The Human Factor in a World of AI 

As I settled down to demolish my Uber Eats the other day, I didn’t give much thought to the process that got the food from the restaurant to my table, but it was nice it was so simple. Why did it take so long for someone to come up with this great idea?  The reality is that Uber wasn’t an option until we had the data crunching capability to make it a reality. As this capability increases, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) enters our daily lives, more and more ideas are possible.  However,  when we think of AI in futuristic terms, it can become overwhelming. In the workplace, there is a concern of mass unemployment as we see many skilled analytical jobs being done better by robots than humans.  Yet, in our engineering company, where we actively hand over the automated tasks to computers, we are not finding this to be the case. The value of our people only increases.  And so when I stumbled across a Ted Talk by Pedro Uria-Recio , I found it fascinating. Uria-Recia shares why he thinks AI will make the workplace more human, not less. He describes how automating repetitive and physical tasks will increase our skills in creativity, social abilities, empathy and sense-making.  While robots or AI are great at productivity and can outperform us humans in many skills (google maps beats my navigation everytime!), it does not mean they will replace us. Instead, it will free us up to focus on skills and tasks that rely on reasoning. Our very human social abilities and creativity will have room to flourish. For example, those skills needed for managing people, dealing with conflict resolution, bringing emotional intelligence to a situation or applying a design mindset will become more and more valued. I found Uria-Recia’s talk interesting in light on the journey we’re on at BVT. We don’t use technology to bypass humans. We use it to get rid of those parts that can be automated. Instead of wasting time grinding through calculations, we can spend it with clients to help them with far more complex problems.   This does require a more varied skill set from our engineers and an ability to keep adapting, and that is why we choose to employ the people we do.  Ceinwen McNeil CE BVT Engineering sdatascience.com/artificial-intelligence-will-make-the-workplace-more-human-not-less-49af1ce6cd0d