Stealing jobs back from the machines

We've been hearing the alarm bells, (heck many of us, well mostly me) have been ringing those bells, the ones that are tolling for the eventual and perhaps even imminent demise of the American worker, destined to be replaced by a robot or an algorithm.

Automation is continuing apace and advances in computing power, combined with development of more sophisticated robotics and smart machines that create and communicate massive amounts of data are causing a perfect storm of sorts. Routine work is likely to be automated out of human hands, lower-complexity service jobs are under threat, and even many types of 'knowledge work' are becoming targets of the relentless pace and unwavering progress of automation and technology.

It is a story that keeps getting repeated so often lately that it is simultaneously getting tired and self-fulfilling.

That's why this piece, 'Gods' Make Comeback at Toyota as Humans Steal Jobs from Robots , from Bloomberg about what a possible brighter future of work and human worker's co-existence with the robots might look like was both surprising and instructive.  The piece is about how at Toyota, long a leader in applying advanced theories, processes, and technologies to the manufacturing environment, was actually introducing (or re-introducing, I suppose), more human-powered and manual labor-based processes into many of its plants. 

Why put slower, more expensive, more likely to mess up, and definitely more likely to need a rest after 8 hours or so humans back into the manufactring flow? 

From the Bloomberg piece:

Inside Toyota Motor Corp.’s oldest plant, there’s a corner where humans have taken over from robots in thwacking glowing lumps of metal into crankshafts. This is Mitsuru Kawai’s vision of the future.

“We need to become more solid and get back to basics, to sharpen our manual skills and further develop them,” said Kawai, a half century-long company veteran tapped by President Akio Toyoda to promote craftsmanship at Toyota’s plants. “When I was a novice, experienced masters used to be called gods, and they could make anything.”

These gods, or Kami-sama in Japanese, are making a comeback at Toyota, the company that long set the pace for manufacturing prowess in the auto industry and beyond. Toyota’s next step forward is counter-intuitive in an age of automation: Humans are taking the place of machines in plants across Japan so workers can develop new skills and figure out ways to improve production lines and the car-building process.

Learning how to make car parts from scratch gives younger workers insights they otherwise wouldn’t get from picking parts from bins and conveyor belts, or pressing buttons on machines. At about 100 manual-intensive workspaces introduced over the last three years across Toyota’s factories in Japan, these lessons can then be applied to reprogram machines to cut down on waste and improve processes, Kawai said.

In an area Kawai directly supervises at the forging division of Toyota’s Honsha plant, workers twist, turn and hammer metal into crankshafts instead of using the typically automated process. Experiences there have led to innovations in reducing levels of scrap and shortening the production line 96 percent from its length three years ago. Toyota has eliminated about 10 percent of material-related waste from building crankshafts at Honsha. Kawai said the aim is to apply those savings to the next-generation Prius hybrid.

Really interesting and perhaps this story foretells one likely scenario for the future of work - a kind of hybrid and peaceful co-existence and co-operation between human and machine. One where each actor can supply and focus on what they do best. The machines are precise, indefatigable, obedient, unerring. The people focusing on creativity, adaptability, recalling institutional memory and lessons. Then the combination of the two leading to the best outcomes for both (and the organization). The humans 'learn' then teach the machines to carry out these learnings. 

Which is kind of the way it has always been until recently, when it seems like we have allowed the advances in automation to allow us to forget that we humans still have much to offer and much to teach the machines.

More (if you can stand it), on HR and the future robotic workplace

I feel at this point I simply have to beep banging on the robot drum, if for no other reason that everyone else seems to have jumped on the bandwagon too, and I want to make sure folks recognize I was driving said bandwagon ages ago!

I'm over at Fistful of Talent today with a piece called, Will You Be Replaced by a Robot? Let's Break it Down - here is a little bit of what I am riffing about there:

Ok, so let’s assume you were either on board with the seriousness of the robotic threats before, or had been skeptical but have read over the Oxford paper and have come around. How do you actually know, or at least take an educated guess at the actual threat to what you do, i.e., how can you determine if or when the robots are coming for you?

Well let’s break it down using the three primary criteria cited in the paper - perception and manipulation task requirements, the need for creative intelligence, and last, the need for social interaction and intelligence on the job. Your task, as you read through these parameters, is to think really honestly about how what you do fits on along the continuum of ‘Easy for a machine to learn and perform ←→ No way a robot could EVER do this’ in the three categories...

Check out the rest over at Fistful of Talent and be sure to let me know what you think.

Or let the robot that is actually writing all these posts know what you think. He's cool with that.

Happy Wednesday!

I don't see him like a robot. I see him like a person.

A couple of years ago when I know I was one of the few folks in the space regularly writing about robots at work and the potential impacts that were going to be realized from these developments, I used to get a boatload of Google search traffic simply from keyword searches on the word 'robot'. These days, I see much less of that kind of search directed traffic, even though I am probably writing even more frequently about the topic. 

But lately it seems like everyone in the HR/work/workplace blogosphere is talking, writing, and speculating about robots and the increasing automation of all kinds of work. While I do think that this increase and almost mainstreaming of attention on the topic is really quite needed, I also think that at some level we might be already getting a little tired of the topic, and are even beginning to tune out these messages.

