Computerworld, Australia: Director at Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work Says 2018 Will be the Year of the Robot

“We are routinely bombarded with news nowadays that robots will take over the world,” writes Benjamin Pring, Director at Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work and co-author of ‘What To Do When Machines Do Everything’. “In reality, the robots are coming, but they don’t signal the end of human employment as we know it. On the contrary, robots offer the promise of new job roles that don’t yet exist.” Excerpts:

“These new jobs will fuel the economy as people upskill and retrain, as well as jobs created for the operation of the technology behind robotics and AI. By 2030, it is estimated machines and robots could relieve Australian workers of two hours’ worth of the most repetitive manual tasks each week, leading to increased job satisfaction and productivity.

The year 2018 may well be the year of the robot, as businesses embrace the many benefits of applying robotics to automate core business processes, cutting out the rote tasks that make many jobs mundane, unsafe, or inefficient.

By integrating some of the more repetitive tasks in a business, robots will extend the creative problem-solving abilities that are currently unique to humans, delivering far superior business results.

Robots are here to stay. However, people’s jobs will be redefined alongside, enabling them to work more productively and efficiently alongside robots. It will involve a new utilization of the unique human skills of creativity, emotional intelligence, empathy, critical thinking, and human touch — skills that robots don’t yet possess.

In order to optimize the software sophistications, money-saving benefits, and data-collective abilities of robots, it’s essential that businesses create a symbiosis between employees and robot counterparts.

The opportunity is vast to redefine skills, allowing people to be involved in people skills, such as complex human relationship roles such as nursing or therapy jobs, and for trade roles where people deliver a service in other people’s homes, such as plumbers, electricians and builders.

In order to remain competitive in a fast-moving global market, and keep employees reassured in times of change, Australia needs to embrace automated productivity whilst simultaneously ensuring its human workers are reskilled and adaptable.

The benefits from AI will be enhanced when businesses recognize the skills and experience of their workforce and build on that to create a viable, profitable and competitive relationship between their employees and robots.”

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