AI kills jobs

Why? Not because Machine/Deep Learning is an unbeatable argument, but because humans stand in their own way or at least pretend to be incapable.

We have had a new office since September 1 of this year: We left our location in Munich and moved to Freilassing on the German-Austrian border - which has many, many advantages and hardly any disadvantages. However, the move was not trivial and led to the realization that AI kills jobs.

I was expecting an urgent delivery from a distributor of network products, but because the new office is not yet staffed on a daily basis, I arranged a desired day of delivery on the logistics company's website.

I saw that the package had already made most of its journey across Germany and was now being temporarily stored in Aschheim near Munich.

In two days (my desired date) it should then hit Freilassing, distance about 130 kilometers. I waited and it did not come. A call to the logistics hotline yielded the following result:

Maybe it will be delivered the next day - a Saturday, when certainly no one is in the office; a second desired date can not be stored in the system; and actually no one knows why the package was not delivered, where it is and when it will really arrive - soon but for sure!?

The phone call with the person from the logistics call center lasted about five minutes and yielded no result. In two minutes, I could have typed in my own data in a browser window - and left a second requested appointment with an intelligent IT system. Humans were completely unnecessary and obstructive in this chain of logistics failures.

After installing the new telephone system, it was possible to make calls, but only limited calls. From some external phone numbers it worked, from abroad (Austria) not at all.

A call to the telecom provider's support did not result in any immediate clarification. After two days, the problem was still not solved and no one knew what to do.

After an escalation up to the management, an experienced technician took care of the problem: Our phone number (+49 8654/77130-0) had previously been used by another company and during the transfer, it was overlooked to delete the old configuration - what was missing was a simple "reset".

After that, everything worked perfectly. I didn't count how many people were involved here. But a simple web portal, where you dial in with your Internet/VoIP password and then trigger a "reset" at your own risk, would have solved the problem within five minutes (I am allowed and able to set up my fixed IP address for our VPN independently via the Telekom provider's portal).

Both the logistics and telecom problems were "humanly" understandable, but solving the problem without humans would have been possible and faster - as long as the employees in the call centers behave like "stupid" machines, their jobs are at risk. So it is the human being who, through his reduced and limited actions, makes room for the AI machines.