The Real Technological Job Killer

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, Owen Thomas
Photo: Salesforce is hiring in San Francisco. But how will its inventions affect employment elsewhere? (Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle)

Forget self-driving cars or warehouse robots. Systems that can understand human speech are where automation will replace large numbers of jobs.

Where the jobs are — and aren’t

Once a year, a sense of feigned helplessness descends on San Francisco, as its residents look at the cuddly, cartoonish park that has wrapped itself around Moscone Center and elbow their neighbors: “Hey, do you have any idea what Salesforce does?” Cue the nyuk nyuk nyk.

It’s 2019, I am sorry to inform you, and the whole gosh-what-is-Salesforce-anyway routine is getting kind of tired. You’ve had two decades to figure this out. But OK, sure, let’s do this.

Businesses need software to track their customers and sales and other things, and Salesforce provides that software, and it does it over the internet instead of with code that’s installed on customer-owned servers because we are not Neanderthals, and this is not that hard to grasp, people.

If you’re going to take one thing away from this year’s Dreamforce conference, it’s this: Voice automation is coming.

If you’ve used an Amazon Echo or other devices with Alexa built in, you’re familiar with the idea of a machine that listens to a request and responds. Salesforce’s answer to Alexa is Einstein. Einstein has historically been limited to Salesforce’s own apps, but on Tuesday, Salesforce announced Einstein would be available to developers, too.

That’s a big deal, because it means anyone building on top of Salesforce — and in the business world, that’s a lot of companies — will be able to add routines that listen to voice requests and look up information or update records accordingly, without having to hire artificial intelligence or natural language processing experts on staff. (Look at the job listings for those specialties and you’ll get an idea for how hotly in demand they are — and good luck hiring them if you’re not Salesforce, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple or Facebook.)

Now think about how many business interactions involve voice. Companies are always trying to cut their customer service costs. Salesforce’s Einstein Voice Skills is one answer. Google made a similar program called Contact Center AI widely available last week, VentureBeat noted.

Millions of people work in call centers. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s steady, and it often takes place in cities far from where you’ll find a Salesforce Tower.

If Einstein or Alexa or Google can answer questions better than a human, it’s a guarantee that businesses will put voice bots to work.

I know what Marc Benioff would say here: Automation will create more jobs than it destroys. He’s more worried about finding space for all the people he wants to hire in San Francisco; Salesforce is already the city’s largest private employer. And work building voice apps may well be more creative and fulfilling than answering irate customer calls. Let the bots take the abuse!

But we need to think carefully about where jobs will be lost and where they’ll be added as we make these technological transitions. Salesforce is doing plenty; I won’t recite the various training and apprenticeship programs they’ve created, because frankly I’ve lost count. But will all its customers be equally thoughtful? Or will they just add bots, cut costs and count their money?

— Owen Thomas, othomas@sfchronicle.com

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/The-real-technological-job-killer