Netease Technology News May 25, according to BBC reports, more and more companies are beginning to introduce smart machines to replace inefficient, costly human employees. So what do you need to know about automation? And what impact will it have on your work?
Using a soft, flexible finger, the robot arm can reach out onto the shelf and grab the apple, then gently place it in the basket. Then it went to perform other tasks, such as moving limes, picking peppers, etc. It would never tire or complain. This is the prototype robot arm that British online supermarket Ocado is testing. Due to irregular shapes or being easily damaged, these common grocery stores often require human workers' packaging in Ocado's warehouses. But the company is seeking to use robotics technology, which can assist humans in warehouses to complete their work safely and at a faster and lower cost.
Ocado is not the only company that pursues the use of "automated workers." In hospitals, law firms, and stock markets, many companies are doing the same thing. The question is, what impact will these "autonomous workers" have on humans? Does it affect you? The BBC Future Now column interviewed a number of experts and listened to their opinions. Some people's opinions are very pessimistic. They fear that robots may steal human jobs. Will this really happen? Whose work is in danger? What will your job become after five years? The answers to these questions may surprise you.
Figure 1: Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, and Barack Obama, U.S. President, watch Automation Technologies’ products at an industry fair in 2016
The middle class is in danger
According to a study report, 47% of human jobs in the United States are in danger of being replaced by machines. About 35% of work in the United Kingdom is threatened by automation. In developing countries, the threat of automation is even higher, and about two-thirds of the work is threatened by automation. But the argument that machines take away human work is not new. Bhagwan Chowdhry, a professor of finance at the University of California, Los Angeles, said: "Automation has happened before." He pointed out that during the Industrial Revolution, there had been automation in the factory and many machines replaced humans. Textile workers.
So what's the difference this time? Choudhury said: "It will not only affect blue-collar workers, many white-collar workers can not be independent." Many times, we believe that low-paying, low-skilled jobs are most dangerous, such as warehouse workers or cashiers. But automation can also affect middle-income jobs such as clerks, chefs, office workers, security guards, junior lawyers, and prosecutors.
It has been worrying that these jobs on the "FireWire" have been replaced. But Carl Benedikt Frey, co-head of Oxford's Martin Technology and Employment Program, said: "What is more worrisome is the pain of transformation. We have seen that most of them have been replaced by automation. Workplaces need different kinds of skills, and the key challenge is to ensure that experienced replacements find meaningful things to do.â€
So are the companies that are looking for automated jobs ethically obliged to help employees whose jobs are replaced learn new skills?
Future work
The answer may not only be that companies have such obligations, but schools should also play their part. In a world where technological progress is so rapid, our current education structure may no longer apply. Erik 燘rynjolfsson, director of the MIT Digital Economy Initiative, warned: "We are concerned that our education, training and political system cannot keep pace with technological progress. In the end, many people may be left behind."
Both Brian Gooderson and the chief technology officer of Ocado, Paul Clarke, believe that school education needs to teach students how to deal with the wide-spread world of AI and robots. It is worth noting that we have not yet improved education, training and political systems. In the workplace, employees are constantly being asked to learn new skills, rather than the entire career does not need to change.
Figure 2: Countries like Germany are strengthening the digital qualification of workers to promote employment and increase automation
Chowdhury said: “The difference between work and study may become more blurred. We currently treat them separately, that is, some people work without learning, some people focus on learning without work. We need to get rid of every week. Instead of using the traditional system for 5 days, it takes 60% of the time to work and 40% of the time to study.†For most people, this may require a major shift in thinking.
According to McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, less than 5% of the work can be fully automated through existing technologies. The reason is that our work is too diverse and changeable, and robots are simply not competent. Instead, the two agencies predict about 60% of the jobs, and 1/3 of the jobs will be handed over to the machines. This will mean that most of us still need to do our own work, but the way we work will change dramatically.
Assisting humans
It is also essential to learn how to coordinate with robots. James Manyika, a senior partner at McKinsey & Co., explained: “We can give repetitive work to the machine and the liberated humans can do more valuable work. This may have a huge impact on wages. The downside pressure is because the machines will take on all the hard work. It also means that more people will work with technical assistance and the competition may be more intense."
But there are also bigger problems here. In addition to lower incomes and the potential for unemployment among middle-income workers, the government itself may also face many basic problems, such as reduced taxes and increased dissatisfaction with voting. Fortunately, there are still many jobs that can only be done by humans. Machines are not competent. Like the best example given by Singapore researchers, they are trying to teach two automated robotic arms to assemble IKEA chairs in flat packs. Although the most advanced equipment is used, these two machines still cannot perform the most basic tasks well.
For robots, even distinguishing different objects from chaotic parts is a huge challenge. In the latest test, two robots took 1 minute and a half to successfully place the latch in the chair leg. And this is just the most basic work of furniture assembly. Hawes explained: “When you want robots to assemble different components of furniture, you will encounter real challenges. Robots can install IKEA drawers, but it is difficult to assemble the same drawers for wardrobes. Parts are different, even if some assembly steps are the same. Humans have no such problems."
Figure 3: In the past few years, humans have been working closely with self-service machines that perform some of the duties of humans, such as passport scanners.
Human advantage
From stronger flexibility to better personality, humans are always better than robots in many ways. Brian Joulfson said: “As repetitive tasks are automatically taken over, we find that the demand for creative skills is increasing. We also find that the demand for social skills is also rising, including care, training, persuasion, negotiation and marketing. Class interpersonal skills."
