Robot revolution: rise of the intelligent automated workforce
Danushka Bollegala Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool Losing jobs to technology is nothing new. Since the industrial revolution, roles that were once exclusively performed by humans have been slowly but steadily replaced by some form of automated machinery. Even in cases where the human worker is not completely replaced by a machine, humans have learnt to rely on a battery of machinery to be more efficient and accurate. A report from the Oxford Martin School’s Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology said that 47% of all jobs in the US are likely to be replaced by automated systems. Among the jobs soon to be replaced by machines are real estate brokers, animal breeders, tax advisers, data entry workers, receptionists, and various personal assistants. But you won’t need to pack up your desk and hand over to a computer just yet, and in fact jobs that require a certain level of social intelligence and creativity such as in education, healthcare, the arts and media are likely to remain in demand from humans, because such tasks remain difficult to be computerised. Like it or not, we now live in an era dominated by artificial intelligence(AI). AI can be seen as a collection of technologies that can be used to imitate or even to outperform tasks performed by humans using machines. We might not first see it but we cannot avoid running into one or more systems that use some form of an AI algorithm in our day-to-day activities – such as searching for some information using Google, purchasing a recommended product on Amazon, or recognising faces in an image uploaded to Facebook. Deep learning Recent breakthroughs in AI are largely attributable to a technique called deep learning. Often known as machine learning or neural networking, deep learning involves “training” a computer […]