AI and the future of work

I've gone a little bit thoughtful on this one, don't worry, in a couple of days I'm going to be talking about chocolate :)

I read this interview with Mike Lynch today, which mentions the company Luminance and how its AI can automate part of lawyers workloads, handling due diligence and other tasks, work which would often take up a great deal of time, freeing up lawyers to spend their time on the more complex and challenging elements of their role.

I view this as one of the steps on the road to having a society dependent on AI.  For decades now technology has been used to carry out tasks quickly and easily, like car assembly and other manufacture.  Now AI is coming in to automate the more routine elements of what, for the sake of this blog, I'll call "professional work" (not that I think that the work undertaken by lawyers or other professionals is more important than manufacturing, merely different).

It won't stop there.

Think of all the repetitive tasks in any office job.  In fact, not just office jobs - in any job.  The combination of AI and physical technology will result in machines able to carry out larger elements of any job.  Consider medicine - how much of the typical doctors work could be done by a sufficiently knowledgeable database, a computer able to analyse symptoms to produce an answer?

I foresee work as we know it changing massively over the next 2-4 decades.  Humans won't be needed for so much work - we will get to the point where technology is quicker, and most critically cheaper, to do so much. Society will have to come to terms with the reality that not everyone has to work.

I don't look upon this brave new world with fear.  It'll be fascinating - we should be able to run the world with every human suitably fed, clothed, and enjoying at least a minimum level of comfort.  We'll be set free to spend our lives creating, with our families, exploring, and thinking.

There will be huge challenges, of course.  The removal of the link between work and having a reasonable amount of money to live on, perhaps resulting in the provision of basic income, or the Finnish experiment currently being undertaken. The challenge of course will be to ensure that people are happy, that they still contribute in some positive way to society - but there would be opportunities also.

How many people are in jobs that they truly enjoy, and how many have ended up in jobs which are tolerable, maybe even reasonably pleasing, but not what they ever really wanted to do - and because of the position that we are now in (mortgages, families and the like) people are unable to consider retraining to a job that they might enjoy more?

Exciting times.

Secure catering

I was at a conference a little while back. For those that may not have experienced the delight that is a conference, a typical conference is at a decent sized building, where you go, sign a register, get a coffee, maybe a pen and an agenda or other handouts (pen drives are quite fashionable nowadays), sit through a few seminars, eat some lunch (which varies but is usually a buffet which includes sandwiches), a few more seminars, and then an almighty dash for the exit. Quite often attendance reduces as the afternoon goes on as people, scanning the agenda, decide that they can miss the last item or two and get home early.

Conferences are typically supported by the venues management and support staff, and let me be very clear, mainly the support staff.  Management are typically very much in presence for the planning of any events, however when it gets to the day of the event, it will be the receptionists, caretakers, and catering team that handle the high workload which includes:

• Around a hundred people in suits getting lost
• People asking where the "Birch Triad Room" is (or some other slightly unusual name - they can never name them something simple like "Room 2")
• Fixing the toilets after someone dropped a onion bhaji down them
• Attempting to hook up one of the presenters laptops to the projector - which is never a straightforward process
• Ensuring drinks are topped up
• Getting food out
• Clearing up plates after people have eaten

The list of activities goes on, generally ensuring that the support team are quite slender due to the fact that they haven't stopped moving - even to sleep - for several days.

However, the one I went to recently had different support staff. Every single one of them were suited up (the norm for event support is trousers and polo shirt), complete with security-type earbuds, the sort of thing you'd see on doormen at nightclubs.  This is particularly odd as I wasn't actually at a work conference for once, but instead one for people to attend in their own time.  Not unreasonably the majority of people attending had elected not to wear business attire on their day off, so for once the support staff actually looked smarter than the attendees.

