If there’s a major fad amongst the industrial community today, it has to be the fact that the majority of the workforce of today will be replaced by robots in the future. While this prediction is a no-brainer, whether such a transformation will happen in the near future or in the slightly distant one could be anybody’s guess.
While the general opinion is this, there is also a sense of denial among a section of the professionals who feel that the claims of takeover by AI and robotics are thin on the ground and their professions- likely Medicine practice, Law, Accountancy- will remain unscathed.
Today’s white collar professionals very well know that automation has happened in a significant chunk of the industry and replaced jobs with bots. But yet, some practitioners routinely argue that the final say will always be placed at the hands of human experts who will be needed for the tricky stuff that calls for judgment, creativity, and empathy.
But ongoing trends and recent research publications by esteemed organizations seem to point in the opposite direction.
For example, a case study published by the Harvard Business Review challenges the idea that professionals who claim to be in a seat of niche will be spared. The article claims that within decades the traditional professions will be dismantled and most of today’s experts will be replaced by less-expert employees or new types of experts. These people will however be supplemented by high-performing systems.
The fallacy that the professions are immune to displacement by technology is ill-founded and is surmised on two assumptions: one being that computers are incapable of exercising judgment or being creative or empathetic; two being that these capabilities are indispensable in the delivery of professional service.
However, these assumptions fail to see the light of the current happenings where industry imbibes processes to get processes leaner and efficient. With the shift to systematization, the use of technology to automate or transform the way a professional work is done is only a logical step.
From workflow systems to AI-based problem solving, software has only aided in giving more tools to the human mind to make professional tasks easier. What is to step some creative humans from going forward and placing these tools at the hand of a robot that brings its own brute computing into the picture.
Not far away is the future where a humanoid toting a tie would enter the workspace and work with a few colleagues. Expect, the colleagues may themselves be humanoids all capable of using several impressive capabilities of brute processing power, big data, and remarkable algorithms.
The entire office could be manned by an entrepreneur who managed to develop these robots in the first place. The entrepreneur, essentially a graduate in robotics, would be heading a law firm where the law is actually practiced by self-aware robots.
Of course, this is all conjecture. The reality may pan out to be a lot more bizarre than the human mind of today can predict.
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