Wednesday 27 January 2016

Robots can do big jobs

There are lots of think pieces around these days posing the question  "Will a robot take your job?", or something similar. According to Betteridge's law of headlines, the answer is " no."

But change the question slightly, to "Can a robot do your job?" and I reckon the answer could be "yes", at least if your job is big and important enough to require your presence at the World Economic Forum at Davos. Because, heaven help me, I've just spent about three irreplaceable minutes of my time on this good earth reading the " best" quotes from the thought leaders present at Davos 2016 and am now totally convinced that every line could have been generated, without human intervention, by something like this, or this, or this.

The human race is probably decades away from creating a robo-tailor or a robo-plumber, but we could probably replace Christine Lagarde with a cybernetic substitute tomorrow and not notice any difference. Although she may be part way there already - judging by the black Sci-fi villain outfit she seems to be wearing in the first quote, she's already putting the Davros into Davos, or morphing from an organic entity into the Borg Queen - which would sort of make sense of her quote  - "Resistance is futile, sisters, you will be assimilated into the Internet of Women!"

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