Why is the feeling economy a good business idea?
It’s important to state that the feeling economy isn’t a business idea as such. It’s more of an all-encompassing term for any job, business, or concept that relies on uniquely human characteristics.
Because this isn’t happening in the future. It’s happening now. According to research from The Data City, in the UK, the AI sector has grown by 145% during the last decade, with machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) – both of which are aimed at helping machines develop a more human-like intelligence – accounting for the largest subsectors. In total, it is worth £15.6bn and employs 35,000 people, and by 2030, it’s estimated that AI will have boosted the UK economy by £232bn.
Clearly this isn’t an opportunity we want to miss. And AI has already started to quietly assume many functions in our day-to-day lives. Just think of that voice-activated personal assistant you carry around in your pocket, the systems that protect your money from cyber attacks, or the algorithms that determine what search results you see when you Google something.
In a paper published last year in the California Management Review, analysis of data on millions of workers in the US department of labor from 2006 to 2016 identified a “significant shift” towards tasks that required greater emotional intelligence as other tasks were automated. This effect was particularly pronounced in the financial sector. The research found that, within financial advisory services, ‘feeling tasks’ were considered 20.5% more valuable in 2016 than 2006, while ‘thinking tasks’ declined by 6.3% over the same period.
Some of the key findings in the Future of Jobs Report 2020 also illustrate the displacement that automation is likely to cause to the jobs market over the next few years. It found that 43% of businesses have plans to reduce their workforce due to technology integration, while 34% plan to expand their workforce due to technology integration.
What’s clear is that the findings by no means paint a picture of a slow slide towards ever more automation and human redundancy. On the contrary, employers expect that while ‘increasingly redundant roles’ will decline by 6.4% by 2025, ‘emerging professions’ will grow by 5.7%. In other words, technology will create nearly as many jobs as it makes redundant.
But perhaps the most significant finding in the Future of Jobs Report is this: by 2025, the amount of time spent on tasks by humans and machines in the workplace will be equal. However, as shown in the graph below, machines will come to do the majority of information and data processing, data retrieval, administrative tasks, and some traditional manual labour, while humans will retain their advantage in managing, advising, decision-making, reasoning, communicating, and interacting.
In turn, the report speculates that in-demand skills will change dramatically over the next few years, with critical thinking, analysis, problem solving, active learning, resilience, stress tolerance, and flexibility expected to be the most sought after qualities.
So, we’ve made the case that emotional intelligence is becoming increasingly important in the jobs market. But why does this make the feeling economy fertile ground for new businesses?
via https://www.AiUpNow.com/ by Henry Williams, Khareem Sudlow
