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The biggest missing point in this article is that the companies who actually succeed at automation are few and far between, and generally speaking entire indust
by rafiki6 8y ago
The biggest missing point in this article is that the companies who actually succeed at automation are few and far between, and generally speaking entire industries need to be upended for automation to actually take hold. I don't agree with the re-skilling narrative, but I do think they're overblowing the capabilities of something like RPA. It's not as good as they claim and generally speaking you have to rejig an entire process for it to make sense. The most important missing discussion point here is that unless we have a global view of humanity and our goals as a species, who are we doing all this automating for? If people lose their jobs and can't spend money, why do we even care about high production? The real thing no one at Davos is openly talking about is the global population and what to do with 7 billion people if you really only need a world of 500 million since you've automated all that labour away and now you don't need to produce as much.
- heurist 8y agoAutomation thought leaders have become an echo chamber divorced from the reality of problem solving. I rarely see discussion of concrete steps to take to automate something, only fluffy high level conversation about impacts should a vague widespread automation rapidly occur. Meanwhile, the hardest problems are still out there and it's impossible to determine impact without knowing what those problems are and basic steps to automating them. That said, there are broader trends that can be studied and discussed, like the impact of the industrial revolution on the world wars, global trade, etc. But those are academic in nature and don't directly indicate investment potential, so tend to stay in academia.