Shaping the way we work: trends in 2019

What existing trends in technology will be shaping our world in 2019? Over the next few weeks I will be sharing my thoughts on this. Let’s start with trends that will shape the way we work. Later, I’ll touch on shaping the way we think and the way we live. Make sure you follow Chair in Digital Economy and me to get updates on followup articles.

Conversational commerce

Earlier this year we were wowed by a demo of Google Duplex — a voice bot that made restaurant and hairdresser bookings on behalf of the user. It sparked some controversy, mostly because its voice was so creepily human and more so because the people it talked with had no idea the Google Assistant was a bot.

Such technologies are not exactly new — we have been able to dictate to our computers for at least two decades now, and the machines would read text aloud if requested. But only recently did the technologies achieve mainstream maturity and the ability to cope well in such unpredictable scenarios as booking a hairdresser.
The newest phones from Google come with Duplex built in, and the function will be gradually enabled (city-by-city; it seems Google is cautious with this service) starting November 2018. Initially rolled-out in the US, we should expect Duplex to start making bookings in other countries as early as next year. Most likely English-speaking regions will be covered first.

This new technology in the hands of consumers means completely new challenges and opportunities for businesses. Expect robocalls from your customers to order services, make appointments. Do you hate robocalls spamming you? Now you can have your revenge moment. DoNotPay, a business building apps providing automated legal services, has recently rolled out a voice-bot that can call Department of Motor Vehicles in the US, on behalf of a customer, up to 1,000 times a day. It will make an appointment and then keep trying to move it to a better time if a new slot becomes available.
Currently, it is a bot-against-bot scenario, where DoNotPay voice-bot calls DMV’s voice-bot line. But imagine the same situation now with a human on the other end. In technology circles, a DoS or Denial-of-Service attack term is used to describe a situation when large numbers of computers simultaneously connect to one other machine on the Internet, effectively overloading it and taking it down. Using voice-bots at scale gives similar opportunities. Remember how 50 Cent bought 200 seats for Jarule gig to keep fans from attending the concert? Me neither, but it happened recently. Now, imagine this at a scale: a competitor booking every single table at every competing restaurant on a Friday night, using a voice bot similar to the DoNotPay’s one. Imagine automating voice-bot calls to emergency numbers. How will the world look when it takes someone a second to initiate a call that may keep another human busy for a few minutes?

This world is coming very soon. There’s no time to waste here: you need to start thinking about strategies to deal with voice-bot calls. Your customers will be using technologies like Google Duplex to screen calls. How will you get through the “smart” assistant if you want to talk to your customers? What about automatic calls initiated by your customers? Do you want to accept them? Can you develop a Captcha equivalent, asking callers questions that help you determine whether they’re a bot or not? Develop your strategy of operating in the voice-bot world. If you need one yourself and you’re not sure whether to build one, pay attention to open source voice platforms such as Mycroft and consider whether developing or acquiring such technologies makes sense for your business.
If you are a legislator — time to think about it now. Consider introducing legislation that requires robots to identify themselves. What are the implications of bot-bot interactions? Can it have an economic impact on society?

The race of voice-bots is on. We may have doubts about how helpful they’re going to be, but there’s no doubt that there will be more and more of them, and we may not even be able to realise they call us, just like the hairdresser lady from the Google demo did not.

Human-machine collaboration

This trend is not new at all. But this article is not about new trends only. Human-machine collaboration has been shaping the way we work for years now, and it will continue to do so in 2019. Perhaps even at a higher pace and scale.

Artificial intelligence algorithms are better than humans at detecting skin cancer. Software predicts the risk of reoffending by criminals (even though it cannot explain how it comes up with the risk assessments and it doesn’t yet seem to be better than humans). But an algorithm cannot hold your hand when delivering news about melanoma. It doesn’t see circumstances that may impact reoffending that are beyond the standard questions asked. Algorithms are making humans more efficient, and they are not making them less relevant. We have seen it in the age of industrialisation too — tasks may change, but there’s always an essential place for humans. There are plenty of opportunities.

More and more organisations are trying to identify tasks that are currently performed by humans but should not be. These automated tasks need to be then orchestrated, and that’s where often humans play a crucial role. Introducing human-machine collaboration will not only provide better outcomes of existing processes but inevitably enable new value propositions too.

In this ongoing race for efficiency, organisations need to look for opportunities to team up humans with machines (algorithms or robots). This search for opportunities could involve reviewing your current business processes and finding steps to remove, automate, and enhance them. Where algorithms start to outperform humans — for instance in pattern recognition, data analytics or structured data management — they need to be hired there. Where humans are still better than machines — for example in creativity, inductive and deductive thinking or structured problem solving — more focus need to be put on having humans do these tasks. If you do it well, you will grow your business, not just automate it.