No B.S Friday: Blink and you’ll miss the robot coming for your job.
At the risk of being an old guy yelling at clouds, robots are coming for our jobs.
Fast.
I know some people are going to accuse me of being alarmist. I know some people are going to cling to the quaint idea that robots will create more jobs than they take.
But this genie is out of the bottle, and it’s moving very, VERY quickly.
The latest in this story is that they’ve trained an autonomous robot to work at a retail apparel store in Canada:
In January, at a Mark's apparel store outside Vancouver, Canada, a Sanctuary AI robot successfully performed assorted retail tasks that would normally be done by human workers.
During a week-long pilot test, the store, owned by retail chain Canada Tire Corporation (CTC), saw its mechanical intern handle 110 different retail-related activities in the front and back of the store.
These included picking and packing merchandise, sales floor replenishment, cleaning, tagging, labeling, store display compliance, and folding – tasks that previously had been demonstrated only in a Sanctuary AI lab set up to mirror the store.
Like, seriously? 110 different tasks?
Sure, the robot still needed a human looking over its shoulder, but every intern does.
And until now, dexterity has been one of the big frontiers in robotics. The human hand is a marvel of engineering, and more than 98% of work requires a human hand to make it happen.
But it looks like we’re about to blow through that barrier, and then things really get real.
And this is what people just don’t get about where we’re at on an exponential curve. Take anything AI is doing right now, double its speed and capability, and that’s where we’ll be in 3 to 5 years.
Mind. Blowing.
Of course the people making the robots are telling us not to worry. Robots aren’t going to replace us. They’re only doing tasks that people don’t like:
Geordie Rose, co-founder and CEO of Sanctuary AI, said in a statement on Tuesday that the company's general purpose robot performed “many necessary but rudimentary tasks that people note finding unsatisfying or unfavorable” and expressed enthusiasm with the results.
One of the commonly cited goals for AI systems is to handle routine tasks so human workers can be freed to take on more demanding, creative tasks.
Cari Covent, VP of data, analytics and AI for CTC, in a statement said just that: “With the Mark’s pilot, we were able to focus human resources on higher-value and more meaningful work, like customer service and engagement.”
These guys are seriously taking the piss.
I mean, what is the definition of a job if not a series of “unsatisfying and unfavourable tasks”?
If they were satisfying and favourable, you wouldn’t have to pay anyone to do them.
And why are they investing all this energy in training up robots to work in a commercial retail setting, if not to replace labour costs at some point?
No venture capitalist ever got rich by making work life more favourable and meaningful.
No, this is happening and it’s happening now.
The avalanche is loose at the top of the mountain, and the number of jobs – from retail to legal to graphic design to whatever – the number of occupations in its path is truly staggering.
Seriously, if you were relying on your wage job to set you up for a comfortable retirement, it’s time to rethink your strategy.
JG.