It’s coming faster than we can think and will change the world of work Jan Raycroft reports
Yes, I was that woman with the “But what is the point of me, then?’ question at the TSA’s autumn conference when computer scientist David Pool spoke on how rapidly expanding technology was ‘taking the robot’ out of human work. Selfish, I know, and if I’d made my question better at the time it would have been: “If whatever the next generation of the likes of Copilot can be asked ‘Just rewrite this piece in Jan’s style, so no one could tell it wasn’t her’ what value does human creativity have?”
Let’s carry on my moan with a bit of self-justification to prove I’m not a Luddite. I’m in the Baby Boomer age group but was at the forefront of the arrival of mass computer tech in the press – working on secondment with the actual brainy people who design and write the programmes. I was their ‘pet journalist chimp’ sitting alongside them at 2am in an office in Cheltenham as we obsessed over making newspaper content and design programmes ‘user-friendly’ on the earliest Apple Macs – for reporters who lived in a world of ancient Imperial typewriters and cigarette ash. I had one light bulb moment to make it idiot-proof which the tech engineers seized upon and wrote into the programme.
They got all the pats on the back and were no doubt well paid in the years of ‘Loadsamoney’. Me, rewarded with a nice dinner. Later, as a newspaper editor, I was lucky enough to meet in London the team developing Google – and stupid enough not to jump ship and join them when my head exploded with its potential. But it did lead to my publication being only the second in the UK to have its own website, so there’s that to compensate for the millions I might have made.
That’s my pathetic credentials over – but it does mean I couldn’t miss a webinar hosted by AiCore founder Christian Kerr and MD Haron Shams for the TSA on how AI can deliver value, adopting it safely and consistently, and how funded training pathways work in practice. And just as it did in the media, this new tech is going to change how our industry operates, but much faster. It’s not The Next Big Thing, more ‘The Big Thing Already Here, Like it or Not’. Get ready to hold on to your hats and the ironing line. For Kerr and Shams, the sheer speed of AI’s development is an exhilarating ride if – like them – you love that sort of thing. No previous technology has spread and developed so fast. Kerr points out that in 2017 when AiCore was founded through Imperial College in London, AI “was more like a toy.” Not a decade later and look where we – and they – are. Their partnerships with industry giants NVIDIA and Amazon were followed by sponsorship from Deepmind, a British-American artificial intelligence research lab later acquired by Google and subsequently merged with Google Brain three years ago. NVIDIA chose AiCore to deliver training on behalf of their Deep Learning Institute across prestigious universities in the UK and before long the business was also partnering with government departments to provide training in AI, data and cloud-based systems.
By 2024 they were looking at the rest of us in need of up-skilling, hand-holding (call it consultancy) and software as reality sunk into commercial operations. Curiosity is a driver for Shams. As he says: “No one has got 50 years’ experience in all this, or even 20 years.” Talking of half a century, these days, of course, I’m not thinking about how beer-soaked hacks might cope, but the implications of rapidly expanding laundry technology, the journey with Laundry & Cleaning Today through RFID, automation and robotics in our operations and the speed, results, energy and labour-saving and cost-cutting this all brings. The ‘bottom line’ is still driving everything, as it has since people marvelled – or railed against – the Industrial Revolution’s inventions. Now let’s imagine this conversation: Jenny: ‘Hi Dave, it’s the laundry production manager here. I think the data from our conveyor system is showing increased disruption and now the folders are having more glitches. Could you take a look?’ Dave (who is available 24 hours a day): ‘Yes, you’re right. I can see what you mean. I’ll send you a report on what’s causing that and book an engineer and parts if necessary.’ Jenny: ‘Great, please include any estimated costings and time schedule – I might need to talk to the finance director to get sign-off.’ Dave: ‘On its way to you now.’ You might have worked out that Dave is actually an AI ‘employee’ analysing data, but Jenny could be, too – and that’s where we’re all heading. That engineer could be a human, or intelligent laundry machinery (washers, dryers and the rest of it) might well be able to fix itself through a bit of off-site instruction and re-programming sent by Dave. And that’s why I was fascinated to join the webinar and hear the thoughts of Kerr and Shams.
One of the insights covered in the webinar was that AiCore still get calls from people asking: ‘Why bother doing anything?’ or ‘Is this going to do my job?’ It’s not just on the likes of the laundry shopfloor, but in sales where AI agents are already responding to queries. Kerr says that such AI ‘employees’ can be trained to handle the more mundane or ‘time-waster’ calls, spotting those with potential high yield that can be swiftly passed to a human.
The same goes for anyone asking ‘Am I talking to an AI agent? I want to talk to a human.” An aim here is to ensure the best sales people spend their time on work that gives them more job satisfaction (and perhaps bonuses) through automating repetitive tasks, such as admin and emails, while making more money for the business. As Shams says: “Everybody has jobs they love doing and those they hate doing. Give the humans the space to do what they are best at and enjoy doing.”
Those attending the webinar had questions including if it’s possible to over-rely on AI. Yes, says Kerr, but this is why humans stay in the loop to review and validate what’s happening, and companies need an AI policy to back this up. Another discussion point was about something we suspect will be a wrinkle to iron out for our industry: linking legacy software to AI tools. Where parts of the supply chain are not on top of this transformation migrating everyone to a new approach to work will be an issue.
And what about sabotage or other nefarious activities, like hacking? That’s already happening, can AI make it worse? Not if the AI is trained to be part of the ‘guard rails’ ready to alert a human co-worker to suspicious activity.
As Kerr points out, you wouldn’t let loose a junior employee to do whatever they liked, so customising an AI system involves ensuring it reports issues and knows when and what to tell ‘the boss’. Want to get ahead of the game (or even catch up)? AiCore is an approved apprenticeship provider, funded through the Government Levy and with courses for companies and individuals.
Training, including totally or partially funded courses, is very flexible, personalised to the learner and business, and normally lasts eight to 12 months, for three hours a week. There are no ‘crash courses’ here, it’s about future-proofing by having AI champions in your business. As Kerr says: “AI skills will decide who keeps up and who falls behind.”
No comment