Some businesses are adopting A.I. technologies so they can be better prepared if the current epidemic drags on and for the next epidemic.
There’s no bright side to the coronavirus killing tens of thousands of people. But it has, in some cases, sped up businesses adopting certain technologies so they can be better prepared if the current epidemic drags on and for the next epidemic.
Last week, Dongyan Wang, a vice president at the business software startup Landing AI, said that the coronavirus has led more manufacturers to consider upgrading their factories with cutting-edge data crunching. His startup is increasingly being contacted by companies that want to install more A.I. technologies to automate their operations—especially companies with facilities in Asia.
As an example, Wang cited an unnamed Chinese manufacturing firm CEO who told him that if one worker out of thousands contracts the coronavirus, he would be required to temporarily close the factory like he recently had to do. As a result, the company is “accelerating” its adoption of A.I. and machine learning over the next few years “to help augment the workers,” Wang said.
Left unsaid is the possibility that the technology would reduce the overall number of workers needed in the factory.
The hope is that the cost of new A.I. technology would pay off the next time a pandemic or some other disaster blocks hundreds or thousands of employees from working.
Wang’s comments came at the MIT Technology Review’s EmTech Digital A.I. conference, which is typically an in-person event. But in a sign of the times, it was held online this year due to the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, tech news site The Information reported that Amazon “has seen a huge swell in sales inquiries” for its A.I. powered Connect service for call-center workers. Workers in big call center operations in the Philippines and elsewhere have been quarantined and are therefore unable to work—or may soon be unable to do so.
As The Wall Street Journal reported, “Businesses are scrambling for temp workers and using bots to help filter callers who need a live person from those who can be helped in other ways.” In essence, companies are trying to make do with less.
It’s unclear what the outcome of all this spending on A.I. would mean to workers of the future. Unions are increasingly negotiating protections for employees impacted by automation. But the push by businesses to adopt A.I. may be happening faster than labor contracts are being drafted.
Jonathan Vanian
@JonathanVanian
jonathan.vanian@fortune.com
