June 25, 2004 6:41 AM PDT
Smart systems will erase jobs, report warns
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In the coming years, a large number of first-level jobs in service industries related to customer service, help desk and directory assistance will be lost due to the advent of intelligent systems, research firm Strategy Analytics said in the report.
This wave of job losses will follow the elimination of as many as 10 million jobs involving physical labor and repetitive activities that were wiped out in the last 10 years as machines began to replace humans, the report noted.
During the same period, there was a cumulative investment of $100 billion in robotics and supporting systems. Today, nearly 1 million robots are in operation in manufacturing and service sectors globally.
In the United States alone, there was an erosion of 50 percent blue-collar jobs due to automation, robotics and information technology between 1969 and 1999.
According to Harvey Cohen, who authored the study, another threat is yet to emerge. For a growing segment of the work force with midrange skills, the further expansion of intelligent systems into capabilities involving decision making, advisory functions, identification and analytical functions will mean further limiting of job potential.
"While these systems are not likely to replace humans altogether," he noted, "they will become capable of shifting the mix of personnel required to support a given level of business or activity, thus reducing the total number of people required."
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Now the world is focusing its attention on services, and we will certainly become better at serving more people while using fewer resources. That is also progress.
What comes next? What will we do as the mundane, repetitive tasks (both physical and logical) no longer require as much human intervention? Will we all go on more vacations? Probably not.
Instead, we will have to focus our attentions on the things that cannot yet be automated. Art, entertainment, pure scientific research, and applied science may all play pivotal roles on the economy.
So, be prepared. Do your blue-or-white-collar job better and cheaper than anyone else, or get ready to move on. The positions of the future can exist, but you will still have to work hard for them. It is called "work" after all.
It's great when you're doing reservations on an airline's phone services, because the lexicon in such a situation is limited to flight-related terms.
The whole experience deteriorates when it comes to "yellow pages" telephone directory assistance. I was forced to use such a system in Florida via Cingular, my mobile provider. The system had trouble recongnizing the word "McDonalds" and cut me off after I asked for the number for the "Southwest Airlines". Thank God I got back to Houston where a real person answers the 411 call.
In any case, the more intelligent systems there are, the more people will be needed to maintain them, correct errors, and develop new ones. Anyone familiar with robotics and AI knows just how underperforming - relative to the wild predictions of so-called pundits - those fields often turn out to be. Current speech recognition technology is in the upper 90th percentile with regard to accuracy, but at the rate at which humans speak, even that is intolerable.
Contrary to what the study says, jobs aren't disappearing. They're simply moving upward. Progress cannot be legislated against. These "analysts" need to stop watching their Matrix DVDs on the weekend when they're trashed and get back to the real world. Get with the program.