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Beyond Automation (Five Steps to Consider (Step in (How you add value (You…
Beyond Automation
Five Steps to Consider
Step in
How you add value
You understand how software makes routine decisions, so you monitor and modify its function and outputs.
Example
A pricing expert relies on computers to optimize pricing on a daily basis and intervenes as necessary for special cases or experiments.
If this is your strategy, how do you prepare?
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Step narrowly
How you add value
You specialize in something for which no computer program has yet been developed (although theoretically it could be).
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If this is your strategy, how do you prepare?
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Step aside
How you add value
You bring strengths to the table that aren’t about purely rational, codifiable cognition.
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If this is your strategy, how do you prepare?
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Step forward
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Example
A digital innovator seizes on a new way to use data to optimize some key decision, such as cable video ad buys.
If this is your strategy, how do you prepare?
Stay at the cutting edge in computer science, artificial intelligence, and analytics. Learn to spot candidates for automation.
Step up
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If this is your strategy, how do you prepare?
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How you add value
You may be senior management material— you’re better at considering the big picture than any computer is.
What Is Augmentation?
David Autor, an economist at MIT who closely tracks the effects of automation on labor markets, recently complained that:
“journalists and expert commentators overstate the extent of machine substitution for human labor and ignore the strong complementarities that increase productivity, raise earnings, and augment demand for skilled labor”
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Augmentation, in contrast, means starting with what humans do today and figuring out how that work could be deepened rather than diminished by a greater use of machines. Some thoughtful knowledge workers see this clearly.
Intelligent machines, Nicita thinks—and this is the core belief of an augmentation strategy—do not usher people out the door, much less relegate them to doing the bidding of robot overlords.
In some cases these machines will allow us to take on tasks that are superior—more sophisticated, more fulfilling, better suited to our strengths—to anything we have given up. In other cases the tasks will simply be different from anything computers can do well.
In conclusion
The reframing
The outlook is grim if computers continue to chip away relentlessly at the tasks currently performed by well-educated people. But if we reframe the use of machines as augmentation, human work can flourish and accomplish what was never before possible.
Five steps
Some will step in, monitoring and adjusting computers’ decision making.
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Some will step forward by creating next-generation machines and finding new ways for them to augment human strengths.
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The threat
Automation has traditionally displaced workers, forcing them onto higher ground that machines have not yet claimed.
Today, as artificial intelligence encroaches on knowledge work, it can be hard to see how humans will remain employed in large numbers.
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FUENTE: Davenport, T. H., & Kirby, J. (2015). Beyond automation. Harvard Business Review, 93(6), 58-65.