The Robots Aren’t Taking Jobs, but They May be the Key to Repositioning and Rebranding Job Opportunities

The narrative of robots taking jobs has been around since (I’m guessing) the advent of the conveyor belt and its introduction into the manual work process. So, it should come as no surprise that over the last few years there has been a consistent focus on jobs being lost to AI, Machine Learning (ML), and Automation tools. The chatter has settled, giving way to the reality of jobs created versus lost, and jobs evolving versus disappearing. That latter scenario may create an opportunity beyond greater efficiency and productivity.

Over the past year, faced with resource shortages – supply chain and workers – companies finally moved from evaluating to implementing new tech solutions. The inclusion of new technologies has meant evaluating the types of “low-tech” tasks that workers are no longer interested in doing.

When you take money out of the equation on the question of employment, it’s opening our eyes to what work people find desirable and, more evidently, what’s not. Specifically, the manufacturing, retail and service industries are taking the hardest labor hits, underscoring that tasks associated with those jobs – repetitive duties, unrewarding customer service tasks and physical labor – are driving more and more potential workers away.

Work in many industries has a perception problem. Workers on the sideline have had the opportunity to be more thoughtful about the work that they would like to engage in for 40 hours a week – a low- to no-skill office job rather than manual labor. However, integrating AI into the work stream could increase the attractiveness of certain jobs. As an example, for many mechanics their day-to-day tasks have evolved from manual diagnostics to a more tech-driven approach, elevating the perception of that job away from being a “grease monkey.”

While there is no one solution to get workers back into the market, as employers raise salaries to the point of diminished competition, those who have implemented new technologies to support the bottom line may be able to market their high-tech systems that replace some manual tasks as a value-add over their talent competitors. 

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/09/is-the-us-labor-shortage-the-big-break-ai-needs/ [TechCrunch]

Facebook has recently released its Blender Bot 2.0, which promises to move past the limitations of deep learning models that store massive amounts of trained information (long-term memory) toward a system that leverages both stored and real-time information (analyzing new information sieved through previous learning and understanding), which, by virtue of the internet, continues to grow at an exponential rate.

When presented with dynamic questions, the Blender Bot 2.0 would be able draw from saved information and scan for new information resulting in quicker response times. 

For companies moving toward greater AI enablement, this could mean offsetting tasks related to customer inquiries and reimagining those roles further down the work stream. For employers, this could mean having a conversational agent with stored knowledge of company culture and newer employee engagement activities, lending itself to a greater understanding of where the company is heading versus where it’s been. As is often the case, it’s a matter of technology catching up to its potential.   

Read more: https://www.marktechpost.com/2021/07/16/facebook-ai-releases-blenderbot-2-0-an-open-source-chatbot-that-builds-long-term-memory-and-searches-the-internet-to-engage-in-intelligent-conversations-with-users [marktechpost]