Will Robots Take Over Our Jobs

The question of whether robots will replace human jobs has been hotly debated for decades, but the rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence – and the populist socio-political environment in which we find ourselves – have given the debate around automation and employment an added sense of urgency. A report by the Nomura Research Institute indicates that by 2035 nearly half of all jobs in Japan could be performed by robots, and recently we've started to see these predictions materialise. Insurance firm Fukoku Mutual Life made 34 employees redundant by replacing them with IBM's Watson Explorer AI system, which is capable of analysing and interpreting data to automatically calculate payouts to its policyholders. This AI system will be able to read tens of thousands of medical certificates and factor in the length of hospital stays, medical histories and any surgical procedures before calculating payouts, but in spite of being described by the firm as "cognitive technology that can think like a human," the sums will not actually be paid until they have been approved by an actual member of staff. And it is this aspect of human oversight that proves crucial to the conversation: Instead of treating Artificial Intelligence and Automation as a zero-sum game and pitching AI as an adversary to human employment, it is important to point out that technological advances generally correlate to increased prosperity in the long-term.