How Artificial Intelligence Can Prove Workers' Best Defense in the Race Against Automation Gordon Ritter and Jake Saper - Forbes
go to original March 24, 2017

Is Artificial Intelligence the Next Phase of Human Evolution? (Seeker Stories)

Most American jobs aren’t going to Mexico, China or another foreign country, they’re being automated. The workers left behind often struggle to find employment for comparable pay because they lack the skills required for the jobs that aren’t threatened by automation.



Yet automation doesn’t have to be synonymous with wage decline or unemployment. Rather than being a threat to workers, technologies that drive automation, like machine learning and artificial intelligence, can be used to retrain and “up-skill” displaced employees. Here’s how it can work.

McKinsey estimates that nearly half of the tasks workers perform today can be automated - representing a potential $2.7 trillion in lost wages and literally pitting man against machine. This “Great Dislocation” could shake the very foundation of the world’s economies and demands a massively scaled solution. Sending millions of people back to school won’t work because of the size of the problem and because it’s not likely to produce the desired results. AI-based solutions, however, can scale and produce results that will allow humans to keep pace with automation. These results will come from Coaching Networks.

AI-based Coaching Networks can be workers’ best defense in their race against machines. These networks learn workers’ best habits and practices, allowing a group to benefit from the “brilliant outliers” worldwide. Coaching Networks convey the knowledge they’ve gained to workers on the job and in context, which is more effective than theoretical or classroom training. In fact, the American Psychological Association calls it a top principle of effective teaching. Indeed, we already rely on digital in-context coaching daily, using YouTube videos to guide us through new tasks.



...To foster the Coaching Network ecosystem, we are co-sponsoring a Machine Learning Startup Competition with Google Cloud. Startups can compete for $1M investment and $400K in Google Cloud Platform credits. To learn more, please visit the competition website here.

Read the rest at Forbes

Related: Robots Expected to Take 38 Percent of U.S. Jobs By 2030s (Tribune Media)

Related: US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchi Is "Not Worried" About Robots, But He Should Be (Inverse)

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!