What many refer to as the robot revolution has long been feared as the end of the road for blue-collar workers whose tasks are manual and repetitive. Vox brought us this interesting information in their article, ““Knowledge workers” could be the most impacted by future automation.”
A recent study revealed that 50 percent of work activities were already automatable using current technology and those activities were most prevalent in manufacturing. The interesting discovery is the data suggests white-collar workers — even those whose work is more closely related to technical and analytical thinking resulting in higher paychecks and presumed job security — may not be as safe as they previously believed.
Emerging technologies like machine learning can make human-like decisions and use real-time data to learn and improve. There’s a good chance you use automation today without realizing it – automating emails to customers, automating the way you generate invoices, automatically logging a help desk inquiry. It will be interesting to see how technology evolves and how the industry responds.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
