Automation and the Red Queen Effect

Product vendors and technology advisory firms often talk about accelerating automation. A popular way of presenting advice is in the form of an executive survey - look, all your peers are thinking about this, so you'd better spend some money with us too. Thus the Guardian reports a survey carried out by one of the large consulting firms, which concluded that almost half of company bosses in 45 countries are speeding up plans to automate their businesses. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, many saw this as a great opportunity to push automation further, although more recent commentators have been more sceptical.

Politicians have also bought into this narrative. For example, Barack Obama's farewell presidential address referred to the relentless pace of automation.

For technical change more generally, there is a common belief that things are constantly getting faster. In my previous posts on what is sometimes known as the Red Queen Effect, I have expressed the view that perceptions of technological change often seem to be distorted by proximity and a subjective notion of significance - certain types of recent innovation being regarded as more important and exciting than other or older innovations.

Aaron Benanav takes a similar view.

Our collective sense that the pace of labor-saving technological change is accelerating is an illusion. It’s like the feeling you get when looking out of the window of a train car as it slows down at a station: passing cars on the other side of the tracks appear to speed up. Labor-saving technical change appears to be happening at a faster pace than before only when viewed from across the tracks – that is, from the standpoint of our ever more slow-growing economies. Benanav 2020

Benanav also notes that the automation narrative has been around since the days of Karl Marx.

Visions of automated factories then appeared again in the 1930s, 1950s and 1980s, before their re-emergence in the 2010s. Benanav 2019

Meanwhile, Judy Wajcman argues (referencing Lucy Suchman) that the automation narrative typically relies on overlooking the human labour that is required to keep the computers and robots working efficiently - especially the low-paid work of data coders and content checkers. Further evidence of this has recently been published by Phil Jones.

 

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Bosses speed up automation as virus keeps workers home (Guardian, 30 March 2020)

Is the pandemic accelerating automation? Don’t be so sure (Economist, 19 June 2021) subscription required

Aaron Benanav, Automation and the Future of Work. Part One (New Left Review 119 Sept/Oct 2019) Part Two (New Left Review 120, Nov/Dec 2019)

Aaron Benanav, Automation isn't wiping out jobs. It's that our engine of growth is winding down (Guardian, 23 January 2020)

Phil Jones, Work without the worker - Labour in the age of platform capitalism (Verso, 2021) Extract published as Refugees help power machine learning advances at Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon (Rest of World, 22 September 2021)

Toby McClean, Automation Is Accelerating At The Edge To Improve Workplace Safety, Productivity (Forbes, 5 January 2021) 

Judy Wajcman, Automation: is it really different this time? (British Journal of Sociology, 2017)

Chris Wiltz, Grocery Automation Is Accelerating Thanks to the Coronavirus (Grocery News, 16 April 2020)

The Allure of the Smart Home

What exactly is a smart home, and why would I want to live in one?

I don't think the smart home concept is just about having the latest cool technology or containing some smart stuff. And many of the most commonly discussed examples of smart technology in the home seem to be merely modest improvements on earlier technologies, rather than something entirely new.

Let's look at some smart devices you might have in your home. Programmable thermostats have been available for ages, adjusting heating and/or air conditioning to maintain a comfortable temperature at certain times of day. Modern heating systems can now offer separate controls for each room, and be programmed to reduce your total energy consumption: such systems are typically marketed as intelligent systems. So whatever smart technology is doing in this area looks more like useful improvement than radical change.

Or how about remote control functionality. Remote control devices have been around for a long time, especially for couch potatoes who wished to change TV channels without the effort of walking a few feet across the room. Now we have voice-activated controls, for people who can't even be bothered to search under the cushions for the remote control device. Voice activation may be a bit more technologically sophisticated than pushing buttons, and some artificial intelligence may be required to recognize and interpret the voice commands, but it's basically the same need that is being satisfied here.

Or how about a chatbot to answer your questions? In most cases, the answers aren't hard-wired into the device, but are pulled from some source outside the home. So the chatbot is merely a communication device, as if you had a telephone hotline to Stephen Fry only faster and always available, like several million Stephen Fry clones working in parallel around the clock. (You may choose any other  knowledgeable and witty celebrity if you prefer.)

And the idea that having a chatbot device in your home makes the home itself smart is like thinking that having a smartphone in the pocket of your trousers turns them into smart trousers. Or that having Stephen Fry's phone number attached to your fridge door turns it into a smart fridge.

Of course, a smart system may have multiple components - different classes of device. You might install an intelligent security system, using cameras and other devices, to recognize and admit your children and pets, while keeping the home safe from unwanted visitors.

But surely the concept of smart home means more than just having a number of smart parts or subsystems, it implies that the home itself manifests some intelligence at the whole-system level. The primary requirement seems to be that these smart devices are connected, not to the world outside the home, but to each other, enabling them to orchestrate things. Not just home automation, but seamless home automation.

For example, suppose I make my home responsible for getting me to work on time. My home computer could monitor the traffic reports or disruption on public transport, check with my car whether I needed to allow extra time to refuel, send a message to my alarm clock to wake me up at the optimal time, having also instructed the heating system when to switch the boiler on.

