One of the most terrifying things about artificial intelligence is them taking over humans’ jobs. They pose a serious threat to human employment, but the fact that they offer a return of investment and increased productivity to companies cannot be disregarded.
That’s why a Japanese insurance firm Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance is making the shift towards the IBM’s Watson Explorer AI and letting go of its 34 employees to do payout calculations to policyholders.
Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance thinks that employing the AI will gain them an increased productivity up to 30%. It also believes that a return of investment will be visible in less than two years. An annual savings of more than $1.2M is expected from the robot.
Well it should, as the company spent more than $1.7M after the system was installed in early of January 2017. The AI has an annual maintenance cost of about $130,000.
Of course the news is bad for the more than 30 employees that will be laid off and made redundant by the end of March.
The company is making a wise move with the system based on the Watson Explorer. IBM explains that their AI system possesses “cognitive technology that can think like a human”, enabling it to “analyse and interpret all of your data, including unstructured text, images, audio and video”.
One of the major Japan newspaper, Mainichi Shimbun, reiterates that the technology can read tens of thousands of medical certificates and even consider the length of hospital stays, medical histories and any surgical procedures before calculating payouts.
In the end, however, a human staff will still have to approve the sum calculated by the AI. Nonetheless it shortens the calculations of Fukoku Mutual’s payouts which reportedly totalled 132,000 during the current financial year.
This is not the first time that a Watson-based system is used by a Japanese insurance company. Dai-Ichi Life Insurance has introduced one to assess payments but without the laying off. Japan Post Insurance is now looking at the technology as well.
Another AI application to be experimented in Japan in February is in politics.
It will be used by the economy, trade and industry ministry as a tool, on a trial basis, to help civil servants draft answers for ministers during cabinet meetings and parliamentary sessions. It aims to cut the time of bureaucrats writing answers for ministers.
Once proven to be a success, the AI might just be adopted by other government agencies.
Whenever smart machines are being developed, employees, especially in Japan, should take heed. There’s a 2015 report by the Nomura Research Institute that by 2035, nearly half of all jobs in Japan could already be performed by robots. And insurance companies are leading the way.
Source: The Guardian
