+John. Subscriber¹ Posted January 5, 2017 Subscriber¹ Share Posted January 5, 2017 Insurance firm Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance is making 34 employees redundant and replacing them with IBM’s Watson Explorer AI. A future in which human workers are replaced by machines is about to become a reality at an insurance firm in Japan, where more than 30 employees are being laid off and replaced with an artificial intelligence system that can calculate payouts to policyholders. Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance believes it will increase productivity by 30% and see a return on its investment in less than two years. The firm said it would save about 140m yen (£1m) a year after the 200m yen (£1.4m) AI system is installed this month. Maintaining it will cost about 15m yen (£100k) a year. The move is unlikely to be welcomed, however, by 34 employees who will be made redundant by the end of March. The system is based on IBM’s Watson Explorer, which, according to the tech firm, possesses “cognitive technology that can think like a human”, enabling it to “analyse and interpret all of your data, including unstructured text, images, audio and video”. The technology will be able to read tens of thousands of medical certificates and factor in the length of hospital stays, medical histories and any surgical procedures before calculating payouts, according to the Mainichi Shimbun. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/05/japanese-company-replaces-office-workers-artificial-intelligence-ai-fukoku-mutual-life-insurance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gary7 Subscriber² Posted January 5, 2017 Subscriber² Share Posted January 5, 2017 I tried to tell folks that this will happen.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+John. Subscriber¹ Posted January 5, 2017 Author Subscriber¹ Share Posted January 5, 2017 1 hour ago, Gary7 said: I tried to tell folks that this will happen.. This time it's 34 people, next time it'll be hundreds... It's the start of eventually millions being replaced. +Gary7 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindovermaster Moderator Posted January 5, 2017 Moderator Share Posted January 5, 2017 Who's gunna be there when the robots malfunction? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Eternal Tempest MVC Posted January 5, 2017 MVC Share Posted January 5, 2017 Masume Shirow (manga writer artist) has been playing with future scenarios, technology and social strife with Ghost In The Shell circa 1989. Not sure how the new movie will touch on this however. It seems to be a collection of scenes from the various series based on the manga. Ghost in the Shell (1989), Appleseed (1985), and really good reads about future technology and impact on socity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Eternal Tempest MVC Posted January 5, 2017 MVC Share Posted January 5, 2017 (edited) 3 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said: Who's gunna be there when the robots malfunction? The problem is how many robots displace, vs the remaining amount needed to maintain the machines. What do you do, and this may not be politically correct, what about the people that only fit to do labor, or lack the skills / ability that only high intelligence requires aka maintaining the machines? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gary7 Subscriber² Posted January 5, 2017 Subscriber² Share Posted January 5, 2017 4 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said: Who's gunna be there when the robots malfunction? A smarter bot. There is a GM plant close to where I live and 12 years ago there were close to 10,000 workers now there are 2,000 multiply this by the number of GM plants in the US and you could build a city with the unemployed workers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skiver Veteran Posted January 5, 2017 Veteran Share Posted January 5, 2017 7 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said: Who's gunna be there when the robots malfunction? Hopefully John Connor or Neo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindovermaster Moderator Posted January 5, 2017 Moderator Share Posted January 5, 2017 3 minutes ago, Skiver said: Hopefully John Connor or Neo The one? LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+John. Subscriber¹ Posted January 5, 2017 Author Subscriber¹ Share Posted January 5, 2017 10 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said: Who's gunna be there when the robots malfunction? Sure, they'll have a couple of people to look after the thing, but it's much cheaper than 34x Salaries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hum Posted January 15, 2017 Share Posted January 15, 2017 McDonald's should hear of this DConnell 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabe84 Posted January 15, 2017 Share Posted January 15, 2017 That's my biggest fear regarding the future. I visit many products' websites, robots, AI, supercomputers, they all talk about how they're going to improve your customers' experience, they seem to fail to realize that if we keep this up soon there won't be many customers left. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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