Worth reading this week is a McKinsey interview with Doug Gurr, President of Amazon China on the benefits of automation for the retail industry:

“I like to say that the only things people should do are things that only people can do - that is, making complex decisions that can’t be automated because there’s high uncertainty, they’re hard to reverse, there’s not enough data, or they’re judgement calls. That does two things for you. First, it allows decision-making at genuine scale. Second, it makes jobs interesting for people.”

Decisions, Decisions

Fair enough, not everything can be decided by a machine. But then Gurr goes and looks at the other side of the argument as well:

“You read a lot about whether machines are better at making decisions than people are. I think it’s kind irrelevant unless the machines are materially worse at it, which they’re not. The point of giving the decisions to machines is that you have scale.”

Ah, the old human mind versus technology debate. It’s one of my favourites.

A of artificial intelligence us usually based on nostalgia; it’s very easy to mourn the old and familiar. For example, the word ‘Luddite’ was invented way back in the Industrial Age for as a byword for those who are resistant to new technological innovations. Usually the nay-sayers were proved wrong. Jobs have been created because of tech advances - my job certainly wouldn’t exist today if that hadn’t happened.

Transformative Technology

I like to think that the future isn’t all doom and gloom as Elon Musk so heartily insists. Yes, automation will cost jobs but it will enhance the working lives of more. It’s a “transformative” technology, as Doug Gurr says.

Human judgement is a long way off from being automated though, and maybe that’s for a good reason. We’ve seen Wall-E (“Eeeeeeve!”) for god’s sake, we’re at least somewhat aware that the human race shouldn’t end up as obese, mindless drones.

But watch this space anyway.

Photo courtesy of interviewly.com.