Robots aren’t interested in taking our jobs after all. They’ve skipped that basic rung of the career ladder and have gone straight into management and consultancy instead. Artificial Intelligence, the Guardian reports, is now being used to decide which of us is going to fill that job vacancy. A.I. is taking over the world of work, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll see this as a worrying development. After all, technology hasn’t progressed to the point where we can manufacture toasters that consistently brown both sides of a slice of bread. Now we’re delegating to it the complex task of choosing the right person for a job.
The problem is that Artificial Intelligence lacks the human touch. Among other things, it lacks common sense. Researchers understand this and, as Slate reports, are planning to teach A.I. how to have common sense. This, it turns out, is harder than it sounds.
Roland Kendall, the protagonist in Crossing Live, would be worried by the rise in A.I. too. Roland is a natural sceptic, who would always believe that the human touch is necessary when dealing with people. But for B.B. Olsen, the alarmingly direct psychologist Roland works with, Artificial Intelligence would be a dream come true. B.B. would have jumped at the chance to film her staff interviews and then use A.I. (as described in the Guardian article) to analyse and interpret the facial expressions of the interviewee.
Fortunately for the team at Channel 5, Crossing Live is set in 1990. A.I was still the stuff of science fiction in those days. Instead, B.B. relies on standard psychological assessments, interviews and some basic manipulation to get what she wants from the team. And when all else fails, she has Roland to reluctantly do a little of her dirty work for her.
It’s a good old-fashioned battle of wills. But neither side has Artificial Intelligence at its disposal. B.B. thinks that there can only be one winner in all of this, but Roland is more resourceful than he seems and if he keeps himself at arm’s length long enough, he might just come out on top.