No-collar workforce: Humans and machines in one loop--collaborating in roles and new talent models

With intelligent automation marching steadily toward broader adoption, media coverage of this historic technology disruption is turning increasingly alarmist. "New study: Artificial intelligence is coming for your jobs, millennials,"1 announced one business news outlet recently. "US workers face higher risk of being replaced by robots,"2 declared another. These dire headlines may deliver impressive click stats, but they don't consider a much more hopeful--and likely--scenario: In the near future, human workers and machines will work together seamlessly, each complementing the other's efforts in a single loop of productivity. And, in turn, HR organizations will begin developing new strategies and tools for recruiting, managing, and training a hybrid human-machine workforce. Notwithstanding sky-is-falling predictions, robotics, cognitive, and artificial intelligence (AI) will probably not displace most human workers. Yes, these tools offer opportunities to automate some repetitive low-level tasks. Perhaps more importantly, intelligent automation solutions may be able to augment human performance by automating certain parts of a task, thus freeing individuals to focus on more "human" aspects that require empathic problem-solving abilities, social skills, and emotional intelligence. For example, if retail banking transactions were automated, bank tellers would be able to spend more time interacting with and advising customers--and selling products.