New research using AI to match patent language with work shows that AI may reinvent high-skill work sooner than you think. When Amazon first arrived on the scene, books were its early focus for product selection, buyer insights, distribution and pricing. In those early days, retailers typically lamented the plight of bookstores, but relaxed in their conviction that products like clothing, food, jewelry and fashion would be safe. "Obviously," consumers would always want to experience such products by physically shopping, touching, smelling and trying them on. Now, we can see how the disruptive effects of Amazon-like technology transformed virtually every market, more quickly and differently than most anticipated.

When leaders describe how advances in automation will affect job prospects for humans, predictions typically fall into one of two camps. Optimists say that machines will free human workers to do higher-value, more creative work. Pessimists predict massive unemployment, or, if they have a flair for the dramatic, a doomsday scenario in which humans' only job is to serve our robot overlords. What almost everyone gets wrong is focusing exclusively on the idea of automation "replacing" humans. Simply asking which humans will be replaced fails to account for how work and automation will evolve.

We are at an interesting tipping point regarding how and where work gets done. As business leaders and managers, we have become increasingly capable of engaging a workforce that is some combination of virtual and on site, part time and full time, permanent and contingent. But just when we've sorted out preferred management routines, there is an entirely new landscape emerging with technology options central to the work and possibly your business model: work automation. How, when, and where should leaders be thinking about applying the various automation technologies to their businesses? There are currently three technological enablers of work automation: robotic process automation, cognitive automation, and social robotics.