IBM CEO Says Automation Won't Decimate Job Market

The article points out “automation won't decimate job market”, I agree with Virginia Rometty. The rise of cognitive technology, or machines will not decimate the employment, but enrich it. It will change the structure of jib market. For example, “It will scale expertise, it will change the way you engage with customers. It will change processes”. Automation could enlarge the output with fewer labors. In the future, more and more mental workers are necessary in the industry and business. Therefore， In order to better adapt to the environment, people should be purposefully educated and get ready to be a disrupter.

Maybe we still remembered the industrial revolution occured in the 19th. Many jobs were replaced by the machines. Redundant labor force was freed.At the same time, our brains were also could be utilized efficiently. We didn't need to think how to carry the heavy things from one place to another. So the economic increased and the technology developed fast. Now it is similar to the past. If more careful work can be done by the artificial intellegence, we also can let people do what can only be imagined in the fiction films.

The more important is that the Waston platform is not just a procedure controled by the background. It can give you suggestion and help you to make a choice. It owes to the cognitive technology. If such platform could be applied in many industries, it shows that everyone of us need to improve ouselves to adapt with the new modern society.
Never mind whether we will loss the jobs or not. What we should do is to focus on it and prepare to enter into the new era.

With the fast development of cognitive technology, most of the traditional manual labor forces would be replaced by intelligent device, this will surely cause the unemployment among those labors. However on the other hand, the new cognitive techonoly would also offers new jobs which are more creative and intellectual. This article indicates the truth that “Automation Won't Decimate Job Market” but only change the job market patterns. Those low-educated labors need to figure out a way to adapt with new technologies in order to keep pace with the trends and find their position in the job market.

Automation definitely will be the trend and driving force of human’s development. Some people believe automation will decimate the job market which refers to cheap labor market. Let’s look back the history technology advance. Light replaces kerosene lamp. Electricity companies emerge. Motorized carriages replace horse-drawn cabs. Taxi companies appear. Printer replaces typewriter. Printer companies arise. From above, we can’t see automation decrease job market instead of changing the pattern of job market. On the contrary, automation will bring prosperity of society and benefit people’s living standard. The more job replaced by automation, the more efficiency brought by automation. People keep learning in the expanding scales of job market.

China as a developing country with large labor force is slowly under transformation. Automation maybe will harm Chinese job market in short term but will benefit in long run. How government takes proper measures to help cheap labor force under automation and how people keep walking to improving themselves are the next problem for us to consider.

Cognitive technology will promote the advancement of human resource and change the patten of future labor market


Age is in progress, that is we are unable to stop. I think the appearance and development of cognitive technology will surely decimate the job market. But through the cognitive technology, many related work which used to be finished by human will become more convenience, efficient and accurate. That is really good for people’s life.

At present or at the short term, many people will lose their jobs. But for a long term, it pushes us to find the new potential and proposition of human resources, what we can do, what kind of ability we want to have, how to proper use and live with cognitive technology. Perhaps it will also cast big influence on the education pattern in the future and recast the structure of human labor

Facing the rapid technology innovation, we have to catch up with and adjust ourselves, and find new value of ourselves, avoiding being disrupted and abandoned.

Nothing can stop the development of technologies. It helps the people to work easier, live a better life. Like this case, the emerging and winder adoption of Cognitive Business Solution - Computer Intelligence will for sure treat some business consultant jobs. From the other hand, new technology also brings new job opportunities, and may introduce a whole new industry. The overall environment is changing but balanced. Technology advancing is from the people, for the people and push people to move ahead.

May cause the development of automation of the production instead of manual labor, a large number of manual laborer loss of jobs. And the development of artificial intelligence will further lead to many mental labor jobs replaced by machine to become the topic of the whole society concerned about. But on the other hand, it also prompted the people if you don't want to be rapidly updated technology instead of words, the practitioner must constantly update their knowledge and skills.

Anyway, there is no denying the fact this is a great invention and technological breakthroughs. And every technology revolution in history will lead to the change of industrial structure and labor structure. Too much doubt is meaningless.

The rapid development of cognitive technology will create jobs as well as destroy jobs. Automation will change the structure of job market. It will create more high-tech and advanced jobs which requires more skills and expertise. On the other hand, it will also eliminate low-end jobs.

To stay competitiveness in job market, people should keep learning the latest knowledge, take training on the new tools and practice the strategic and innovative thinking.

Agree the point that automation won't decimate job market. We can find out the job function from long time ago to nowadays, or to the future have changed every year. We moved from single manual labor to complex brain work, or to the high technology automation. Outwardly it looks like the job market reduced, but according to the history, the job market is becoming larger and larger until now. Frankly, automation reduced a lot of job quantity in factory. But we also find the job market increased on other areas, such as high technology-driven jobs: scientists, technologists, and economists. In the new areas, the world needs more and more new contributors and workers to explore and create. And the job market will not be decimated by automation too.

