About this item
An invigorating, thought-provoking, and positive look at the rise of automation that explores how professionals across industries can find sustainable careers in the near future.Nearly half of all working Americans could risk losing their jobs because of technology. It's not only blue-collar jobs at stake. Millions of educated knowledge workers - writers, paralegals, assistants, medical technicians - are threatened by accelerating advances in artificial intelligence.The industrial revolution shifted workers from farms to factories. In the first era of automation, machines relieved humans of manually exhausting work. Today, Era Two of automation continues to wash across the entire services-based economy that has replaced jobs in agriculture and manufacturing. Era Three, and the rise of AI, is dawning. Smart computers are demonstrating they are capable of making better decisions than humans. Brilliant technologies can now decide, learn, predict, and even comprehend much faster and more accurately than the human brain, and their progress is accelerating. Where will this leave lawyers, nurses, teachers, and editors?In Only Humans Need Apply, Thomas Hayes Davenport and Julia Kirby reframe the conversation about automation, arguing that the future of increased productivity and business success isn't either human or machine. It's both. The key is augmentation, utilizing technology to help humans work better, smarter, and faster. Instead of viewing these machines as competitive interlopers, we can see them as partners and collaborators in creative problem solving as we move into the next era. The choice is ours.
About the Author
Tom Davenport is the President's Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College. He has led research centers at Accenture, McKinsey and Company, Ernst & Young, and CSC Index, and has taught at Harvard Business School, Dartmouth's Tuck School, the University of Texas, and the University of Chicago. He is a widely published author and speaker on the topics of analytics, information and knowledge management, reengineering, enterprise systems, and electronic business. Tom's latest book--coauthored with Jeanne Harris--is Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, a best-seller that has been translated into 13 languages. Prior to this, Tom wrote, co-authored or edited twelve other books, including the first books on business process reengineering, knowledge management, attention management, and enterprise systems. He has written over 100 articles for such publications as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, the Financial Times, and many other publications, and has been a columnist for Information Week, CIO, and Darwin magazines. In 2003 he was named one of the world's top 25 consultants by Consulting magazine, and in 2007 and 8 was named one of the 100 most influential people in the IT industry by Ziff-Davis magazines. His blog for Harvard Business Online is http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/davenport/
