Artificial Intelligence, or AI as it is more commonly known, and automation is this weeks discussion point for SOE. After visiting quite a number of factories on our innovation tour of Shenzhen, there was definitely a noticeable trend towards automation in manufacturing for some businesses and not others. The tour group discuss this and it’s implications (along with others) to try and make sense of it. Automation is not new to the world with the Luddites smashing the Cotten Gins in the early 1800’s, inventions such as the Combine Harvester, Robotics in car manufacturing, CNC of all sorts of machines, etc bringing about changes to the labour force. However, the recent improvements in AI (machine learning and neural networks in particularly) and a desire to implement it, is making it possible for manufacturers to remove most of the “human component” of their processes. These aren’t just the obvious, repetitive type of processing jobs but many roles previously thought “safe” from automation/AI like legal researchers, medical staff and even programming/design roles. Many on our tour group have real concerns about jobs, careers and even what humans will do with themselves ultimately. The discussion is very much the results of our tour and our newly learnt knowledge of what is possible in manufacturing specifically, today.

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