INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS AND EMPLOYMENT LEVELS

15.12 INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS AND EMPLOYMENT LEVELS

There is very little information on the relationship of MSS to employment levels. However, MSS and especially intelligent systems have the potential to significantly affect the productivity and employment of many types of employees as well to completely automate jobs. The material in this section summarizes the positions of some of the world's top experts with regard to the potential impact of intelligent systems on productivity and unemployment.

Although the impact of AI may take decades to fully materialize, there is agreement among researchers that intelligent systems are increasing the productivity of knowledge workers. Technology is getting less expensive and more capable, and thus is bringing about substantial changes in jobs and job content. However, researchers disagree about the potential impact of intelligent systems on the aggregate employment

No Massive Unemployment  Benefit/cost advantage of computers  New occupations and jobs have

Massive Unemployment Will Come

increases with time.

always been created by automation.  Less skillful employees are needed.  There is much less unemployment in

 Shifting displaced employees to services is countries that use more automation. getting difficult.  Work can be expanded to accommodate  Many employees lost their jobs in the

everyone. 1990s.  Conversion to automation is slow, and the  Hidden unemployment exists in

economy can adjust. many organizations.  Many tasks cannot be fully automated.  Millions of help-desk employees will be

 There will always be some areas replaced by intelligent agents. where people are better than machines.  Electronic commerce will cause millions

 People will work less but will have

of intermediaries and agents to lose their

more money.

 Electronic commerce reduces the cost of  Unemployment levels in certain countries

jobs.

many goods and services; thus their is high and is increasing. consumption will increase, resulting in

 There is an upper limit to customer more buying and more jobs.

CHAPTER 15 INTEGRATION, IMPACTS, AND THE FUTURE OF MANAGEMENT SUPPORT SYSTEMS

ROBOTS CLEAN TRAIN STATIONS IN JAPAN

With growing amounts of rubbish to deal with at meters long. The railway and Sizuko spent 200 million Japanese train stations and fewer people willing to yen ($2 million) to develop the machines and are plan- work as cleaners, officials have started turning the dirty ning to program them for other tasks, such as sweeping work over to robots. The central Japan Railway and scrubbing. Similar robots are now cleaning many Company and Sizuko Company, a Japanese machinery major railway stations in Japan. maker, have been using robots programmed to vacuum

More than any other country, Japan has made rubbish. A railway official said that the robots, which extensive use of robots in industry. It also uses them to are capable of doing the work of 10 people, each have assist the blind and the elderly, as well as. to diagnose

been operating two or three days a week at the Sizuko some illnesses. station in central Japan. The robots are about 1.5 meters wide and 1.2

level. The two extreme positions are massive unemployment and increased employment (or at least no change in the employment level). These positions have been supported by two Nobel Prize winners, Wassily Leontief (1986), who supports the massive unemployment argument, and Herbert Simon, who takes the opposite position. Table 15.6 summarizes the main arguments of each side.

The debate has been going on for many years. It is true that many people have lost their jobs to intelligent systems. But many new jobs and job categories have been created. The following is a list of newly created MSS-related jobs: terrorists fighting using AI, biometric specialist, security expert, AI computer lawyer, BI headhunter, BI project manager, BI hardware-architecture specialist, BI venture capitalist, BI usertraining specialist, MSS tool developer and vendor, industrial robotics supervisor/manager, knowledge acquisition and maintenance specialist, robotics maintenance engineer, system integrator, ANN software developer, software-agent developer and vendor, chief knowledge officer (CKO), MSS system integrator, knowledge maintainer, and intelligent agent builder.

The debate about how intelligent systems will affect employment raises a few other questions: Is some unemployment really socially desirable? (People could have more leisure time.) Should the government intervene more in the distribution of income and in determination of the employment level? Can the "invisible hand" in the economy, which has worked so well in the past, continue to be successful in the future? Will AI make most of us idle but wealthy? (Robots will do the work; people will enjoy life (see Teresko, 2002 and AIS in Action 15.7). Should the issues of income and employment be completely separated? The issue of how to handle unemployment both at the organizational and the national level is beyond the scope of this book.