Essay: Assessing Smarter Machines' Impact On Mass Unemployment And Anxiety.

You have been assigned as part of a project management team in a fast growing “Knowledge Management Consultancy” company in Prague. Your manager, Miss. Fearwek is very interested in you planning and delivering a “Professional researched report” that will be focusing on an area that has often arisen and generated concern amongst the employees of the company and it relates to the following quote from the Economist Magazine (Special report, June 2016), that some of them have read:

“…After many false starts, artificial intelligence has taken off. Will it cause mass unemployment or even destroy mankind?...”

You are to follow the suggested tasks below and deliver the relevant project deadlines as set below.


Tasks:

In order to complete the project by the due date, you will need to create and submit the following work:

1) Project Plan

Create a project plan for the gathering of both secondary and primary data (academic resources and interviews) for your project – the plan should involve your project aims and objective, a project management plan that covers the aspects of cost, scope, time, quality, communication, risk and resources required for its completion.

2) Project Realisation

Once your plan has been submitted, you must then complete the research in order to write up the final project. The project should include discussion of the scenario, aim and objectives, methods utilized and their appropriateness and limitations, data analysis and findings to generate final conclusions on the impact of artificial intelligence on future employment.

3) Self-Reflection

The final element of your submission must be a self-reflection examining your experience running the project and lessons derived from that experience. This must be partly based on your weekly submission of the learning log.
 

Overview of the Project

The title of the project under consideration is Automation and Anxiety. This project aims at getting the answer of a significant question, which includes whether the smarter machines are capable of creating mass unemployment. The project plan is divided into a number of sections that gives the overview of the project and the different project processes. This is a legitimate question as different researchers prove that machines provide a more accurate result in analyzing different complex tasks in comparison to the human analysis. Therefore the major aim of this project is to find the answer of this question that is raised with the increasing use of the smart machines across the globe (The Economist 2018). The project plan gives an overview of the Aims, Objectives and Research Question, project methodology, and the different project management processes associated with this project. The aims, objectives and the research questions identified for this project is discussed in the following section.

This project will shed light on one of the most significant question of the recent times, which is whether the smarter machines will result in mass unemployment. This is a major issue of recent times and the excessive use of machines has resulted in engagement of the less human resources with the different complex task of the organization. This can possible make most of the jobs of human vulnerable (The Economist 2018). Researchers prove that America has a higher risk of potential automation that can increase the unemployment issues in the country. Similar is the cases of other countries across the world. With the increasing use of the artificial intelligence, which is now trained in more commercial applications as well, many are wondering that whether machines can do the work of the human better than them. This field is increasingly evaluated since the prospect of creating economic unease around the world increases. This project will evaluate how much correctness is there in the speculations that say that smarter machines are capable of creating mass unemployment across the globe. This is a leading problem since the idea of the manual work that can be carried out by the machines is already familiar and is widely used by the different business organization. This is mainly because smarter machines can perform a particular work in very less time and with greater perfection in comparison with the task being completed by human labor. Machines already are capable of performing the different manual labor and are able to execute routine cognitive tasks as well (Cleden 2017). Therefore it becomes essential and important to evaluate whether the smarter machines will be the cause of mass unemployment in near future. 

Aims, Objectives, and Research Question

The aims, objectives and the research questions that are identified for the project are discussed in the following sections.

Aim

The main aim of this project is to evaluate the correctness of one of the most significant problems of recent time that states that smart machines are capable of causing a mass unemployment in near future. With the increasing use of machines in performing the vital works of the organization, it is definitely a cause of worry as machines can definitely perform the work of human much better than them. This significantly reduces the need of the engaging human resources for performing certain essential tasks of the organization. Furthermore, a machine can easily perform the work of a human in much less time and therefore employing machines to do a particular work proves to be a very cost effective option to the organization.

This project aims at researching the use and contribution of smarter machines in easier implementation of the different works of the organization, in order to evaluate whether the smarter machines will be the reason of mass unemployment in near future.

Objectives

The objectives of implementing this project are as follows- 

Objective 1: To identify whether smarter machines will be a reason of mass employment?

This is the main objective of this project as it the area of focus of the project is to identify whether the smart machines will be the reason of mass unemployment across the globe. Therefore, fulfilling this objective will provide a solution to identified aim of the project.

Objective 2: To analyze whether smarter machines are really capable of providing error free implementation of any task.

If the smart machines become the main reason of mass unemployment, it would definitely be because of the fact that the smarter machines provide a more accurate result or output to a given input. This objective aims at analyzing whether the smart machines are really capable of error free implementation of any task.

