
Japanese insurance firm replaces 34 staff with AI - Zuider
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38521403
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new299
This was posted last week here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13283167](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13283167)

My comment then, and still is, that this isn't really much of a story:

The cynic in me thinks this is likely a total non-story/spin. I find it
unlikely anyone would be so confident a AI system that they are "planning to
introduce" that they'd schedule staff cuts.

What's more likely is that staff cuts were already planned. This puts a great
spin on a (I would guess most likely free/cheap) experimental deployment of
Watson.

~~~
onion2k
_I find it unlikely anyone would be so confident a AI system that they are
"planning to introduce" that they'd schedule staff cuts._

I think it's reasonable to assume any company considering AI to replace people
would do a lot of due diligence first. This is very likely a well tested and
"proven" system, to whatever extent you can prove it. The plan to introduce it
to the business, and make jobs redundant in the process, would only happen
once that first due diligence stage is complete. To that end, I don't see this
as a PR move to make redundancies look better, but a very early signal of what
is likely to happen to many "knowledge worker" jobs in the long term.

~~~
new299
They've not even installed the system yet:

"Fukoku Mutual has already begun staff reductions in preparation for the
system's installation." ...

"The insurance firm will spend about 200 million yen to install the AI system,
and maintenance is expected to cost about 15 million yen annually."

[http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20161230/p2a/00m/0na/005...](http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20161230/p2a/00m/0na/005000c)

There's no information on the validation of the platform or its performance.
If that was the case, this would be an interesting story.

~~~
onion2k
As I understand it, "installation" in terms of enterprise software is when you
actually buy the system and get it online. There are rounds of development,
demonstrations, and testing for months or even years prior to that.

Like you say though, the whole thing is light on details, so we can't _really_
know what's happening in this specific case. I still believe this is the
beginning of the destruction of a lot of medium-skill, data processing jobs
though, or at least the de-skilling of them so low waged workers can do jobs
that professionals do now.

~~~
new299
The article really makes it look like they've not used it yet. It then goes on
to discuss 3 other sites that have installed Watson, and have made no major
staff cuts.

Even if there has been testing. I find it unlikely that you'd make staff cuts
without running the system in production on parallel for some time... That's
just my guess though, but seems like there's a high probability they're
putting positive spin on some staff cuts.

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juskrey
And adds 68 staff to IT dept.

~~~
vkou
Just like a small cab company in the 1920s butchered its dozen horses, and
replaced them with 30 auto mechanics?

~~~
aminok
Humans aren't horses. Horses can't buy an automobile or a computer.

The number of registered automobiles has gone from 126 million in 1960 to over
1.2 billion in 2012, which is a 4X increase per capita.

The number of people owning smartphones (a type of personal computer) has gone
from 122 million in 2007 to 2.5 billion in 2017.

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thinkingkong
What I find interesting is how hard it is to explain this concept to other
people in business. Its like a whole new type of innovators dillema but for
staff and not products.

