7.18.2006
Straight out of Manna
Maybe We Should Leave That Up to the Computer
From the article: "Do you think your high-paid managers really know best? A Dutch sociology professor has doubts. The professor, Chris Snijders of the Eindhoven University of Technology, has been studying the routine decisions that managers make, and is convinced that computer models, by and large, can do a better job of it. He even issued a challenge late last year to any company willing to pit its humans against his algorithms."
What Manna says:
From the article: "Do you think your high-paid managers really know best? A Dutch sociology professor has doubts. The professor, Chris Snijders of the Eindhoven University of Technology, has been studying the routine decisions that managers make, and is convinced that computer models, by and large, can do a better job of it. He even issued a challenge late last year to any company willing to pit its humans against his algorithms."
What Manna says:
- In addition, Burger-G saved a ton of money. In 2010, Burger-G had just over 1,000 stores in the United States. Manna worked so well that Burger-G deployed it nationwide in 2011. By 2012 Burger-G had cut more than 3,000 of its higher-paid store employees -- mostly assistant managers and managers. That one change saved the company nearly $100 million per year, and all that money came straight to the bottom line for the restaurant chain. Shareholders were ecstatic. Mr. G gave himself another big raise to celebrate. In addition, Manna had optimized store staffing and had gotten a significant productivity boost out of the employees in the store. That saved another $150 million. $250 million made a huge difference in the fast food industry.
So, the first real wave of robots did not replace all the factory workers as everyone imagined. The robots replaced middle management and significantly improved the performance of minimum wage employees. All of the fast food chains watched the Burger-G experiment with Manna closely, and by 2012 they started installing Manna systems as well. By 2014 or so, nearly every business in America that had a significant pool of minimum-wage employees was installing Manna software or something similar. They had to do it in order to compete.
In other words, Manna spread through the American corporate landscape like wildfire. And my dad was right. It was when all of these new Manna systems began talking to each other that things started to get uncomfortable.
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There really wouldn't be a competitive reason for all of the systems to communicate with each other. There will be many competing systems. There will be Japanese authored systems, Korean systems, American systems... you get the point.
# posted by 
: 6:31 PM, July 19, 2006
: 6:31 PM, July 19, 2006
And I'm not talking about languages either... I'm talking about companies who make these systems...
# posted by : 6:31 PM, July 19, 2006
: 6:31 PM, July 19, 2006
It is a bit late and I haven't read the whole Manna chapter but I always thought that Google vs Yahoo already shows that machines can do better than humans. Google uses AI algorithms to index the web while Yahoo initially depended on humans to edit its index. Google won in no time by returning better results to users' queries. So, there you have it, machines 1 Humans 0. Anyways, like all new technologies, robotics will not eliminate humans from the workforce but instead the type of jobs we do will be different. It has happened before and it will happen again :-)
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# posted by : 3:41 AM, July 23, 2006
: 3:41 AM, July 23, 2006
"There will be many competing systems, but won't communicate?"
Doubtful. They WILL communicate because there is great value in doing so. Nobody will buy a system that cannot communicate with others. The competition will be best features, performance and intra-communication will be a big one. Kinda like connecting to the Internet now....try marketing a computer that doesn't talk to anybody elses!
Marshall agrees: nothing will eliminate all humans. Marshall is simply stating that a huge percentage of humans will be replaced...not *all* of them, but almost all of them (85%-99.9%).
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Doubtful. They WILL communicate because there is great value in doing so. Nobody will buy a system that cannot communicate with others. The competition will be best features, performance and intra-communication will be a big one. Kinda like connecting to the Internet now....try marketing a computer that doesn't talk to anybody elses!
Marshall agrees: nothing will eliminate all humans. Marshall is simply stating that a huge percentage of humans will be replaced...not *all* of them, but almost all of them (85%-99.9%).
# posted by : 6:42 PM, July 23, 2006
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