The independence revolution begins: on the dismissal of Pelephone's employees

No professional is probably immune from being replaced by a computer or a robot

It was one of the nights, when my cell phone chirped weakly, and died prematurely with a full battery. Seeing that all my attempts to bring him back to life met with overwhelming failure, I used my home phone to contact the Pelephone company and try to get advice. After over thirty minutes on the line, I decided to go to the company's website, and started a chat with the online representative. He asked a number of targeted questions, thought a bit, and explained to me simply and clearly how to solve the problem. He was, without a doubt, the most efficient and courteous service representative I have ever encountered. And this fact is not at all surprising, since he was 'all in all' a computer program. And yet, he did a better job than most human representatives ever did for me.

So what's the wonder that Pelephone is starting to lay off its human employees?

The bots take control

Ever since the days when the Golem from Prague was written about, we are anxious that our works will rise above us. The legend wore new clothes at the beginning of the century with the invention of the idea of ​​the 'robot' - the artificial humanoids that take over the world in the play of the Czech Karl Chapek. Chapek's robot is still used today to scare small children in its modern incarnations as the man-killing web of machines in the Terminator and Matrix movies. These are dramatic films, full of action and explosions and punches and kicks. But in reality, the robots - or the computers - may take control without lifting a single finger. They will not demand to fight the humans, or eliminate them physically. They just have to be more efficient than the average person.

Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. Even a person with a low IQ is still a highly sophisticated machine, combining in one compact body the ability to work physically, processing input from the senses, planning for the future and the ability (and strong desire) to reproduce. All of this is true, but in today's job market, the employer is not interested in making use of everything that makes a person a person, but only in the employee's ability to perform his job to the best of his ability. To this end, the worker must dedicate himself to a certain craft, become professional and perfect in it, and not deviate to the right or to the left. He has to, in fact, become a robot for eight hours. And when we try to compete with robots on their home court, what wonder they win?

The fact is that the job market is being filled these days with bots: computer programs capable of performing tasks that until now were reserved for humans only, such as providing advice or acting as sales representatives over the network. More than 380 companies - from Intel to Toys-R-S - use automated software as customer service representatives. Rollo Carpenter, who won prestigious awards for the sophisticated bots he created in the last decade, recently gave an interview to New Scientist magazine, in which he said that bots are able to provide 10,000 times more information than a real person can provide. Beyond that, they do not require food or sleep, social benefits or travel expenses. They do not argue with the employer, do not curse, and do not have to return to the children at two in the afternoon every day.

To clarify: this is not about computers impersonating people, the kind that artificial intelligence researchers have been promising us for many years. But the point is they don't have to impersonate people either. The bots only fulfill the role of humans in very specific and limited tasks. And that is enough. This is enough to push the feet of a large part of customer service people out of the job market. And this is just the beginning.

The computer systems are improving at an ever-increasing rate, and the bots with them. As artificial intelligence systems continue to improve - and currently they show no tendency to stop - more people will be forced out of relatively simple jobs. The stock brokers have almost disappeared. They may also be joined in the next decade or two by customer service personnel, various insurance agents and journalists (Thanks to the Narrative Science company that employs news writing algorithms as journalists for everything). Even taxi and bus drivers may find themselves out of a job. In the state of Nevada, after all, driverless vehicles are already allowed to drive on the roads, and it appears that their safety exceeds that of human drivers!

The independence revolution

All these data indicate that we are living in a 'time of change' - a period of radical and rapid changes. A period of new revolution, equivalent to the industrial revolution. We will call it the 'Independence Revolution'. Instead of the steam engine replacing fifty rowers with oars, we get a computer algorithm replacing fifty customer service people. Pelephone's layoffs are nothing more than the opening shot (and some would say, a middle shot) to the independence revolution - in which computers will take the place of human servants.

Life in the shadow of the independence revolution will not be easy, especially in the beginning. Every revolution is bought with blood and suffering, but this will mainly lead to waves of layoffs of many who are currently engaged in providing service to others, and their positions can be replaced by computers. The respected British economist John Maynard Keynes already understood the meaning of this in 1930, when he wrote about technological unemployment, which "is created as a result of us finding ways to optimize the use of labor power faster than we can find new uses for labor power."

I would like to assure all readers that their profession is immune from bot takeover, but I cannot do so. It is difficult to know what the future holds for us, and our sages have already sadly said that "from the day the Temple was destroyed, prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to fools and infants." Even so, it is hard to ignore the signs that some of the jobs that exist today are going to disappear in the coming decades. We, the adults who have already acquired a profession, will find it difficult to adapt ourselves to the future. But what about the children?

We may not be able to predict the future with complete confidence, but we would be fools if we did not try to outline general guidelines to help our children deal with the revolution that has already begun. In a world of information and computers that provide information, students must be given the deeper knowledge: how to create new information and analyze the world around them. They must be taught the subjects that are at the center of all fields of engineering and science: mathematics, statistics and computer science. They must be exposed to the latest technologies so that they can choose for themselves the direction that suits them - and even develop new directions of their own, for their well-being and the benefit of those around them.

The State of Israel has the duty to promote the professions and scientific fields of knowledge in all education systems: state, state-religious and ultra-Orthodox. Any other way will leave hundreds of thousands of children without a real livelihood, and the entire State of Israel without the ability to cope with the global labor market in the coming years.