Chronicle of a technological abduction (AI is coming to get you)

In times of Artificial Intelligence and machines worthy of the most sophisticated dreams of Hollywood scriptwriters, two weeks ago a technological abduction took place in Milan where not only fashion houses, but also the lilac subway robot-wagons triumph.

We bring you this story from the Milan Chronicle

Suddenly the subway train stopped - a breakdown. This episode is nothing exceptional: the electronic voice urged commuters to keep calm and wait for the dear old common mortal who would save all passengers. In fact, 'the technician climbed up, proceeded towards the first wagon but the train unexpectedly departed, kidnapping him too. At the next stop, passengers had to get off and the electronic voice continued asking them to do so, however the external security doors remained closed and the train started to move again with all the patient Milanese passengers trapped on board! At the next stop there was still no mention of the opening of the external doors and the usual emotionless voice continued to urge people to get off.

According to the Corriere journalist who reported the episode, there were no panic scenes because "we are still Milanese, progress is our friend, we are elected citizens of a smart city. “.

Yet not everyone was Milanese on that train because at the Jerusalem stop some people decided to pull the safety handle and stop the convoy. The doors opened and half of the people went down, probably the "techno-pessimists". The others continued to the next stop, perhaps curious to witness the bizarre algorithm on a lazy day in July.

In 2014 the physicist Stephen Hawking told the BBC that "artificial intelligence could mark the end of the human race”. But the net effect on jobs does not seem to lend support to Hawking’s gloomy predictions.

According to the Colorado State University, we should be skeptical that automation will mean the end of the job. Some jobs - or even specific tasks - will be carried out by robots, while workers will move to different jobs or take on different tasks. For low- and medium-skilled workers, the relocation is likely to occur in lower quality jobs, i.e. with lower wages, or with lower benefits, or with a combination of both. Workers with skills complementary to new technologies, on the other hand, will benefit from the advent of automation, collecting most of the productivity gains in the form of higher wages.

As reported in this article Marco Taisch, professor at the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano and head of the Industry 4.0 Observatory, says that "With industry 4.0 "it is not true that the worker is more exploited, but is ennobled. In plant 4.0 the operator has been ennobled of his activity, because the low-level manual work is done by the machines and he does a cognitive work. Industry 4.0 is cognitive automation". It is clear that "roles change and this requires more skills", therefore, "we need to understand that the ennobling of work goes through training," explains the professor, highlighting that "we need to work on reskilling and upskilling of workers. Another aspect concerns the protection of jobs: "I do not doubt that the workers are scared and I can understand that there is a perception of threat", but "the companies that have implemented the digital transformation have become more competitive and have hired people," Taisch notes, taking as examples South Korea and Germany. These two countries "have the highest rate of robots per inhabitant, therefore automation, and one of the lowest rates of unemployment in the world. This fact refutes the automation syllogism 4.0 equal unemployment". Moreover, "the fact that an economic system seeks to improve productivity has always been true", but "innovation has always created better conditions for man".

And research conducted by Accenture "Jumping the S-curve" indicates that the companies that survive are those that facilitate learning and develop capacity - new technical skills and domain expertise, greater adaptability, and ways of leveraging institutional memory – also before they need it. 

Indeed, when organizations facilitate learning, they create new carrying capacity for growth throughout their organizational ecosystem.  Like a biological ecosystem, organizations are either growing or they’re dying. And organizations grow when their employees are learning. So if we want a high-growth organization, we need to create a learning ecosystem to support high-growth individuals — to expose them to new and challenging opportunities.