Tag: automation

At the mercy of machines

Automation and algorithms are changing business but they are not without risks

Automation is the greatest change we’re going to see in business over the next decade as companies increasingly rely upon computers to make day to day decisions.

Giving control to algorithms however comes with a set of risks which managers and business owners have to prepare for.

Earlier this week the risks in relying on algorithms were shown when car service Uber’s management was slow to react to a situation where its formulas risked a PR disaster.

Uber’s misstep in Sydney shows the weaknesses in the automated business model as its algorithm detected people clamouring for rides out of the city and applied ‘surge pricing’.

Surge pricing is applied when Uber’s system sees high demand – typically around events like New Year’s Eve – although the company has previously been criticised for alleged profiteering during emergencies like Hurricane Sandy in New York.

In the light of previous criticism, it’s surprising that Uber stumbled in Sydney during the hostage crisis. Shortly after criticism of the surge pricing arose on the internet, the company’s Sydney social media manager sent out a standard defence of surge pricing.

That message was consistent with both Uber’s business model and how the algorithm that determines the company’s fares works; however it was a potential disaster for the business’ already battered reputation.

An hour later the company’s management had realised their mistake and announced that rides out of Sydney’s Central Business District would be free.

User’s mistake is a classic example of the dangers of relying solely on an algorithm to determine business decisions; while things will work fine during the normal course of business, there will always be edge cases that create perverse results.

While machines are efficient; they lack context, judgement and compassion which exposes those who rely solely upon them to unforeseen risks.

As the Internet of Things rolls out, systems will be deployed where responses will be based upon the rules of predetermined formulas.

Businesses with overly strict rules and no provision for management intervention in extreme circumstances will find themselves, like Uber, at the mercy of their machines. Staking everything on those machines could turn out to be the riskiest strategy of all.

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Where will the jobs come from? ABC Nightlife radio

The future of work in an age of robots and algorithms is this month’s Nightlife technology radio spot

If you missed the program it’s available from the Soundcloud site.

Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife across Australia from 10pm Australian Eastern time on Thursday, November 27 to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

Last week a US company showed off its robotic security guard, with the boast it costs less than half the wages of a human officer. It isn’t just security guards, baristas or taxi drivers, many knowledge based jobs — from call centre workers to lawyers — can be done by computer programs, or algorithms.

Even the building industry isn’t immune from the robots as 3D printing moves into making houses by squeezing concrete out of computer controlled nozzles.

In almost every occupation technology is changing the way we work and reducing the number of workers needed to do a job. So where next for employment in the Twenty-first Century?

Meet the K-5 robot security guard

For this month’s Nightlife we’ll be discussing how the robots and algorithms are taking over the workplace and what this means for our communities and businesses.

Join us

Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Australian Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

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The rise of the robots

A robot security guard shows the way for future employment

One of the key themes of this site is how  industries and workplaces are changing, one good example of this is Knightscope’s K-5 robot, a refrigerator sized device that does many of the tasks currently done by human security guards.

The K-5 comes with an impressive list of security features; live video,  facial recognition, behavioral analysis and a range of other tools to help organisations protect their premises.

With an advertised running cost of $6.25 an hour, half the US mean average wage for security guards, the robots appear an attractive proposition although one suspects the limitations of the devices, not to mention the networking infrastructure involved, won’t make them feasible for most places in the near future.

Despite its limitations, the K-5 shows the direction of robot technologies in replacing jobs that until recently were thought to be immune to automation. As the technologies inside the K-5 become smaller and lighter, future devices will become even more flexible and adaptable.

Adding to the strengths of these autonomous devices is their constant connectivity, as the promotional video shows the robot uses cloud services to run its recognition and alarm services. Coupled with various sensors and beacons within a building, and these robot security guards become formidable devices.

The applications for devices like the K-5 goes beyond patrolling shopping centres, car parks or industrial complexes; it’s not hard to see how similar devices can be deployed in applications like agriculture, mining or manufacturing for tasks where it would be expensive or dangerous to employ humans.

