Artificial intelligence is on its way. What does it imply for the labour market? Which jobs are able to survive the digital transformation stage? Which jobs will not exist anymore because of machine learning? Anthony Glodbloom from Caggle, a company that the studies the consequences of machine learning, concluded that almost one in every two jobs have a high risk of being automated by machines.
Machine learning is not something new. It started making its way into the industry in the early nineties with relatively simple tasks like sorting the mail by reading characters from ZIP codes or assessing credit risk. Since then, machine learning experienced a steep development curve.
Nowadays, machine learning is capable of far more complex tasks. In 2012, Caggle challenged its community to build an algorithm that could grade high school grades. The winning algorithms were able to match the grades given by human teaches. Last year, an even more difficult topic was issued: write an algorithm that diagnoses eye diseases based on images from eyes. Winning algorithms in this case were able to match diagnoses given by human doctors.
Do teachers and doctors have to worry? According to Goldbloom are we, humans, powerless in case of regular and frequent tasks. Though, there is hope. There are things that machines cannot do.
The development of artificial intelligence has made very little progress in tackling novel situations. The fundamental limitation of machines is that they need to learn from large volumes of past data. Humanity does not have this constraint. We solve these type of problems thousands of times a day.
From this, we can conclude that the existence of our future jobs is related to two aspects. First, the amount of tasks that are standard and frequently returning, so called patterns. Next to that, the number of times you have to deal with new situations you do not know from the past.
So what does this imply for Business students? Let’s consider the goal of a marketing campaign: it needs to stand out from the croud to grasp consumers attention. Something that has not been done before, will receive attention. Business strategy means finding gaps in the market, things that nobody else is doing. Only humans can do this.
And for Information Strategy students in specific? Those are especially safe. As this field of study is relatively new and markets have not been satisfied yet. So no need to worry, many gaps are waiting to be found by you.
