We are an advanced society. It’s a marvel to look at how much things have changed in the last decade alone. It’s even hard for older adults to keep up because they didn’t have this technology growing up. However, we’ve become too advanced that machines are already starting to replace people.
Will this work, or will it be the detriment we never saw coming?
Court Reporting
In Phoenix, AZ, some courts are already turning to machinery to record proceedings, doing away with full-time court reporters. While it sounds logical as the next step, it’s not practical.
Sure, recorders do not need much maintenance, and they are inexpensive, but there have been instances of them experiencing technical difficulties. In a courtroom, emotions may run high, and there is no way to replicate a scenario just so they can be re-recorded.
Once the moment is lost, the transcription is incomplete. The presence of court reporters, real people with good recollection and a capacity to express whether they got what people were saying, will never be completely eliminated. They are crucial in the accurate portrayal of the court proceedings, and they will remain so until machines become advanced enough that they can think like humans.
Customer Service
Difficult customers are hard to deal with — especially if you’re letting bots take their case. These customers will not be satisfied with canned responses, and the more you let them interact with automated messages, the more difficult they may become.
A human customer service representative has something bots don’t have: empathy. They are able to understand where your customer is coming from, and they can help the customer find a way to resolve the issue without further agitating them. Even if your bots have an exhaustive list of responses, it’s not enough to address issues of an emotional customer without a little personalization.
Food Preparation
Restaurants these days pride themselves over customized menus and dishes done exactly the way you want them done. You can make special requests, and the chef will be able to execute them in real time.
If food preparation were to be fully automated, it would be expensive to teach machines to customize each dish and get them right every time. They can’t taste what they make, either.
Sometimes, no matter how perfect a meal looks on paper, its taste will still need some finishing touches from a seasoned chef. You’re removing this step if you let robots prepare your food.
Body Measurements
There have been attempts at automating body measurements, but there’s a reason they haven’t taken off. Taking body measurements is something that requires proximity.
Attempts at automating the process have yielded favorable results, but it takes too much effort to have to wear a bodysuit with identifying markers and then have your photos taken at different angles for the machine to calculate the distance between markers. The traditional, or old-school way of using a measuring tape, will not take you a minute.
Sure, it would be nice to let machines do everything while you laze around and do nothing. However, in some industries, human presence simply works best.
