Making the Case for Flesh and Blood Employees in an Automated Future  

This year marks the 30th anniversary of South by Southwest which, for a few dewy spring weeks, overtakes downtown Austin to celebrate music, film, and technology (not to mention food, fashion, and hip techie parties). Likely unrecognizable as the SXSW of 1987, the enduring nature of the event begs the question of how it will look in another 30 years.

Will the innovation culture continue down its current socially enabled, digitally native path, asking future attendees to reserve a virtual seat and attend each session from the safety of their in-home VR/AR apparatus? Will future-state 3D printers deliver piping hot Texas-style barbecue directly through their consoles?

While the idea of going fully automated may still seem far-fetched today, this year’s interactive tracks placed enough emphasis on bots, AI, and the mechanization of business-as-usual that it’s hard to say for certain what remains out of scope for the automated future of work.

Where We Stand 

An Intuit study recently predicted that more than 40% of the American workforce will work contingently by 2020. “Contingent” work (for the blissfully uninitiated) is also referred to as freelancing, contracting, or driving the gig economy.

As modern business functions (e.g., IT, manufacturing, and transportation) lean on robotic solutions, full-time skilled work is looking more like it’s playing understudy to AI technology, and formerly human-centric roles like customer care are going the way of the chatbot. Taking advantage of forward-leaping technology and rising human connectivity in the digital space, the contingent workforce includes Uber drivers, AirBnB hosts, Etsy artisans, and other hustlers armed with ambition and a smartphone.

Traditionalists may fear a fully automated future, bleakly envisioning the day they are replaced by an unfeeling robot. Despite a strong current pushing toward automation, however, humans will always be the purpose and the target of work. In their trends report for 2017, research firm Fjord reiterates the importance of making people the heart of everything you do as a brand. Products and their messaging will need to be geared toward a human audience, even if their manufacture, distribution, and deployment are driven by tech.

Thus, professionals with an eye on the future should seek a balance, for some sacred ground remains where a robot cannot reign. People, alone, are both the motivation for and the consumers of the fruits of modern technology; automation simply fills the gaps to empower swiftness and precision.

The Case for Keeping It Human 

Despite the push toward automation, the human experience will continue to bleed into modern business. Consider the following:

Inspiration: Time & Place
Bots continue to find new functional responsibilities and increasingly inhabit roles once held by humans. From assembly lines to fast food counters, some automation enhancements make sense. Others, like bots as content creators, still feel like science fiction. As a modern form of brand currency, some brands seem to believe that more is always better. But more is certainly less when it means deviating from the brand voice that appeals to an audience of loyalists.

In her talk on “Courageous Creativity,” Refinery29 founder Piera Gelardi shared how she fosters an environment for creativity in her office, painting a vibrant image of the physical location where her creativity (and that of her colleagues) was given space to thrive. Inspired by her love of the 1990s and the teen drama “Beverly Hills 90210,” she refers to her office as The Peach Pit and supplements weekly brainstorming sessions with peach candy, pink wine, and a staunch “no bad ideas” policy. Far from mundane details, these conditions cultivate creativity for brand building, teamwork, and innovation.

While her industry – publishing and content creation – welcomes the support of automation for curating stories, Gelardi’s passionate approach to innovation is inspired by the audience she serves. From her brand vision to creative execution, Gelardi’s work is uniquely hers as she offers pure authenticity communicated in profoundly human terms. From a viewpoint cultivated through individual experience, the clarity of voice that makes Refinery29 a success gains power from her origin story and her humanity.

“Siri, Tell Me a Story” 
Ultimately, it’s the story that connects consumers to a brand. This is as true of the consistency of messaging and style of communities like Refinery29 as it is for modern marketers, newsmakers, and brands.

In his “Brain, Behavior and Story” session, Ogilvy Center for Behavioral Science president and founder Chris Graves used several real-world examples (including this heartbreakingly adorable offering from Google Chrome) to argue that, where persuasion is concerned, story always beats facts. After all, brands aren’t flocking to visual media like Instagram and Snapchat to share their most persuasive KPIs; they’re there to tell their story.

While tech enhancements can help us turn big data into actionable insights, it’s up to the human element to craft a compelling story. From the consumer side, too, brands will continue to find ways to put their audience at the center of the stories they tell to deepen the impact and solidify the bond between customer and product.

Perfectly Imperfect
One of the biggest challenges to widespread chatbot adoption for functions like customer service is not aptitude, but emotional intelligence. As artificial intelligence gains more sophistication in learning and accessing information, bots will become smarter, but that will not make them any more human. Real live people will be needed wherever empathy is required; in retail, customer service, insurance, medicine, and anywhere that human understanding plays a part in the customer experience.

No automated system, no matter how advanced, will ever understand what creative director Michael Nieling calls the “charm/hustle” cycle–a classically human rollercoaster of overcommitting, then scrambling to deliver on one’s promises.

A machine will never need to overcome crippling self-doubt or power through a panic attack when its self-worth is tied up in its professional accomplishments. A bot will not understand the exhilarating stress and joyous relief that accompanies the human tendency to procrastinate. (No one understands how constraints fuel creativity quite like the serial procrastinator.)

On one hand, this lack of human “flaws” is exactly what makes automation appealing: surgical precision, clockwork productivity, minimal sick days. On the other, automation is only as good as the people who engineered it, and only as successful as the people it’s designed to help believe it is.

The future of flesh and circuitry are, of course, powerfully intertwined.

The Importance of Authenticity 

What is most likely to be lost in an overly automated world is not something measured in KPI – it’s authenticity. While “authenticity” is getting close to “synergy” in terms of buzzword meaninglessness, it still represents the primary differentiation that makes humans human.

New landscapes for working and living alongside technology abound, as contingent employment demonstrates humanity’s capacity to co-create with modern technology, rolling with the changes for a co-operative, mutually beneficial existence. Humans start with creativity and discover how to harness it productively, while machines start with productivity and wait for humans to turn it into something meaningful … and magical.

Written By Whitney Durmick, Senior Product Manager, Oracle Social Cloud