{"id":5918,"date":"2017-12-19T22:50:32","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T03:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/?p=5918"},"modified":"2018-01-16T15:58:58","modified_gmt":"2018-01-16T20:58:58","slug":"what-will-ai-do-to-service-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/2017\/12\/what-will-ai-do-to-service-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"What Will AI Do to Service Jobs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

guest Article by\u00a0Ming-Hui Huang and Roland T. Rust<\/em>
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing rapidly, and its impact on service promises to be profound.\u00a0 Although AI has not yet shown its full potential in business, scientific progress appears to be at an inflection point, and the number of AI applications in service is increasing rapidly.\u00a0 It is useful to analyze AI as involving four distinct intelligence levels.\u00a0 \u201cIn the order in which scientific development in AI is taking place, the four levels are mechanical<\/em> (using AI for routine and repetitive tasks), analytical<\/em> (using more complicated logic and analysis), intuitive<\/em> (coming up with holistic understanding and sensing patterns), and empathetic<\/em> (understanding and emulating human emotions)\u201d says Huang.\u00a0 \u201cMany people still believe that AI is limited to mechanical, routine tasks, but scientific development in AI shows that this isn\u2019t true–AI in service is likely to involve all four intelligence levels,\u201d says Rust.\u00a0 As AI masters more and more service tasks, human service jobs will be eliminated.\u00a0 We already see this for many mechanical service tasks, for example, with customer service jobs being lost to automated phone menus.\u00a0 Given that the order of AI development is roughly from mechanical to analytical to intuitive to empathetic<\/strong>, it is possible to predict that the next big wave of service job losses will be those that involve analytical tasks.\u00a0 IBM\u2019s Watson system, for example, already creates marketable products that perform analytical (and to some degree, intuitive) tasks.\u00a0 Eventually analytical, intuitive and empathetic tasks will all be successfully performed by AI.\u00a0 One firm is using AI for financial portfolio analysis.\u00a0 An empathetic robot, Sophia, has already been named a citizen of Saudi Arabia.\u00a0 Managers should be open to developing ways to use AI for all service tasks, starting with the most routine.\u00a0 Service employees should seek to avoid jobs that will be easily taken over by AI.\u00a0 These are mostly mechanical jobs today, but soon analytical jobs will be under threat. Our mathematical model shows how the relative importance of the four intelligence levels for service labor will change. The job skills that will take longest for AI to take over will be the \u201csofter\u201d people skills of intuition and empathy.\u00a0 Our business schools should be emphasizing those skills the most.\u00a0 Ultimately we may be faced with the \u201csingularity\u201d described by Ray Kurzweil, in which AI is smarter than humans for all four levels of intelligence.\u00a0 In that scenario, we may need to be creative about how human service employees can remain relevant.\u00a0 One possibility is that humans may need to become \u201ctrans-human\u201d (extending human capabilities using AI).\u00a0 Recently scientists in South Africa succeeded in connecting a human brain to the Internet.\u00a0 In the extreme, we may have a network of human brains all connected to the Internet\u2014a human analog to the Internet of Things that we call the Internet of Brains.\u00a0 Such connectedness will greatly accelerate learning in the service environment\u2014expanding service capability just as the beehive expands the capability of individual bees.<\/p>\n

A forthcoming article in the Journal of Service Research<\/em>, \u201cArtificial Intelligence in Service,\u201d by Ming-Hui Huang and Roland T. Rust, investigates how AI is likely to develop in the service economy, and what the likely implications are for service jobs and marketable job skills. A copy of the forthcoming article may be obtained from the authors.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Ming-Hui Huang (huangmh@ntu.edu.tw<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Distinguished Professor of Electronic Commerce at National Taiwan University<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Roland T. Rust (rrust@rhsmith.umd.edu<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Distinguished University Professor and David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing at the Robert H. Smith School of Business<\/p>\n

Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Service.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

guest Article by\u00a0Ming-Hui Huang and Roland T. Rust Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing rapidly, and its impact on service promises to be profound.\u00a0 Although AI has not yet shown its full potential in business, scientific progress appears to be at an inflection point, and the number of AI applications in service is increasing rapidly.\u00a0 It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,18,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5918"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5918"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5987,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5918\/revisions\/5987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}