Assuming I do not wish my movements to be known in advance by burglars and kidnappers, all of these messages need to be secure against eavesdropping. It isn't obvious to me why it would be necessary to transmit these messages via servers outside my house. Yes I know it's called the internet of things, but does that mean everything has to go via the internet?

Well yes apparently it does, if we follow the recently announced Connected Home over IP (CHIP) standards, to be developed jointly by Amazon, Apple, Google, and most of the other key players in the smart home market.

Many of those who commented on the Register article raised concerns about encryption. It seems unlikely at this point that the tech giants will be keen on end-end encryption, because surely they are going to want to feed your data into the hungry mouths of their machine learning starlings. So whatever security measures are included in the CHIP standards, they will probably represent a compromise, appearing to take security seriously but not seriously impeding the commercial and strategic interests of the vendors. Smart for them, not necessarily for us.

Sometimes it seems that the people who benefit most from the smart home are not those actually living in these homes but service providers, using your data to keep an eye on you. For example, landlords:

Smart home technology is an alluring proposition for the apartment industry: Provide renters with a home that integrates with and responds to their lifestyle, and ­increase rents, save on energy, and collect useful resident population data in return. Kayla Devon

Internet-connected locks and facial recognition systems have raised privacy concerns among tenants across the country. A sales pitch directed at landlords by a smart-home security company indicates that the technology could help them raise rental prices and potentially get people evicted. Alfred Ng

We should pass a law that would hold smart access companies to the highest possible standard while making certain that their technology is safe, secure and reliable for tenants. Michael McKee

Energy companies have been pushing smart meters and other smart technologies, supposedly to help you reduce your energy bills, but also to get involved in other aspects of your life. For example, Constellation promotes the benefits of smart home technology for maintaining the independence of the elderly, while Karen Jorden mentions the possibility of remote surveillance by family members living elsewhere.

Smart technology that recognizes patterns, such as the morning coffee-making routine mentioned earlier, could come in handy when those patterns are broken, perhaps alerting grown children that something may be amiss with an elderly parent. Karen Jordan

As Ashlee Clark Thompson points out, this kind of remote surveillance can benefit the children as well as the parents, providing peace of mind as well as reducing the need for physical visits to check up. 

And doubtless the energy companies have other ideas as well. According to Ross Clark

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks has proposed a system in which it will be able to turn off certain devices in our homes ... when the supply of electricity is too small to meet demand.

Finally, Ian Dunt grumbled that his smart thermostat was like having a secret flatmate.

It's really not clear to me why I paid extra to be undermined by my own heating.

— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) November 16, 2020

and got dozens of Tweets in reply, from people with similar frustrations.

So we keep coming back to the fundamental ethical question: Whom shall the smart home serve?

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Footnote May 2021

Some legal advice for landlords just in from US law firm Orrick: "Tenant data may be an attractive source of new revenue, but landlords should proceed with caution" (13 May 2021). They also note that "New York City Council has enacted a Tenant Data Privacy Act that is poised to enhance privacy protections in multifamily buildings in the city" (27 May 2021).

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Dieter Bohn, Situation: there are too many competing smart home standards. Surely a new one will fix it, right? (The Verge, 19 Dec 2019)

Ross Clark, The critics of smart meters were right all along (Telegraph, 19 September 2020) HT @tprstly

Constellation, Smart Homes Allow the Aging to Maintain Independence (published 20 July 2018 updated 13 August 2018)

Kayla Devon, The Lure of the Smart Apartment (MFE, 31 March 2016)

Karen Jordan, Set It And Forget It: The Lure Of Smart Apartments (Forbes, 28 August 2017)

Kieren McCarthy, The IoT wars are over, maybe? Amazon, Apple, Google give up on smart-home domination dreams, agree to develop common standards (The Register, 18 Dec 2019)

Michael McKee, Your Landlord Could Know That You’re Not at Home Right Now (New York Times, 17 December 2019)

Alfred Ng, Smart home tech can help evict renters, surveillance company tells landlords (CNET, 25 October 2019)

Ashlee Clark Thompson, Persuading your older parents to take the smart home leap (CNET, 11 April 2017)

Shannon Yavorsky and David Curtis, Unlocking the Value of Tenant Data (Orrick 13 May 2021), Home Alone? New York City Enacts Tenant Data Privacy Act ( Orrick 27 May 2021) HT @christinayiotis

Related posts: Understanding the Value Chain of the Internet of Things (June 2015), Defeating the Device Paradigm (Oct 2015), Hidden Functionality (February 2019), Towards Chatbot Ethics - Whom does the chatbot serve? (May 2019), Driverless cars - Whom does the technology serve? (May 2019), The Road Less Travelled - Whom does the algorithm serve? (June 2019)

 

 Updated 16 November 2020, 29 May 2021

RPA - Real Value or Painful Experimentation?