The industrial revolution and machines have been changing people’s life since 1860s, and now the technology revolution is coming with its cognitive machines, which is also known as artificial intelligence. These new technology improves the productivity and at the same time takes the place of human labor. Machines replaced some jobs, which were simple and repeating in the past, however, with the development of technology, even the skillful jobs, such like doctors and editors will be taken over in the future. Therefore, we must think ahead of what shall we do next? What jobs can we do in the world full of cognitive machines? What specifics of human brain that cannot be replaced by technology revolution?

Of course cognitive technology is not decimate jobs, it just replace some physical labor by robots and at the same time save money, be more efficient. So what's the labor replaced by robots will do in the future? From this prospect of view, everybody should be cautious not to be replaced. Keep self-improvement and keep eyes open for what is happening in the industry.

wanghb wrote:IBM CEO Says Automation Won't Decimate Job Market

“Huge era of digital technology and artificial intelligence that bring positive change has arrived, it also shows the result of causing a lot of negative effects, such as unemployment. "-《The Second Machine Age》
Cognitive technology is the macro background of Watson’ rapid development, in recent years, it is widely used in the medical and financial field, which has once again proven cognitive technology has a broad space for development.
Man-machine confrontation began in 2011, today when we look at the problem of cognitive technology, it can bring us more enlightenment.
Firsly, the cognitive technology is a double-edged sword, it is mainly manifested in two aspects. On the one hand, with the sustainable development of the cognitive technology toward commercialization, the advantage of cognitive technology have brought out, such as the sharing of information resources, the life convenience, efficiency and output, and so on. On the other hand, some industries will be eliminated, and some of the job will be replaced.
Secondly, cognitive technique need people to have a correct understanding and take effective solutions accordingly. the cognitive technology cannot completely replace artificial, it is just one aspect. For human beings, there are even more areas and more blue ocean need to be explored, people may find more jobs through positive innovation.
At last, we have to acknowledge that the essence of the technology is serving for the people instead of injuring the people. People can prevent troubles through the top-level design as early as possible.

Very logical analysis! This also gives us a hint on continuous study through whole life, in order not to be replaced by Artificial Intelligence. Because what the IBM mentioned as better job can only be complete by qualified experts. It's kind of disguised replacement of concept.

Automation is a trend. As capital follows profitability, company follows low cost. I was informed in today's class that half of the trades in wall street were done by machine, while all the trades were done manually ten years ago. This is an example of how smart machine squish room of employment, as mentioned above "Technology is allowing the production of far more output with far fewer people".

Actually all predictable and/or repeatable jobs could be done by machine theoretically. Human is not needed in this kind of job - all the steps are set and the system runs automatically, and if no accident occurs, the system will run just fine by itself. No need to interrupt with human. And then we consider what jobs left for us - creative, unpredictable, and volatile positions. As the passage says, "the artificial intelligence and other algorithms at the heart of Watson can provide answers far more quickly than can the human mind", so I guess the day that machine takes the place of human doing predictable jobs won't be far from now, maybe even in my lifetime.

Then what should human do? Laying back on the couch and waiting for being replaced? Human should have sense of urgency. Like what happened in the 1st and 2nd industry revolution, human will give up something to replacement methods. But what makes us human instead of routine machine is our creativity and spirit. We can create unpredictable things or situations. So the fact is that automation helps to evolve human evolution, and forces human to do what the mission of evolution needs human to do.

Mao Zhongmei wrote:Of course cognitive technology is not decimate jobs, it just replace some physical labor by robots and at the same time save money, be more efficient. So what's the labor replaced by robots will do in the future? From this prospect of view, everybody should be cautious not to be replaced. Keep self-improvement and keep eyes open for what is happening in the industry.

Impressive and thoughtful comment. I agree with you that some labors will be replaced by robots for efficiency and finance consideration. And your solution - keep self-improvement and be aware of what's trending in the industry - is suitable.

One thing I want to complement is the way we keep self-improvement. Knowledge is accumulated, one cannot gain all the knowledge but dive in one or some aspect of study. What I try to explain is that human should use the power of machine to evolve themselves. An open attitude is helpful in receiving more. Since basic work is done by machine, human can do more things that based on the machine-made fundamental by using tools, and by using machines as tools to build more powerful tools. Actually needs are created by human evolution, and at this stage, human are needed to build connection between human and machine to make more powerful tools.

Automation helps transform the way people work by bringing analytics to everyone. Machines which are created through cognitive technology provide services or finish tasks far more quickly than can the human mind. Automation won't decimate job market but for sure it is a inevitable trend. It will definitely change the way we educate people in order to meet the new requirements in the job market. Eventually, everyone will have some skills around data science and data. This new trend will begin to create whole new sets of jobs while detroying some of the old job which are easily be replaced by machines.

