Gigaom AI Minute – March 29

Transcript

At Gigaom.com/quiz, there is a ten question test that scores how likely any given job is to be replaced by automation, be it by a computer or a robot. I'm going to spend ten AI Minutes going through the questions one at a time, and why they're on the test.

Question #9: Does the job directly manage employees?

You can answer yes to this, score it a 0, if your answer is yes, I manage employees. And that might be something like a police chief. And then you could score it a 10, which would suggest it's more likely to be automated, if it's something that doesn't have any management responsibility at all, such as a flight attendant. And then, you might score it in the middle if the job requires it, but it isn't the primary function of the job, such as a restaurant manager.

The reason this is a good indicator of whether something can be automated is, the skills necessary to manage employees are not things that we can instantiate in machines right now. It's very nuanced, obviously, it's difficult to master, and anything that requires actual management of workers is probably not a good candidate for automation.