Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not.
Marc Andreessen – Venture Capitalist
We’ve been involved in engineering and tech automation for years. What surprises us is the observable breadth, depth, and impacts of automation (AI included) over the last five years, which COVID accelerated. What’s the big deal about automation?
“Automation exists to substitute work undertaken by humans with work done by machines, with the aim of increasing the quality and quantity of output at a reduced cost.” (Automation and Artificial Intelligence: How Machines Are Affecting People and Places’, Brooking Institution, January 24, 2019.)
COVID accelerated the adoption of automation. We’re especially seeing this if workers can’t work close together due to social distancing, the solution may be robots. We’re seeing this in coffee shops, distribution and meat packing plants. Automation stories are increasing in the U.S., China, India, and all parts of the world. For example, one of China’s big e-commerce companies, has a warehouse in Shanghai where 4 engineers service all the robots in a mega fulfillment center.
Amazon has an army of 100,000 robots that displace humans. What happens to VUCANs? We’re just beginning to see and understand the social impacts of automation.
Story: Increasing automation should be a real concern to all workers. Over the past few years, most if not all established and legacy companies realize they must transform their ‘brick and mortar’ work models to online and automated models to survive and hopefully thrive.
Tech is coming at us faster than we can cope. We don’t yet have the social and human systems to address many of the tech challenges. We’ll have to start thinking about work differently and re-architect the nature of work itself in terms of what VUCANs can do and what machines can do.
Work Lesson Earned: Automation disrupts businesses and displaces VUCANs. And, automation results in real fear. The numbers are stunning:
“An estimated 67% of workers at U.S. technology companies are concerned about losing their jobs to digital capabilities powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotic software.” (‘Tech Workers Fear More Automation in Wake of Virus’, Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2020.)
You say: ‘So what? This won’t affect me.’ Maybe or maybe not. We just want to say: ‘Be prepared’. Years ago, Xerox PARC CEO Stephen Hoover said: “Every company is a tech company”. I guess he was right. In VUCA time, the logical extension may be ‘every person
is a tech person’. What do you think?