So rather than run the latest piece about the newest advancement or application of robot or otherwise machine intelligence to a new form of work and issue off another warning about how you or your kids need to take this all very seriously as one day the robots will take all our jobs and leave us, well, trying to figure out what to do with ourselves, I decided to share a simple, short video about a specific application of new robot technology in the workplace, and let you decide what it might mean.

Embedded below, (email and RSS subscribers will need to click through), is a recent video from Rethink Robotics, the makers of the pretty amazing industrial robot known as Baxter. Baxter, you might have heard, represents an improvement to traditional stationary and bespoke, single-use manufacturing robots of the past. Baxter is flexible, can be easily programmed, and can work in very close proximity to people.

Check the video and pay particular attention to the comments of one of the plastics plant supervisors, a Ms. Martinez about what it is like working with (and supervising as it were) Baxter:

Really interesting, for a couple of reasons I think. Certainly the big, easy to remember line is when Ms. Martinez admits to 'seeing' Baxter like a person, like the person who would have previously had that job on the line that Baxter is now cheerfully, ceaselessly, performing. But we also hear some comments from the plastic factory leadership about how the cost savings and efficiency gains from automation are necessary to save jobs in the aggregate, even if the shift to Baxter(s) will cost at least some jobs in the process.

No matter if you take the 'robot threat' seriously, or think it all a bit silly, I think it does help to ground the conversation at least a little bit sometimes, and the experiences and observations of front line organizations, managers, and co-workers that are now, increasingly, co-existing with more and more advanced robotics are worth considering.

Note: I am down at the IBM Connections event in Orlando this week, maybe I can see if Watson has some comments on the subject. 

COMIC: Automation's slippery slope

Last week I had a take on The downside of measuring everything, for today, (kind of a slow, is it a day off of work or not a day off of work day, at least here in the USA), I wanted to share a really funny comic from XKCD on the topic of the downside of automation:

Pretty amusing, and also kind of accurate. Reminds me of the old line, maybe it was from Seinfeld?, 'It's funny because it's true.'

Anyway, it seems like as long as I have been around technology in the workplace folks like me have been promising HR and other business leaders lots and lots of free time and space to be able to focus on 'strategic things' once we've come in an automated everything else and beaten the old, manual, and inefficient processes into submission.

That has been at least partially true, but not completely. Primarily I think because there continues to be more and more processes that the technologists can and want to automate. The low-hanging fruit has all been picked, but the technologists are not stopping there.

But that is a subject for another day.

Happy MLK Day in the USA, and Happy Monday everywhere else!

Long Robots, Short Human Beings

The below chart from a indeterminate Bank of America report seems to be making the rounds today, interesting not just for the data, (which has two problems, one, it is kind of obvious to anyone watching the American economy over the last 30 years or so that manufacturing has been on the decline; and two, that it attempts to compare US manufacturing employment to Global industrial robot production). 

 

But still it is kind of a fun chart, not the least of which for its title, Long Robots, Short Human Beings. Clever Bank of America!

Except it might not be all the funny, even for the highly educated, well-paid types of folks that are likely working at Bank of America and would have put together a chart like this.

The robots are not just going to be satisfied and content with the boring, industrial, just another machine in the machine type factory jobs that are the main subject of this chart.

No, Mr. and Ms. Bank of America hotshot. The robots are probably coming for you too. Just a couple of examples to consider.

From the Abnormal Returns blog - 'The rising challenge of robo-advisors'  

It has been my hypothesis for some time now that the rise of the exchange-traded fund, or to be more specific the ultra low-cost, indexed ETF has made possible the growing wave of online, algorithmic asset managers (or robo-advisors).* In short, this abundance of low-cost portfolio building blocks available from a host of fund sponsors makes low-fee online portfolios possible. A couple of years ago I noted that most investors’ portfolio needs are not all that unique. Therefore algorithms could handle the bulk, but not all of their needs.

Or perhaps the disruption to the Bank's models will come from IBM Watson. The below is taken from the 'Watson at Work' section of IBM's site:

Watson is being designed as the ultimate financial services assistant, capable of performing deep content analysis and evidence-based reasoning to accelerate and improve decisions, reduce operational costs, and optimize outcomes.

In a bank, an advisor can use Watson to make better recommendations for financial products to customers based on comprehensive analysis of market conditions, the client's past decisions, recent life events, and available offerings.

The ability to take context into account during the hypothesis generation and scoring phases of the processing pipeline allows Watson to address these complex financial services problems and assist financial services professionals in making better decisions.

The context in which this capability of Watson is one in which Watson is a resource to the financial services professional, simply a tool or resource they can use when advising clients. But it is not hard to envision a time when the clients could simply 'ask Watson' directly questions about their investing strategies and get information on anticipated outcomes. Why would we need, forever, an intermediary between us and the source of knowledge?

These are just a couple of quick examples I found in about 10 minutes of writing this piece this AM, but I bet there are plenty more out there (and more coming).

I guess my point is really that everyone, including bankers in expensive suits should be taking what is happening with robots and automation seriously. It's all fun and games until the algorithm can do your job better than you.

And who knows, maybe the next investment planning chart we will see in a few years will be titled 'Long Automated Advisors, Short Bankers'.

Have a great day!