This paper explores how artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are transforming the global labor market. Human workers, limited to a 33% duty cycle due to rest and holidays, cost $14 to $55 per hour. In contrast, digital labor operates nearly 24/7 at just $0.10 to $0.50 per hour. We examine sectors like healthcare, education, manufacturing, and retail, finding that 40-70% of tasks could be automated. Yet, human skills like emotional intelligence and adaptability remain essential. Humans process 5,000-20,000 tokens (units of information) per hour, while AI far exceeds this, though its energy use-3.5 to 7 times higher than humans-could offset 20-40% of cost savings. Using real-world examples, such as AI in journalism and law, we illustrate these dynamics and propose six strategies-like a 4-day workweek and retraining-to ensure a fair transition to an AI-driven economy.

Increasingly, the industry captains and senior executives are realizing that the answer could lie in the use of advanced technology -- in particular, machine learning.Business leaders today are faced with an existential crisis: how to increase the quality of their products and services while driving down the costs. Increasingly, industry captains and senior executives are realizing that the answer could lie in the use of advanced technology -- in particular, machine learning (ML). ML creates digital labor that can automate a business process, reduce the costs for the process and enhance the quality by the consistency of the outcomes. I predict those businesses that don't adopt digital labor will become uncompetitive. It is for this reason that ML is being seriously considered across many industry segments.

Speaking at the third annual Digital Workforce Summit in New York City, Gonzalo Gomez Cid, Global Contact Center Director at Telefónica, discussed his company's journey from IVR-based contact centers to AI-driven operations driven by digital labor. Telefónica is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Madrid. It has a presence in 15 countries across Europe and Latin America. In the telco space, it ranks seventh in revenues, sixth in market capitalization and fifth in number of subscribers. Gomez Cid told DWS attendees that Telefónica describes itself as a "company of platforms," including physical assets, networks and IT, and products and services.

This seems like an obvious one, but with so many potential areas for AI exploration, starting with the right projects--and stakeholders--is crucial for long-term success. First and foremost, the process of identifying and selecting use cases shouldn't be driven by technology alone. That is, you don't want to think about AI solely in terms of where you can apply natural language processing, for example, or how you can leverage a labeled data set. Instead, ask where you seek to increase productivity or derive new value. Going through the questioning exercise above with the various leaders who may own or touch AI, such as the chief information officer, chief digital officer, chief data scientist, and other specialists (see #3), will enable you to identify where to start.

Today, the contact center is at an inflexion point. Artificial intelligence is here and with it comes the ability to recognize customer situations and solve their problems faster. With the rise of chatbots, this marks the beginning of the shift to digital labor, meaning the automation of tasks that are performed by computer applications that were previously performed by humans. Digital labor can be used in contact centers to solve problems that humans are having with a particular product or service. Aragon predicts that by 2021, digital labor will become a key feature of intelligent contact center offerings.

When there is such a strain on skilled labor -- there are two directions it can head. Firstly, labor is stretched and doesn't perform their tasks to the adequate level. Leading to stressed and unhappy people, and businesses that lose out on opportunities due to not having people to perform the tasks. The second outcome, is the use of intelligent automation to bridge the gap in skilled labor. By deploying intelligent automation, tasks that are time consuming but low value can be performed by digital labor -- meaning that the limited human labor can take on those tasks that only a person can perform.

Ready to put artificial intelligence to work at your company? Make sure to get these 10 things right. A few weeks ago, we joined hundreds of other business and technology leaders at the AI Summit San Francisco. The conference was packed with executives and technologists who were looking for ways to put artificial intelligence (AI) to work in the enterprise. One continuing theme was just how quickly the technology--and corporate interest in AI--had advanced.

I once heard it said that if AT&T did not install automatic phone switching technology several decades back, the phone company would now need to employ the entire population of North America to work as operators to meet the demand of today's call traffic. While many observers fear that artificial intelligence and robots will eliminate large swaths of jobs, it's also arguable that technology is enhancing humans' lives and livelihoods, and in the process, creating even more opportunities. Chetan Dube, founder and CEO of IPsoft, falls squarely on the side of technology optimists in this regard. I had the opportunity to talk with Dube at a recent IPsoft confab which unveiled the latest version of its enterprise intelligent assistant, "Amelia." Dube, whose company, IPsoft, specializes in applying artificial intelligence to customer interactions, is himself an example of an innovator who is building on the next wave of work-saving technology.

Over the last two decades, banks and financial institutions have achieved significant efficiencies through outsourcing, offshoring and labor arbitrage. Those levers can only go so far, however, when it comes to further cutting costs and simultaneously growing revenues -- particularly at a time when disintermediation is increasing and budgets are diminishing. To address this, enter the "bots": Financial services institutions including retail banks, investment banks, custodians, commercial banks and insurers are turning to digital labor, which represents a new wave of technologies such as robotics process automation (RPA) and cognitive automation. "Bots" are not the electromechanical robots with arms and legs one may have seen in sci-fi movies. Instead, this refers to software configured to interact with computers and applications just like a human would, performing high-volume, repetitive processes and tasks.

You can't ignore - Technologies like Cloud computing, Internet of Things, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are creating a new kind of labor system; called Digital Labor With cognitive platforms available now, it is feasible for the machine to learn and understand the meaning of what's going around. There is no doubt that this is another industrial revolution. Many tasks we perform today will be taken up by Digital Labor. Machine Learning can significantly transform IT services, but have some objectives before you hit the road -as Machine Learning is not some magic you apply and get benefits out of it. Machine learning techniques can complement your current monitoring tools, providing root-cause analysis and real-time detection of any anomaly.