In May 2017, Fran Karamouzis of Gartner stated that "96% of clients are getting real value from RPA" (Robotic Process Automation). But by October/November 2018, RPA was declared to be at the top of the Gartner "hype cycle", also known as the Peak of Inflated Expectations.

So from a peak of inflated expectations we should not be surprised to see RPA now entering a trough of disillusionment, with surveys showing significant levels of user dissatisfaction. Phil Fersht of HfS explains this in terms that will largely be familiar from previous technological innovations.

• The over-hyping of how "easy" this is
• Lack of real experiences being shared publicly
• Huge translation issues between business and IT
• Obsession with "numbers of bots deployed" versus quality of outcomes
• Failure of the "Big iron" ERP vendors and the digital juggernauts to embrace RPA 

"You can't focus on a tools-first approach to anything." adds @jpmorgenthal

There are some generic models and patterns of technology adoption and diffusion that are largely independent of the specific technology in question. When Everett Rogers and his colleagues did the original research on the adoption of new technology by farmers in the 1950s, it made sense to identify a spectrum of attitudes, with "innovators" and "early adopters" at one end, and with "late adopters" or "laggards" at the other end. Clearly some people can be attracted by a plausible story of future potential, while others need to see convincing evidence that an innovation has already succeeded elsewhere.

Diffusion of Innovations (Source: Wikipedia)

Obviously adoption by organizations is a slightly more complicated matter than adoption by individual farmers, but we can find a similar spread of attitudes within a single large organization. There may be some limited funding to carry out early trials of selected technologies (what Fersht describes as "sometimes painful experimentation"), but in the absence of positive results it gets progressively harder to justify continued funding. Opposition from elsewhere in the organization comes not only from people who are generally sceptical about technology adoption, but also from people who wish to direct the available resources towards some even newer and sexier technology. The "pioneers" have moved on to something else, and the "settlers" aren't yet ready to settle. There is a discontinuity in the adoption curve, which Geoffrey Moore calls "crossing the chasm".

Note: The terms "pioneers" and "settlers" refers to the trimodal approach. See my post Beyond Bimodal (May 2016).

But as Fersht indicates, there are some specific challenges for RPA in particular. Although it's supposed to be about process automation, some of the use cases I've seen are simply doing localized application patching, using robots to perform adhoc swivel-chair integration. Not even paving the cow-paths, but paving the workarounds. Tool vendors such as KOFAX recommend specific robotic types for different patching requirements. The problem with this patchwork approach to automation is that while each patch may make sense in isolation, the overall architecture progressively becomes more complicated.

There is a common view of process optimization that suggests you concentrate on fixing the bottlenecks, as if the rest of the process can look after itself, and this view has been adopted by many people in the RPA world. For example Ayshwarya Venkataraman, who describes herself on Linked-In as a technology evangelist, asserts that "process optimization can be easily achieved by automating some tasks in a process".

But fixing a bottleneck in one place often exposes a bottleneck somewhere else. Moreover, complicated workflow solutions may be subject to Braess's paradox, which says that under certain circumstances adding capacity to a network can actually slow it down. So you really need to understand the whole end-to-end process (or system-of-systems).

And there's an ethical point here as well. Human-computer processes need to be designed not only for efficiency and reliability but also for job satisfaction. The robots should be configured to serve the people, not just taking over the easily-automated tasks and leaving the human with a fragmented and incoherent job serving the robots.

And the more bots you've got (the more bot licences you've bought), the challenge shifts from getting each bot to work properly to combining large numbers of bots in a meaningful and coordinated way.  Adding a single robotic patch to an existing process may deliver short-term benefits, but how are users supposed to mobilize and combine hundreds of bots in a coherent and flexible manner, to deliver real lasting enterprise-scale value? Ravi Ramamurthy believes that a rich ecosystem of interoperable robots will enable a proliferation of automation - but we aren't quite there yet.

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Phil Fersht, Gartner: 96% of customers are getting real value from RPA? Really? (HfS 23 May 2017), With 44% dissatisfaction, it's time to get real about the struggles of RPA 1.0 (HfS, 31 July 2019)

Geoffrey Moore, Crossing the Chasm (1991)

Susan Moore, Gartner Says Worldwide Robotic Process Automation Software Market Grew 63% in 2018 (Gartner, 24 June 2019)

Ravi Ramamurthy, Is Robotic Automation just a patchwork? (6 December 2015)

Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (First published 1962, 5th edition 2003)

Daniel Schmidt, 4 Indispensable Types of Robots (and How to Use Them) (KOFAX Blog, 10 April 2018)

Alex Seran, More than Hype: Real Value of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (Huron, October 2018)

Sony Shetty, Gartner Says Worldwide Spending on Robotic Process Automation Software to Reach $680 Million in 2018 (Gartner, 13 November 2018)

Ayshwarya Venkataraman, How Robotic Process Automation Renounces Swivel Chair Automation with a Digital Workforce (Aspire Systems, 5 June 2018)


Wikipedia: Braess's Paradox, Diffusion of Innovations, Technology Adoption Lifecycle


Related posts: Process Automation and Intelligence (August 2019), Automation Ethics (August 2019)