Lately
I have been in a strange kind of friendship. Though this friendship started 3
years ago, these days I have being seeing a different face of this friend. In
every friendship it is quite common that we fully understand each other over
some period. I spend 9 to 10 hours of my day with my friend every day. It’s
none other than the crucial professional tool, Microsoft Excel.
Winds
of automation are blowing around the work I do and that’s when the macro facet
of Excel comes into view. These macros are believed to be smart and are capable
of finishing our work in lesser time than what we did manually. Of course these
macros run well albeit some hiccups, but in the end they emerge victorious,
thanks to the background commands given to them, the language which appears
like Greek and Latin to me. Not exactly being macro literate, I sit agape when
they run into error and immediately goes the call for help to those who have
mastered this language. I sit patiently till these experts decode the macros
and convince them to work properly. The time that goes in this patch-up is
equal to the time I could do the same work manually. Sometimes these macros turn
their back on you when you expect the most to count on them. In such situations
I think to what extent we are dependent on technology and how helpless we feel
when these wonders of technology don’t function. Sometimes, I ask myself who
the real robot is- the automated tool or humans themselves, who don’t get to
use their mind constructively.
We
hear so much about automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) these days that
it makes me question the importance of human minds. Are we just going to let
the rust cover our brains? Surely, automation makes work lot easier and saves
time; the minds behind it are creative. But what if this automation is robbing
people of their jobs and most importantly the ability to think on our own? Quite
frequently I hear statements like, “This all is being automated so that you can
focus more on qualitative and analytical work.” When asked what exactly they
mean by ‘qualitative’, the answer is unknown to even to those who make such
promises. Of course, the work being qualitative cannot be quantified in any
answer, or so do I convince myself when I do not get any plausible reply.
For
a country like India where population and hence workforce is growing at a rapid
rate, automation can seem like an idea in grey zone, especially when we know
the fact that labour is cheap in labour abundant countries. Ironically I see
new faces around me in an environment where automation is given so much boost. I
shrug it off thinking, “Maybe they are the ones who are going to do some qualitative
and analytical work!”
Recently
I read in a newspaper that implementing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in HR
also can save time in routine tasks like reviewing thousands of applications,
corresponding with candidates, scheduling interviews, interviewing, making
offers and onboarding, thus reducing process costs as much as 1/10th.
Soon many administrative tasks in HR could be replaced by RPA. This could also
mean that your HR manager could be a robot who will decide whether you are fit
for a job or may schedule an interview for you. The human touch in Human
Resources would soon be lost in an effort to reduce costs by 1/10th!
All this is again so that people work on value added tasks. This definition of
value-added remains vague. Thankfully the article acknowledged the fact that
RPA cannot replace human decision making. We can hope that this value-addition
could be in terms of sound and fair decisions.
I
remember hearing about the period in banks when people chose the option of
Voluntary Retirement Scheme when computers made an entry in their manual world
of banking. People who are habituated and are convinced that the work they
manually do is accurate, find it hard to come to terms with computers and the technology
that follows. Nowadays I see many jobs coming up for automation processes. In a
way, you develop something that works automatically and eventually ends up replacing
you. So much for the ease in processes! In spite of this, we see that some
people do not trust these new vehicles of technology or are ignorant about it
and prefer standing in long queues. On one hand where we see so much thrust
being given to automation and technology for the benefit of mankind, we see
many who refrain from this newness and go the conventional way. With reduced
manual intervention in processes, surely the scope for errors and
inefficiencies is reduced. Still, the
void of human touch and human angle cannot be filled up with these manmade
robots.
I
believe that the only places where humans will always thrive are hospitality
and food industries. You would not like a robot to welcome you or serve you
food when you go in an airplane. Nothing can replace the special taste of food made
by your mother. So far there is no technology developed for that. Soon there
could be a technology wherein you input the ingredients along with the quantity
required and command it to prepare a dish; but it won’t allow you to add the
most important and intangible ingredient – mother’s love and warmth. Robots are
robots after all who do not have the ability to think. They are the products of
human creativity to ease the life of and at times replace humans. But they
surely cannot replace some forms of creativity like a painting in which only a
human can draw and paint those emotions. We have high-tech cameras today, sure,
but the idea to capture that beautiful smile or a scenic place is a decision which
comes from a human mind, before we are lost in a virtual world and forget what
natural and human feels like. It is necessary to understand that technology or
robotic automation is a way to reduce manual work and yes, to focus more on
quality. But it should not let us overpower us in such a way that it starts to
dominate us and leads to restricted and straitjacketed thinking, devoid of any
ideas, just like robots.
As
I express my thoughts about automation, the macro that I have been running
since 30 minutes proudly flashes on the screen the amount of time it took, as
if to prove every time how faster it is than me. Starting to admit that fact, I
open the file in which it has created wonders only to find out that it has
missed some data here and there or has replicated some data twice. I laugh at
it ruefully saying, “Not so smart after all, you product of human creation!”
and there again goes call for help to those who created this ‘wonder’ to (quite
contrarily) make my life easy!
