Are You Ready for Robot Colleagues?

Is the convergence between artificial and human intelligence, which once seemed like just a gleam in the eyes of computer scientists and science fiction authors, almost upon us? And if robots become as clever as we are, how will the role of managers change?

Bernd Schmitt, the Robert D. Calkins Professor of International Business at Columbia Business School, thinks the convergence is coming, and that managers have to start preparing now.

Schmitt comes at the questions not as a computer scientist but as a marketing expert. He is faculty director of Columbia’s Center on Global Brand Leadership, a forum on branding issues for researchers and executives. He conducts research on people’s perceptions of cyborgs and robots, and has launched a project entitled “Possible Future Worlds” that explores the impact of technologies on business and consumers. He presents his own brand with a little bit of a lighthearted robotic edge, too: His website is called “MeetSCHMITT.com”.

Schmitt spoke with MIT Sloan Management Review about how artificial intelligence is advancing, and how it is likely to impact the workplace and even managerial creativity.

For decades, computer scientists have referred to the merging of human intelligence and computing as “the singularity.” How do you define the concept?

Technological singularity is typically defined as a point in the future when IT systems become as sophisticated as humans or even qualitatively more sophisticated and superior to humans. It is often discussed in the context of robots that are supercomputers but also have a human appearance. It’s when humans and robots cannot be distinguished from each other because the computer or robot has passed the Turing test, meaning if you ask it a series of questions, it answers like a human being.

It’s quite likely that robots, or systems, will at some point have all the capabilities — or more — that we normally ascribe to humans. That includes information processing, of course — in this area computers are already outdoing human decision makers in many respects — but it’s not only about decision making. It’s also about emotions, it’s about creativity, it’s about coming up with new ideas.

Now, we are not there yet, obviously. Some futurists, like Ray Kurzweil, predict that this will occur as soon as 20 or 30 years from now. Others argue that it is much further off. But just look at IBM Watson. In 2011 it outperformed humans on the TV game show Jeopardy!, and today it’s doing very, very well with legal documents and with medical diagnoses, and it’s outperforming human resource managers. This is a super computer — in this case not a robot in human form, but a system — that can do as well as humans or better. And that’s the direction of technological singularity.

Robots that have the same emotional and creative capabilities as humans represent the far edge of singularity. Are you one of the people who think we could be seeing that in 20 to 30 years?

My view is that when you consider specific tasks like the ones that I just mentioned, providing legal analysis or medical diagnosis and prognoses, coming up with treatment programs and so on — it is certainly possible we will reach that stage in 20 to 30 years, and probably earlier.

Now, if you’re talking about technological singularity in the sense that there are systems that are exactly like humans and cannot be distinguished from them, that robots become astute decision makers, become creative and feel emotions, and that their emotional behavior is indistinguishable from that of humans — for that, I think 30 years may be a little bit too optimistic.

But the changes taking place right now are very real. The original robots were just industrial systems. They had an industrial appearance, they didn’t look like anything like humans, and they were very mechanical. They were “factory workers.” But today we have service robots. There are robots being used in elder care, like Paro, the robot seal, which is used as a psychological aid in Japan. Some robots like Paro are plush, like stuffed animals. Some are moving toward what one could call a human face and a human look.

So I think in the more emotionally-oriented and caring sectors, we will clearly see supercomputing and robots making major inroads.

How would robots be used in the parts of knowledge work that we truly associate with humans, such as decision making, in the modern office?

In the modern office of the near future, as artificial intelligence and robotics incorporate more and more aspects of daily life, computers will be able to go beyond analytical work and data crunching to carry out more creative, decision-making and emotion-related management tasks.

Human-machine interaction may be quite different from how it is today, with humans in full control. As creative AI systems become more active, robots will make suggestions on how to do work, where to look for answers, how to make decisions, and how to organize and to lead.

Moreover, because the physical form of robots will change and become less mechanical, humans may feel more comfortable around them — although, admittedly, these robots may give some people the creeps. Robots will appear more and more in humanoid forms, and they will display emotions in their faces and move their bodies increasingly naturally.

These robots will have capabilities as idea generators for new product development, as consultants and counsellors, and they may take over many HR roles. They will engage with others in office conversations and office chat. In other words, they may become full-fledged and fully integrated employees and be part of a company’s culture. Human office workers will likely end up working next to robot workers.

What impact do you see the singularity having on your areas of speciality — marketing, branding, and creativity?

It’s entirely possible that marketing, branding, and creative tasks may be done by supercomputers. Creativity is, basically, knowing a lot about a domain and then making sense of an unexpected event and adjusting to it by devising new solutions. Computers can certainly do that.

How would managerial and leadership roles change as a result of having a partial robot work force?

Well, if the question is, should managers worry about all of this, the answer is absolutely. I don’t think this is about just the frontline employees. Some jobs, like construction work or picking up garbage on the street, may not go away because they involve extremely complicated motor behavior. The sophisticated motor tasks that people perform, no computer can do those yet — they’re not even close.

But the manager’s task is largely analytical decision making and, to an extent, dealing with emotions. And much of that is doable by machine. It’s actually a very interesting moment in history. We are learning that there are certain skills involved in what people might have seen as simpler jobs that are actually very complicated. And the jobs often viewed as more complex — the knowledge jobs, those involving mental work — actually have a significant automatized component. We see that Watson is as good in certain respects as some doctors and legal analysts, and frankly, I don’t think the job of a manager is more complicated than that of a doctor or a lawyer.

So we should definitely envisage that soon many job functions, and parts of jobs, will be entirely automatized. Some jobs may go away.

In this world of the near future, what can humans do to make themselves useful?

Future generations will live in a world that is much more focused on computing and analytics and big data as well as robots. And as a result, they will have very different relationships with robots. Children will grow up with service robots and having digital or robotic assistants in the house and in professional situations.

As we already know, the idea of a life-long career and moving up a hierarchy of similar jobs has vanished. Humans will need to ask questions such as: How can I structure my career and my job so that I can differentiate myself from a machine? Or, how can I best use my skills to work with an AI system? In other words, humans may supplement the skills of machines — and not the other way around.

What can companies do to prepare?

Company leaders must start developing future scenarios. That’s an imperative. It’s not a case of waiting 5 or 10 years to see what happens. This planning should be going on now.

Let me explain why I see this as so urgent. We’ve seen in just the past 15 years the commercialization of digitization that has entirely changed the workplace and how we communicate. Social media has changed our social lives, and new companies have come up and become million-and billion-dollar businesses in that space — and that has happened in just the last 20 years.

What technologists always stress is that with the speed of technology, the increase is not linear, it’s exponential. So over the next 15 or 20 years, we will see much, much more change, and it will incorporate the digital revolution into solid devices. It’s very much this convergence of the digital and the solid that will be happening, and it will be a major life-changing movement and business-changing movement. Businesses need to be ready.