Benjamin Dyer is the CEO of Powered Now. Powered Now aims to take the pain out of admin and paperwork for trade businesses like gas engineers, electricians, builders, and many more.
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Why robots won’t put tradespeople out of a job
ACCORDING to Hollywood we are all doomed. When the ‘singularity’ is reached, robots will be more intelligent than us. So why would they want to keep us around?
Hollywood’s job is to sell films and the press have to sell papers. Neither have a great track record at predicting the future, with a handful of exceptions. So don’t believe everything you read or see.
Despite this, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are advancing very fast. There are big changes happening in this area and it will definitely impact some jobs.
New ways of learning
In artificial intelligence (AI), there have been some big changes recently. These are powered by the internet giants like Google, Amazon and Apple. All of these companies have vast amounts of data and AI has started learning from this information. It’s actually learning from experience, a bit like humans, although only in narrow, specialist fields.
As recently as 2012, Google assembled a vast trove of pictures and fed these into one of these new learning machines based on AI. It wasn’t given any
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information but it started recognising cats. That seems trivial, but it was the first time it had ever happened. Consumer products based on the same approach are now rolling out with Alexa from Amazon (speech recognition) one of the most well-known.
One trick robots
The problem with robots is that they are only ever good at one thing. That’s why robots today are all very limited: Cyber- weld provides welding robots; Dyson does robot cleaners; Fastbricks Robotics has a robot bricklayer.
So what about jobs?
The Law Society recently published “The Future of Legal Services”. They stated that “Numerous legal tech companies, universities and law firms are now exploring the extent to which the cognitive domain of lawyers can be automated.”
Accountants at the ACCA in 'Professional Accountants – the future' say something similar: “Smart software and systems will replace manual work and automate complex and multifaceted processes.”
It’s hard not to smile that these fat cat professions will face something similar to
what industrial workers have faced in the past.
Good news
When it comes to trades like electricians, gas engineers, plumbers and builders, the saying “no two jobs are the same”, gives a clue to the good news. In household situations, even the most advanced robots are a million miles away from dealing with the complexity that the average tradesman encounters. Robots cannot climb ladders, bend under stairs or solve a large variety of different problems. A broad range of manual and mental dexterity is required, which is exactly what these new AI-driven robots don’t have.
The new machines will probably be best at lifting and manoeuvring heavy objects into place. That will replace the grunt work, which is great.
This new industrial revolution is likely to be big news. The human race is here to stay, but there are likely to be quite a few changes in jobs. Hopefully for the trades it will simply mean the elimination of some back-breaking work. That will make a career in these professions even better than it is today.
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