Meet the New Boss: The World’s First Artificial-Intelligence Manager?
Last week, the Japanese multinational conglomerate Hitachi quietly issued an intriguing announcement. Apparently, the company has appointed its first AI boss.
Well,
kinda-sorta. The announcement details a new initiative in which
artificial intelligence (AI) technology is being used to determine
workflows and employee duties in real time. Specifically, an AI “boss”
was put in charge of a warehouse management system, where it managed to
effect an 8 percent increase in efficiency among its human servants workers.
The opening paragraph of the press release is worth quoting in full:
Hitachi, Ltd. announced today, the development of AI technology which provides appropriate work orders based on an understanding of demand fluctuation and on-site kaizen activity derived from big data accumulated daily in corporate business systems, and its verification in logistics tasks by improving efficiency by 8%. By integrating the AI into business systems, it may become possible to realize efficient operations in a diverse range of areas through human and AI cooperation.
(Sounds
like a fun place to work, doesn’t it? The language in the Hitachi press
release is a little…"dense" is probably the polite term. That may
partly be a Japanese-English translation issue, but I suspect the
Corporate Jargon-English translation issue is the bigger problem.)
Who’s the boss?
Of
course, we’ve seen all kinds of automation introduced into the
workplace over the years, from the Industrial Revolution to modern IT
infrastructures. But this project is different. The AI system isn’t just
automating routine tasks. It’s actually adjusting work orders on the
fly, basing its decisions on enormous, cumulonimbus swirls of Big Data
stored up the Cloud.
In
this case, those weather metaphors are no joke. The Hitachi AI is
programmed to adjust work flows depending on what the weather’s like
(among other factors). So forget about blaming that snowstorm for being
late or delaying a deadline: The boss already knows about the snow and
has already Made Appropriate Corrections.
The
really fascinating stuff involves the integration of artificial
intelligence with the concept of kaizen — the business philosophy common
in Japan that encourages workers and managers to constantly improve
their personal efficiency.
According
to kaizen, workers should implement new approaches based on their
personal experience. But Hitachi’s AI system adds a new twist to that
system: “The AI automatically analyzes the outcome of these new
approaches, and selects processes which produce better results and
applies it to the next work order.”
Uh-oh.
No more awkward bar crawls
This
is a classic good-news/bad-news scenario, I think. The good news is
that putting an AI in charge would mean everyone gets a rational boss —
like, rational in the binary sense. No mean feat, that. Also, the AI
boss would presumably not be “inviting” you out to mandatory dinner
parties or sporting events or whatever.
The
bad news is that we really could be putting the machines in charge. We
could no longer fool ourselves about the impending robot revolution,
even though AI systems are already learning how to evolve, fight, and even dream.
The
dawning of the AI boss would also mean a profound change in our culture
generally. We can expect a radical shift in New Yorker cartoons for one
thing. Workplace situation comedies would take a hit. And gossip,
naturally. Who wants to gossip about an AI boss? It’s like gossiping
about the refrigerator.
One
more detail from the official announcement: Having concluded the test
run on warehouse logistics, Hitachi intends to apply the AI to other
areas including finance, transport, manufacturing, healthcare, public
works and distribution, in order to — and I quote — “contribute to
business operations which can respond flexibly to changes in society in
an efficient manner.”
Courtesy: Yahoo
