With computers increasingly encroaching on professional jobs, how can human professionals compete with or work along side the new Robo systems?

1.  November 2016
 www.irn-research.com
The Rise of the Cyborg Professional

2. Based on press comments and venture capital investment, the future of professional services is
“Robo”
Robo-financial advisors
Robo-investors
Robo-doctors
Robo-teachers
Robo (self-drive) cars
Robo – professionals are valued for their speed of operation, ability to make fast decisions, ability to
through vast qualities of data and their lack of human biases and weaknesses.
Its Robo Time
The question is, what happens if computer systems, based on artificial intelligence, replace
many professional services jobs in the same way that industrial machines replaced manual
jobs in the industrial revolution?

3. Professionals have three choices
Accept it and retrain Protest and try to stop it Get more emotional

4. The Cyborg Phase of Development
In the Brave New Robo World, if you want to get ahead get
in touch with your feelings.
The feeling professional can work with the machine,
creating a new hybrid:
The Professional Cyborg.

5. The psychologist and one of the founders of
behavioural economics, Daniel Kahneman, has
explained that the human mind consists of two systems:
 System 1: intuitive, emotional, sub-conscious.
is controlled by the Limbic system or the emotional
(mammalian) brain. Thinks Fast
 System 2: rational, conscious, “me”. This is
associated with the human part of the brain, the
Cerebral Cortex that controls higher functions.
Thinks Slow
Human strengths and weaknesses

6. We are less human than we think
When we think of a decision we have made or try to explain why we
felt a certain way, we employ system 2 to rationalise our choice
or feelings.
But the actual choice and the actual motive for feeling a certain
way in most cases is taken largely by System 1.
The reason?
Using System 2 is effortful and slow. Imagine trying to decide which chocolate bar to buy. Your human
brain (System 2) will have to rationally consider the various shapes available, pack sizes, brands, prices, coca
content, wrappers, wrapper colours and designs. This is no longer a five-minute decision. To short-cut the
process, System 1takes over and sub-consciously makes a decision based on a simple set of factors.
System 2 (the part of the brain we think of as “me”) is far less in control than we think.

7. The short cut to success
Making decisions can be hard
If we weighed up and compared every possible option on every
possible decision we had to make, we would never make a choice.
System 1 comes to the rescue!
System 1 employs heuristics or simple rules of thumb to make
choices. This:
 speeds decision making
 makes life liveable (yes we can decide what food we want to
eat)
 but can come at a cost.

8. The pros and cons of heuristics
The cons
Taking short cuts when making a decision can
result in
Judging others by easily observable traits –
gender, race, height, hair colour, nationality
Basing your judgements on the opinions of others
(e.g. financial bubbles, fad diets)
Buying a product purely on the brand name or
because a celebrity endorses it.
Assuming tomorrow will be like today, favouring
Jam today over Jam tomorrow.
The technical specification (System 2 territory) is regulated to the small
print at the bottom (if it is there at all), while the brand image and sexy
photos of the car (System 1 territory) dominate. If our emotions were
not so powerful advertising would not work.

9. The pros
System 1 holds our experiences
Once learned an experience or lesson is
moved to System 1 for fast retrieval. The
Result
 High levels of intuitive behaviour,
sometimes confused with
premonition
 Rapid escape from dangerous
situations
 Avoiding bad situations because of
gut instinct.
The pros and cons of heuristics
Professionals accumulate many years of experiences which are stored
in System 1, meaning this knowledge is ready for fast retrieval and is
often fed to the conscious mind in the shape of an emotional feeling
rather than a rational evaluation. Sometimes you just know
something is right or something is wrong.

10. How the Cyborg solves the problems
The machine has no emotional attachment to a
previous way of thinking, it can be
reprogrammed and can take a dispassionate view
of new evidence.
The Cyborg decision maker gets most of its
System 1 from the human and most of its System
2 from the computer.
The computer System 2, unlike the human, is fast
and can compare a multitude of factors quickly
but it stills needs human gut instinct and
experience to make the best choices.
If humans, according to Daniel
Kahneman, Think Fast and Think Slow,
the Cyborg decision maker Thinks Fast
and Thinks Fast.

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