It has been reported that about 35% of jobs may be at risk due to people being replaced by robots within the next two decades. You can even do a quiz here to establish whether YOUR job may be at risk!
However, this media scaremongering hasn’t affected me, and I felt completely calm upon reading these stories, because I know what matters most in our business of marketing communications is to be HUMAN. (Yes, I did succumb to completing the quiz, and there is just a 1% risk of a computer doing my job!) After all, when we do telemarketing at Spirus, we need to do our utmost to be “real” and not script reading robots. If you have recently had an automatic dialler calling you, you will understand what I mean. Even when real people from a call centre are calling you, and they are reading a script, the response will not necessarily be the best because that person has been dehumanised, mainly as they HAVE TO follow a script. Shall we talk about how initially the “Syrian refugees” were dehumanised, or is that too gloomy for a light-hearted Friday blog?
Of course, we can humanise robots too. The European Space Agency’s Philae lander had a Twitter account that actually made us, in the Spirus office, all go “Aaaw”. But hey, think about it, it wasn’t really the lander tweeting but the clever and very human scientists who realised we would be more inspired by a conversation rather than a data set!
If you’re wondering what a world with walking, talking, human-thinking robots – with added sensibility (or not) – would look like, why not check out some of the films below (even if it’s for the umpteenth time), and let us know your favourite. Some might already be staple members of the family DVD shelf!
1) Wall-E
2) I, Robot
3) Star Wars
4) Transcendence
To conclude, I am not worried by this report. I know that in our work, we have to dig deep, be creative, laugh together, cry together, learn together, have flaws and most of all be REAL human beings. Remember that the next time you fill up your communication with fancy jargon!
Have you done the quiz? Let us know if your job is reported to be at risk and if you agree with the prediction on Twitter @SpirusMarketing !