Frei believes that humans have advantages in several fields. He said: “The first is social interaction. If we decompose complex social interactions into daily work, we can divide it into negotiations, try to persuade others, help others, or look after others. This is almost inconceivable. The computer will let these people do the work. People are troubled.â€
Followed by the field of innovation. Computers are good at analyzing problems and can perform repetitive tasks without hesitation. However, humans have confirmed that this monotonous work is rather tedious. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's "Digital Economy Initiative" plans to set up a $1 million prize challenge to encourage companies to make full use of the most typical "humanity" and technology. McKinsey’s Manka said: “Now we pay very low salaries to nannies. Similarly, a lot of art and creative work does not make money. The challenge is how we evaluate creative output or jobs that are not willing to let the machine take over. value."
Alex Harvey, Ocado's head of research and development, is responsible for developing software and technology for the company's retail sector. He pointed out that the world was designed and built for humans, and that manufacturing robots run these capabilities in complex environments is a major technical challenge. The project that Ocado is developing together with several universities in Europe is called SecondHands, which is a robot maintenance assistant work and proves that humans and robots can work together. Harvey explained: "It has the ability to raise the work to a higher level than humans. From the aspect of its behavioral instructions, this is quite simple. But when human technicians act as leaders, they can form a great team." , can exert the maximum strength of the robot."
However, if we look closely at the coordination of humans and robots, there may be deeper moral issues.
Moral issue
At present, there are about 1.7 million robots in use around the world. They are mainly used in industrial environments, where few humans can step in. As the number of robots increases, so does the amount of work they do. It is likely that humans and robots will need to work side by side, but it will also increase the risk of human beings being harmed. Mady Delvaux, deputy chairman of the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee, called for: “We need more transparency so that we can understand how robots do things and the behind-the-scenes of their performance.â€
Delvaux is currently working hard in the European Parliament to promote legislation for robotics and artificial intelligence. Her report compiled for the European Parliament stated that there is an urgent need for new legislation to deal with possible accidents. If the robot violates the law, it should take corresponding responsibility. For example, the AI ​​algorithm may choose a series of financial transactions in order to achieve the goal, but it does not meet the intricate regulations of the regulatory authorities. Dvor and colleagues also urged the ethics committee to help guide our relationship with the robot. She said: "Some things must be respected, such as human autonomy and privacy."
This may also highlight another troubling problem that deals with AI, namely the problem of prejudice. Machine learning systems perform very well when training with data, but recent studies have shown that AI can be cultivated in favor of sexism and racial discrimination. Dvor also pointed out that people who write algorithms have a great influence on AI. Most of the people working in the technology industry are white men. Among the largest and most influential technology companies, male employees account for 70% to 90% of the total. In the past few years, Silicon Valley has been shaken by sexist scandals.
Judy Wajcman, a professor of sociology at the London School of Economics, warned: “The people who currently carry out technical design only account for a very small proportion of the entire population. Technology needs to reflect the needs of the society. It needs to be designed and innovated. Change in the process.†At the same time, Bill ç‡ates (Billç‡ates) came in and raised ethical issues: The robots themselves may need to pay taxes to make up for the taxes of people who have lost their jobs and help support their lives. Others claim that as robots undertake more and more tasks, there may be a phenomenon of “universal basic incomeâ€, that is, everyone can benefit from it.
Of course, most of these assumptions are that robots really do what we set for them. Although they have strong intelligence, they are still rather clumsy tools compared to humans.
Figure 4: Customers dining outside Eatsa, San Francisco’s first fully automated restaurant, without waitresses or cashiers
Improve space
Like IKEA's example, AI still has plenty of room for improvement. Perhaps one of the biggest problems that machine learning and AI communities are currently facing is understanding how algorithms work. Manka said: "Things like AI and machine learning are still largely black boxes. We haven't been able to open them up to find the reason they gave their answers." This leads to many problems. Both machine learning systems and modern AI plants need to train with large amounts of data or pictures to help them identify patterns or trends. When they get new data, they can also use things they already have to find similar patterns.
This may be very useful if we want to find signs of a disease on a CT scan. However, if we use a similar system to identify suspects from CCTV videos and use them as important forensic evidence, it is critical to understand how it identifies suspects. Even in the field of driverless cars, this reasoning ability is still a considerable challenge.
Professor Takeo Kanade, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, is one of the pioneers in the field of driverless cars and a computer vision expert. He said that giving robots the ability to “true understand†the world around them still has to overcome many technical challenges. He also explained: "This is not just about identifying the location of an object. It must be able to understand what the surrounding world is doing. For instance, does that person really have to cross the road in front of them?"
In the development of an automated "intern manager" project, Harves asked a similar question. The team programmed the robot named Betty and sent it to work in offices around the country, such as checking if the fire doors were closed, measuring noise, and calculating the employee’s overtime outside normal working hours. Havis said: "This robot needs to distinguish people's movements of moving chairs, moving to tables or potting plants. It is difficult for robots that do not need to be reprogrammed." But even if this robot is not perfect, humans still find use. Its way.
Surprisingly, those who worked with Betty responded positively to their machine colleagues, even when it was trapped in the corner to provide positive help. Havis said: "In the morning people will greet it, saying that it makes the office work more interesting." If we can give cumbersome, repetitive tasks to the robot to do, then we can do more things to do . Frey said: "As a result, work will become more interesting."
This is a tempting idea, but that is only a possibility. The rise of the machine may steal more people's jobs. (small)
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