Rise of the machines: Japanese firm's AI eliminates 34 white collar jobs

Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance says it has two primary goals for the move: to increase productivity by 30 percent and to save about 140 million yen (US$1.2 million) a year. Workers at Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance are being replaced with an artificial intelligence system. The system is based on IBM's Watson Explorer which the company says has "cognitive technology that can think like a human," enabling it to "analyse and interpret all of your data, including unstructured text, images, audio and video." "With Watson, you can provide personalized recommendations by understanding a user's personality, tone, and emotion," IBM adds. Despite the AI'hire', the final say on all of the company's insurance payouts remains with a human.