What the K-5 illustrates Andrew McAfee’s warning of exponential technological change being about to engulf businesses, the employment implications of that should have community leaders thinking as well.

For entrepreneurs, on the other hand, advances in robotics are another great opportunity.

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Times get tougher for journalists and the middle class

Business and sports reporting is increasingly being done by computers, many other middle class jobs are going the same way.

Journalists have had a tough time over the last twenty years and it’s about to get tougher.

Last July The Associated Press announced they will automate most of their business reporting. AP’s Business News Managing Editor, Lou Ferrara explained in a company blog how the service will pull information out of company announcements and format them into standard news reports.

instead of providing 300 stories manually, we can provide up to 4,400 automatically for companies throughout the United States each quarter

This isn’t the first time robots have replaced journalists, three years ago National Public Radio reported how algorighms were replacing sports reporters.

Ferrara admits AP has already automated much of its sports reporting;

Interestingly, we already have been automating a good chunk of AP’s sports agate report for several years. Data comes from STATS, the sports statistics company, and is automated and formatted into our systems for distribution. A majority of our agate is produced this way.

Reporting sports or financial results makes sense for computer programs; the reciting of facts within a flowing narrative is something basic – Manchester United led Arsenal 2-0  at half time, Exxon Mobil stock was up twenty cents in morning trading and the Japanese Yen was down three points at this afternoon’s close don’t take a super computer to write.

Cynics would say rewriting press releases, something many journalists are accused of doing, could be better done by a machine and increasingly this is exactly what happens.

The automation of commodity reporting isn’t just a threat to journeyman journalists though; any job, trade or profession that is based on regurgitating information already stored on a database can be processed the same way.

For lawyers, accountants and armies of form processing public servants the computers are already threatening jobs – like journalists things are about to get much worse in those fields.

It could well be that it’s managers who are the most vulnerable of all; when computers can monitor the workplace and prepare executive reports then there’s little reason for many middle management positions.

This is part of the reason why the middle classes are in trouble and the political forces this unleashes shouldn’t be underestimated.

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Our evolving view of robots

It’s interesting how our perceptions of robots have changed over the decades

Ahead the Ovations Speaker Showcase on Tuesday, I’ve been looking at robots as one of this decade’s trends.

What’s interesting is how our perception of robots has evolved over the last half century.

The idea of Robots in the 1950s and  60s were ones with human shapes – four legs, a torso, two arms, shoulders and a head – otherwise known as anthropomorphic. Lost in Space and the Day the Earth Stood Still are two good examples of those human like machines.

How robots looked in the 1950s
1950s robot chic – the day the Earth stood still

Today’s robots have much more utilitarian shapes, like the Winbot window cleaner pictured at the beginning of this post.

Many of the robots look like the machines we use today, mainly because they are today’s technology with the driver or operator replaced. A good example being the Google self driving cars.

google self driving car

The idea of a robotic car isn’t completely new though; the 1980s action series Knight Rider featured KITT, a robot car with an almost equally mechanical David Hasslehof as its sidekick.

The Hoff and KITT

More interesting still are the tiny robots who look, and act, like insects. Wait until these guys infest your internet fridge.

All of these technologies had to wait until computers became small and cheap enough to fit into the systems. In the 1980s a computer with the capabilities to run KITT or a Google Car would be the size of a large warehouse, today it can fit inside a cigarette packet.

Of course the real power for robots comes when computers talk to each other and form a collective intelligence. This is the Internet of machines.

The terminator
Skynet has told The Terminator to destroy us all.

Which brings us to Arthur C. Clarke’s and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and the 1980s vision of Skynet which gave birth to the Terminator.

Hopefully those visions of the future of network connected robot are just as misguided as those of 1950s movies.

If they aren’t, we’re in a lot of trouble.

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