Recently, I was intrigued by this Straits Times' article "Race with machines, not against them" wherein Dr Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management and co-author of The Second Machine Age, observed that "Quite simply, if a job is routine, it can be done by a machine."
He cited the case of Enlitic, a deep-learning machine, which actually outperformed a selection of professional radiographers in matching patterns accurately for the purpose of diagnosing lung cancer.
With the push for driver-less cars and buses becoming a closer reality by the day, we could well foresee other routine jobs such as cleaners, cooks and waiters being replaced by machines.
However, all is not lost as humans can still be around to supervise the robo-cleaners, put in the finer touches beyond the reach of robo-cook and attend to special request from diners.
According to Dr McAfee, the skills which are not easily substituted by machines would be:
* creative skills (e.g. writing)
* people / social-interaction skills (e.g. childcare, nursing, negotiation)
* cognitive skills (e.g. problem solving)
* computer programming skills
The list is by no means exhaustive. For instance, you can add leadership skills and management skills.
Back to this thing about a routine job, I wanted to know how safe is the job of a news presenter. I thought it would be refreshing to introduce an android in a segment of the news broadcast such as the weather to complement our human news anchor.
So, I did a search on Google and found that Tokyo museum has unveiled a robot newscaster. Click here to watch on YouTube.
A robot can even ride a bicycle and could well 'work' as an untiring and uncomplaining exercise or dance instructor in the near future. We are just scratching the surface of how to make robots more capable and hopefully work for the good of humanity.
Click here to watch "The Human Robot Documentary HD".
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