for example, virtual personal assistants for workers to help them complete their daily tasks or the benefits for smaller companies who use smart technology such as 3D printing.

The session ended on a lighter note with Limor Schweitzer, CEO at RoboSavvy, encouraging Franky the robot to show the audience his dance moves, proving that even our entertainment these days is driven by A.I. Sophia, the humanlike robot created by Hanson Robotics also provided the entertainment at the CogX awards ceremony, ‘She’ announced the nominees and winners in the Best innovation in artificial general intelligence category, composed of Sherpa, DeepMind and Vicarious.

CogX 17 touched on many other sectors, such as the impact of AI on Health, HR, Education, Legal Services, Fintech, and more. Experts were in agreement that advances in AI must benefit all of us, and while there are still many question marks over regulation of the sector, it’s beyond doubt that AI already permeates all aspects of our society.