None of them smiled either, and looked fairly well built, making it feel that the Secret Service were taking a day off guarding the President of the United States to hand out sandwiches.  I entertained myself by imagining what was going through the earbuds:

 "Cub One to Wolf King, contact."
 "Wolf King to Cub One.  How many?"
 "We have twenty four, two four, people headed for the main entry point."
 "Acknowledged, Cub One, keep monitoring and providing updates.  Do not engage unless attacked.  Wolf King to Cub Two, you have incoming.  Status?"
 "Pens and agendas at the ready."
 "Wolf King, this is Cub Four.  We have a delay of zero-two minutes on coffee, I repeat we have a delay of zero-two minutes on coffee."
 "Acknowledged, Cub Four.  Wolf King to Cub Two, fumble the pens when you pass them out, is that clear?  We need to buy Four some time."
 "Yes sir, fumbling."

I made sure to get out of that conference a little early, after all if the conference was being catered by a national security service there may well have been some sort of undercover operation going on.  Best to keep out of harms reach, I feel.

Pouring milk isn't as easy as it sounds

Imagine the scene, if you will.  It's a normal workday morning.  A colleague from another organisation has arrived for a meeting.  As is the normal social convention, I offer him a drink, and he chooses a coffee, with milk.

I select a mug, pour in a teaspoon of coffee, and put in some hot water, and empty the contents of one of those little buckets of milk into the mug.  It's all given a good stir, but it looks as though it could do with a little more milk.

Not a problem!  We have more UHT pots of milk.

I grab another milk pot, open it up and...

Pour the milk into the bin.

This happens occasionally.  If I have something in my hands, and two activities to undertake, I'll do the wrong thing with the item I'm holding.  I remember some years back holding a used straw, and a stamp (I was collecting stamps at the time).  The straw was to be disposed of, while the stamp when in my album.  And I managed to put the stamp in the coal scuttle.

So, we all make mistakes.  I grab another pot of milk, open it up and...

Yes.  Again.  Poured the milk straight into the bin.

Why?!?

Gamification and the use of "Achievements" in work plus the need for BIM

Anyone who has played computer games in the last two years will have become aware of "Achievements".  Basically, you receive Achievements for doing certain things in games.  Completing a level might give an achievement. Completing it on a harder difficulty setting might give another.  Completing it quickly might be another one.  Or finding a hidden item within the level.  Falling from a height that almost (but not quite) kills you.

Anything pretty much can be an Achievement.

And they're addictive.  I'm currently playing World of Warcraft and getting really in pet battles - for those not aware of what I'm talking about, basically you can train pets to fight other pets, to make them stronger.  And you can capture other pets (generally after your pet has kicked the stuffing out of them) to give you more choice.

And there's achievements for defeating certain people with your pets.  It's driving me on to get an Achievement, and basically makes me stay online playing the games for many hours more than I would do otherwise, playing what is basically a simple turn based fight sim.

There has been some thought into how this Achievement system could be brought into the world of work.  Certainly targets are nothing new (the acronym SMART is synonymous with target setting) but whether it can be reconfigured into an Achievements system is an intriguing one.

Would you stay longer at your desk working if it meant you getting more "points" than your colleagues?  It's certainly a way of differentiating between workers.  I think there's a danger that potentially people come to rely on it as a method of assessing quality of work, which in my view it is too much of a blunt implement to do successfully.  However, it could indeed form part of performance management, apart from its main role as a motivational tool.

Construction, my particular work sector, has long been viewed as in need of a revolution to produce efficiency.  In other sectors it would be unthinkable for managers based on site to be without email or internet facilities, in far too many situations it is still the case in construction that site managers are working without basic IT facilities to support them.

BIM, or Building Information Management, is not a solution by itself, but is still a potentially fantastic tool.  being able to identify clashes on designs prior to construction starting will reduce problems on site - simply equate the cost of changing a design against the cost of changing a design while a construction site is delayed waiting for the change to be made.  The use of web conferencing facilities to allow design meetings to take place virtually, with the design team sat in their offices watching as the building design is walked through virtually rather than everyone sat around poring over drawings, trying to imagine the finished facility.  And the benefits for users, who aren't necessarily skilled at deciphering drawings, now able to look at a virtual 3D model of their completed building.

The elimination of change post-tender is an important goal to aim for.