Those immortal words of Victor Meldrew (from TV series ‘One Foot in the Grave’) immediately came to mind after reading a ZDNet article titled ‘No, AI won’t eat your job, say tech chiefs, and here’s why.‘ The article quotes those ‘tech chiefs’ as saying that robots will not take jobs away. Who are they kidding?

The opening gambit says it all, “Fears that artificial intelligence will munch through our job prospects and leave us slumped on the scrap-heap may be overblown, according to tech chiefs.”

When asked whether they thought the emergence of artificial intelligence would have negative consequences for employment, the panel of tech decision makers voted ‘no’ by a margin of eight to four. What planet could these gurus have descended from?

Only last week came a report from China that a factory assembling mobile phone components had replaced 650 staff with robots. The Changying Precision Technology Company factory in Dongguan, China, has not only replaced 90 percent of its human workers with robots it is now producing three times as much product! There are now only 60 human employees with the aim to cut this further to just 20 staff.

Let’s get this into perspective.

First published at TelecomAsia