The ongoing significant developments in technology is obviously a trend nowadays which cannot be avoided as usual. It's so called 'cognitive technology' because we want to show how electronic devices and other tools can assist and influence humans' mental activities & job Market. But I think People are over worried according to the old experience of 'new technology destroying jobs and created new ones in long history' again and again. Just like Ms. Rometty said 'This is not about replacing people. It is about augmenting what man does…this helps us do things we couldn’t do”, I cannot agree more. We may separate the job Market into 2 types to see how the influence works:
1. High-end professional Jobs
The cognitive technology based systems have delivered tremendous business and societal benefits by automating tabulation and harnessing computational processing and programming to deliver enterprise and personal productivity. It's specialized in running big data, and it just can 'approximate the way people think', which doesn't mean 'replace the way people think'. It can only help those professionals gathering data analyzing conclusion more quickly, but not likely to get to conclusion itself. We could change the educational focus and content to adapt with the trends. With the hope that one day, this revolution will enable people and machines to interact more naturally to extend and magnify human expertise and cognition.
2. Low-end labor Jobs
It is so sad but true high technology will step into the labor works not only to speed up the quality and efficiency of particular function, but also to increase the difficulties of equipment operating and management. This will improve the threshold of low-end labor works. Fortunately the impact will not be happening in one day. It is the society’ commitment to think about how to leverage standard level of people's education .To create a high-tech+ service group.
One good news is that, machines cannot replace the emotional contact between people--which has played an important part in the society. No matter how developed the world becomes, the linkage catalyst between heart and heart will never be suppressed.

We are now entering the new era of AI and we are aware that automation has penetrated into our lives. Obviously automation has already killed some lower-end jobs in our world which has caused the change for the labor power structure. But we should also notice that, automation technologies inspired many new industries in which many new companies come out. That means new jobs are created. The point is that, the qualifications and requirements for the labor market have changed. What we need to think about is that how to adjust our knowledge structure and skills to meet the new requirements of those jobs.

It’s hard to say that the rise of cognitive technology which will obviously lead to big changes in people’s work and also in the economy. On the bright side, the sustainable development of the cognitive technology will make our life more convenient and digital. And those low-end jobs will be covered by those more technical ones. For people who doing those related work, the right thing to do is to be fast learning in such a digital world, and to win the new competition in the job market.

The fear that human intelligence will take place of human labor prevails over recently. But two paradoxes come up behind it. Firstly as mentioned, the order, the logic and the progrm of process are all reliying on human's thinking. If any replacements happen, it's human want to replace human not the machine. Secondly, if the hyposis of all the so-called repeated copy work could be replaced by automation of high efficiency, who could consume or afford th high outcome brought by the high efficiency? If the issue of the age moves on, after the peak of birth boom, who would pay for the over productivity of high efficicy automatically? In China, excess capacity is a big obstacle right in front of all the manufacturers. Sometimes we should slow down the updates to meet the real demand.

I agree with that. But I also agree that the Automation will change the job market. At that time, the basic requirement will become higher. We need more skills which are Automation can not owned. And in the other hand, the develop of the Automation will also create some jobs about it. The day are coming. We need to prepare for it.

Automation will be a revolutionary change to the existing job market, this is not simply a matter of changing the way people work but how to allocate the scarce high skilled talents. For those who are at the top tier of the job market, they will be able to plan, organize and lead the given tasks in a more effective and efficient manner. The nature of the work will be disrupted as well. We used to conduct modular working tasks according to our specific work tasks and duties. While on the other hand, we would say surely digitalized work style do have loads of benefits to the customers, human beings as the ultimate carrier of the work, must always took the lead because even the most sophisticated system or technology, human beings always plays a significant role.

Technology becomes more and more popular in recent years. With the high speed development of technology, some labors will be affected since it maybe replaced by the robot. As you know, China and India are the biggest manufacture countries all over the world, if technology find cheaper robots than labors , a lot of workers will be replaced ,and then lose their job.
Although technology will change the labor structure in some countries, it will also generate new industries ,new companies, and new jobs. The education system will be changed because of the revolution of industry. More and more people will work on the company who will support the development of high technology, which provides a very convenient and smart live way to people.

Automation won't decimate job market. However, it has certain short term effect on the pattern of the job market, thus exerting a long term effect on ecomony and business cycle. Automation improves efficiency and productivity, but automation itself cannot upgrate without human intellegence. On the long run, automation will re-structure many industries and trigger the demand for high intellegent people, which may rebalance the job market.

Firstly, robotics and automation have already been a large number of alternative human beings in the field of industry and service industries. Secondly, with the development of the robot technology, more and more work and more work will be replaced by robots, because the company always pursues lower labor costs and higher labor efficiency.

I don't feel anxious for the future because the human beings always make adjustments to adapt to the development of the society. This is one of the biggest differences between human and machine.

But social problems can be met is: the arrival of the era of robots will increase the social gap between the rich and the poor With knowledge of technology and wealth of the social strata will have more resources and wealth. The living conditions of the labor force may be even more difficult. Of course, this is the problem that the government needs to consider.

Digital business and cognitive technology have become emerging business and popular topics around the world in recent years. Although i agree with the trend that digital business will take the lead in many ways than traditional business, and cognitive technology and machines will save the labor force largely than usual and provide competitive advantage, I still believe that Automation won’t decimate Job market, and digital or cognitive technology will never replace unique customer experience in tangible places and the emotions and creations by human beings. For example, although people can buy APPLE products very easily online, many people will still want to go to APPLE Store to try on the new iPhones, attended the small education sessions, and even come to feel the enthusiasm of the customers. So do many of other industries. So digital and technology will improve the efficiency and convenience of people’s life, but they’ll never replace the experience that customers want to get.