When most people think of automation, they tend to imagine low wage menial jobs being taken over by machines and computers. That may have been true in the past, but nowadays the robots are also gunning for your boss’s job. In fact, for some industries it’s the low wage tasks that still require human hands while mid-level positions are much more economical to automate.
At Hitachi, the Japanese electronics manufacturer, workers have started to take orders from artificial intelligence programs meant to increase productivity in the workplace.
Hitachi has deployed the AI in an unspecified number of warehouses, where it issues work orders and instructions to employees. The computer analyzes employees’ previous approaches to problems, and if an employee uses a new way to accomplish a job more efficiently, that technique is analyzed and used later on. This idea of kaizen, or constant improvement, is an often-repeated theme in Hitachi’s announcement of the AI system.
Rather than relying on preprogrammed instructions like other warehouse software, Hitachi claims that this AI can go off-script, adapting to on-site changes, weather patterns, and shifts in demand.
This post was published at The Daily Sheeple on September 10th, 2015.
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