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Will the robots take over?

It may seem like something out of a science fiction movie, but a world full of robots and artificial intelligence is not a future fantasy. In fact, in many industries, it is already an everyday reality.

The pace of artificial intelligence development is very fast—Google predicts that robots will be able to display human intelligence by 2029, and that by 2025, up to one third of jobs will be replaced by robots and other forms of artificial intelligence. Some professionals imagine a future in which robots and digital agents will have replaced big numbers of blue- and white-collar workers. However, there is no reason to start panicking just yet. Many experts predict that artificial intelligence will mostly introduce new jobs and change the tasks of existing jobs instead of entirely replacing current positions. Whatever the outcome, artificial intelligence will revolutionize jobs and tasks around us, and will continue to play a growing role in our lives.

Here are a few fields in which technology will play an important role:

• Healthcare. Robots already perform certain surgeries, and Johnson and Johnson has developed a system that automatically delivers anesthesia for standard procedures. A doctor oversees multiple machines at once, making the cost much less than paying an anesthesiologist.
• Manufacturing. Manufacturing was one of the first industries to include artificial intelligence by using robots to assemble products and package them for shipment. New robotic developments will be able to assemble more complicated items, such as electronics. Although production lines will still need human support and supervision, the manufacturing industry will become mostly automated.
• Customer Service. Thanks to developments in personalization and human interaction, artificial intelligence is more efficient than ever in customer service. Messenger bots can now recognize basic text questions and answer chats with customers. Assistants such as Siri on iPhone and Cortana on Windows even use natural language processing and machine learning to recognize and produce human speech patterns to provide interactions that are intuitive and easy. Finally, company x.ai is developing a personal assistant named Amy, who is capable of responding to emails and setting up meetings.
• Commerce and Finance. Robots can use predictive systems and algorithms to manage stocks and finances, and do accounting, often more quickly and efficiently than their human counterparts. Even financial advice at banks is becoming automated, as robots can analyze a person’s financial profile and provide recommendations that best meet his or her spending, saving, and investment habits.

If automation makes jobs less secure in the future, there needs to be a way to deliver benefits outside of employment. Many experts are concerned that our existing social and educational structures are not adequately preparing people for the skills that will be needed in the job market of the future. Others hope that this will be an opportunity to reassess our society’s relationship to employment itself, by returning to a focus on small-scale production and economy, or by giving people more time to spend on leisure.  Only the future will tell what companies and individuals can do to continue to co-exist, grow and thrive with robots.

*Adapted from 5 Industries Being Most Affected By Artificial Intelligence