Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines

by Thomas H. Davenport, Julia Kirby

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062438614
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/24/2016
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Thomas H. Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor in Management and Information Technology at Babson College, the cofounder of the International Institute for Analytics, a fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and a senior advisor to Deloitte Analytics. He teaches analytics and big data in executive programs at Babson, Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan School, and Boston University, and is the author or coauthor of seventeen books.

Julia Kirby is a senior editor at Harvard University Press and a contributing editor for Harvard Business Review. She is the coauthor of Standing on the Sun: How the Explosion of Capitalism Abroad Will Change Business Everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

A fine call to action in the face of uncertainty. — Financial Times

The world the authors describe may be unsettling, but it is a world that we would all recognize and will likely live to see. — Wall Street Journal

This badly needed and well-researched book makes a convincing and inspiring case that the challenges ahead could be a catalyst to help us achieve far more of our potential and, in the process, become much more human. It is a powerful call to action and provides a roadmap that we ignore at our peril. It’s not enough to read this book; we need to act on it, now! — John Hagel, Chairman of the Deloitte Center for the Edge

The winners in the analytics revolution won’t simply replace human decision-making, they will augment it. The essential guide to this management revolution is Davenport and Kirby’s remarkable new book. — Erik Brynjolfsson, Professor at MIT and co-author of The Second Machine Age

Individual knowledge workers, corporate executives, and government leaders all need to read this book. Smart machines are going to change our work and our lives, and the sooner we begin to augment their capabilities, the more successful our economy will be. Davenport and Kirby are correct: people will augment these tools, rather than be automated by them. The sooner you learn about augmentation, the more successful you’ll be in the labor markets of the future. — Manoj Saxena, Former General Manager, IBM Watson

From the Publisher

This badly needed and well-researched book makes a convincing and inspiring case that the challenges ahead could be a catalyst to help us achieve far more of our potential and, in the process, become much more human. It is a powerful call to action and provides a roadmap that we ignore at our peril. It’s not enough to read this book; we need to act on it, now!

John Hagel

The winners in the analytics revolution won’t simply replace human decision-making, they will augment it. The essential guide to this management revolution is Davenport and Kirby’s remarkable new book.

Erik Brynjolfsson

Individual knowledge workers, corporate executives, and government leaders all need to read this book. Smart machines are going to change our work and our lives, and the sooner we begin to augment their capabilities, the more successful our economy will be. Davenport and Kirby are correct: people will augment these tools, rather than be automated by them. The sooner you learn about augmentation, the more successful you’ll be in the labor markets of the future.

Manoj Saxena

The world the authors describe may be unsettling, but it is a world that we would all recognize and will likely live to see.

Wall Street Journal

A fine call to action in the face of uncertainty.

Financial Times

A fine call to action in the face of uncertainty.

Financial Times

The world the authors describe may be unsettling, but it is a world that we would all recognize and will likely live to see.

Wall Street Journal

05/01/2016
Davenport (President's Distinguished Professor of Information Technology & Management, Babson Coll., MA; Big Data at Work) and Kirby (contributing editor, Harvard Business Review; coauthor, Standing on the Sun) here focus on knowledge workers (though an important chapter looks at the role of managers), defined as those "whose primary tasks involve the manipulation of knowledge and information." The authors claim that new and foreseeable developments in information technology will allow for more decision making—when contingencies are known and there are clear processes—to be handled by computers, and that staff should be preparing for this now if they are to remain employed. Far from pessimistic, Davenport and Kirby claim that data can be used to enhance the value of output by both computers and humans and to foster innovation. They call this "augmentation," which they contrast with the concept of automation, a method that aims to cut costs by eliminating positions. Five different strategies to maintain employability are proposed. Each is distinct and appropriate for various audiences. All are discussed in depth and at some length. Throughout, the authors provide examples that strike a practical note. VERDICT This book will appeal primarily to knowledge workers concerned about their futures in the industry, secondarily to those seeking to enhance their careers, and also to managers.—Shmuel Ben-Gad, Gelman Lib., George Washington Univ., Washington, DC

Library Journal