Objective 3: To understand whether smarter machines are really capable of performing all the work of human and cause mass unemployment

Smarter machines can cause mass unemployment only if they are capable of performing all the works of human. This objective tries to understand whether the smart machines are really capable of the performing all the works associated with human labor. 

Objective 4: To understand why are smarter machines being adopted by many business organizations resulting in the crisis?

Background of the Problem

Another major cause of the predicted unemployment will be because the business organizations are choosing machines over human labor. Therefore, a major objective of this project is to understand why business organizations are adopting smarter machines for the daily business processes and operations.

Objectives and Research Questions

Secondary Data Needs

(i). Secondary data need 1: Academic Resources.

Academic resources are an important secondary data need of this project since it will help in understanding the main problem associated with project. These resources will be used in gaining a clear understanding of the research problems and finalizing the process of this research project. Academic resources can be found in form of text books. One of the major limitations of this type of data is that knowledge gained from it is very limited. The major strategy of overcoming this limitation is to consult other secondary data resources for this project.

(ii). Secondary data need 2: Research Journals

This secondary data is needed in order to research about automation that is the cause of anxiety as it is capable of creating a mass unemployment in near future (Neuman and Robson 2014). This data will be used to answer the various research questions identified in the previous section. This data can be found by researching different scholarly articles and journals. One limitation is that, some of these data might lack the authenticity. In order to eliminate this limitation, this project will be considering the use of primary data as well.

(iii). Secondary data need 3: Government Reports

This data will be needed in order to understand the real picture of the unemployment. This will provide the actual data of unemployment in a country which will be very useful for the research (Silverman 2016). This data can be collected from the government’s websites. One of the major limitations associated with this data is that there might be a problem in having an access to this data. Review of the journal and other data sources can however eliminate this limitation. 

Primary Data Needs and Methods

(i). Method 1: Interview

This method is suitable for this task because the project aims at analyzing whether the smart machines will be the cause of unemployment in future (Hair et al. 2015). The proposed sampling method will be interviewing 50 officials from the different organizations that make use of smart machines in their work. The data collected will be analyzed based on the research questions identified.

Lack of Manpower

(ii). Method 2:  Survey

Apart from interview, online survey will be done as well in order to collect the necessary data of the research. The proposed sampling method for this data will be surveying 150 workers from different organization in order to understand the level up to which smart machines reduces their work load. The collected data will be analyzed and evaluated on basis of the identified research questions.

Risk Assessment

The risks that this project might face are represented below (McNeil, Frey and Embrechts 2015)-

The above table represents the major risks associated with this project and recommends their mitigation plans as well.

Contingency Plan 

The contingency plan for proper implementation of this project and the elimination of these risk associated with the project includes proper identification of the resource requirements and implementation of the project according to the schedule (Loosemore et al. 2012). This will ensure that that no schedule and budget risk are faced during project implementation.

Work Breakdown Structure

The work breakdown structure of this project is represented below (Larson and Gray 2013)-

Figure 1: Representing the Work Breakdown Structure

(Source: Created by author)

Timeline (Gantt chart) 

The schedule of the project is represented in the following table (Burke 2013)-

Critical Path Analysis

The critical path diagram is represented in the figure below. The work activities marked in red represents the critical path of the project (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017).

Consideration of Costs

The cost associated with the major deliverables or resources that is required to be completed in the project is represented in the table below (Heagney 2016)-

References

Bryman, A. and Bell, E., 2015. Business research methods. Oxford University Press, USA.

Burke, R., 2013. Project management: planning and control techniques. New Jersey, USA.

Cleden, D., 2017. Managing project uncertainty. Routledge.

Hair Jr, J.F., Wolfinbarger, M., Money, A.H., Samouel, P. and Page, M.J., 2015. Essentials of business research methods. Routledge.

Heagney, J., 2016. Fundamentals of project management. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.

Hewson, C. and Stewart, D.W., 2016. Internet research methods. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H.R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Kerzner, H., 2017. Project management metrics, KPIs, and dashboards: a guide to measuring and monitoring project performance. John Wiley & Sons.

Larson, E.W. and Gray, C., 2013. Project management: The managerial process with MS project. McGraw-Hill.

Loosemore, M., Raftery, J., Reilly, C. and Higgon, D., 2012. Risk management in projects. Routledge.

McNeil, A.J., Frey, R. and Embrechts, P., 2015. Quantitative risk management: Concepts, techniques and tools. Princeton university press.

Neuman, W.L. and Robson, K., 2014. Basics of social research. Pearson Canada.

Silverman, D. ed., 2016. Qualitative research. Sage.

The Economist. 2018. Automation and anxiety. [online] Available at: https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21700758-will-smarter-machines-cause-mass-unemployment-automation-and-anxiety [Accessed 23 Apr. 2018].