Artificial intelligence replaces workers in Japanese company

The employees laid off are obviously none too happy about being replaced by AI but, with Japan’s aging population, there might be fewer and fewer people in the future to be available for the labor force. Image: INQUIRER.net stock photo

One of the fears revolving around the development of artificial intelligence rises from the possibility that it may eventually replace humans as a workforce. This fear has now become a reality for a number of employees working for a Japanese company.

To be exact, 34 employees were laid off by Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance and replaced by an artificial intelligence system that calculates payouts to policyholders, reports The Guardian.

The system is based on IBM’s Watson Explorer which the firm believes would increase productivity by 30 percent and help yield a return on its investment in less than two years.

Thanks to the Watson Explorer’s cognitive systems, the company will now be able to read thousands of medical certificates while factoring in length of hospital stay, medical history and surgical procedures to calculate payouts. Of course, all of these will still have to be approved by a member of the staff.

With Japan’s prowess in the realm of robotics, having an AI system takeover human work is, if anything, somewhat inevitable. The Nomura Research Institute filed a report that nearly all jobs in Japan could be done by robots by 2035. Alfred Bayle