Andrew McAfee

Blog Link:  https://hbr.org/2014/07/the-kind-of-work-humans-still-do-better-than-robots/

As the technology advances rapidly, will human workers eventually be replaced by robots? What kind of work do humans still do better than robots? According to Andrew McAfee, at least for now, humans exceed robots in fields that requires innovation, aesthetic and emotional response.In his blog, McAfee also expresses an implicit concern that as technology races ahead, how people continue to add value in production.

This is a thoroughly inspired article which leads me to have a further thought on the relationship between humans and robots in business world. I do not think the fact that robots are gradually replacing human labor is something to be worried about. Instead, this trend will bring positive impact in manufacturing industry. In the long run, the cost of high-tech machines will decrease and the cost of labor will increase. Using robots in factories enables companies to lower cost to produce the same amount of products, which maximizes their profits. Meanwhile, this also benefits the society as a whole. I concede that the trend of robots replacing human labor may lead to a cyclical unemployment. However, in the long run, human workers will eventually switch to the third industry to seek new opportunities. In this sense, popularizing robots in manufacturing industry actually frees people to do work that we are innately good at, such as creative, innovative and interactive tasks. Therefore, there is no need to worry that robots may replace humans in some domains. After all, we just treat robots as tools to help companies to be more efficient.

To develop a successful business strategy, the management should not only carefully analyze internal resources and industry factors, but also have a great insight into the external macro-economic factors. And social factor is one of the most important aspects. According to a report from Vancouver Sun, the Northern Gateway project (an oil transmission project run by Enbridge) has encountered a strong resistance by six first nations. And the Nak’azdli , one of the six first nations, has swore that they will not let the pipeline enter their territory. It is not a surprise to see first nation’s opposition against this project. A great concern is that the oil spill will severely affect the fishing activity which is an important source of food and income for the community. In addition, the traditional territory has profound meaning for aboriginal groups. It is part of their culture, history and lifestyle. They don’t want it to be destroyed by those steel tubes. These social factors will pose some significant impacts on this oil transmission business that the management cannot ignore. First, it will directly affect the profit. To persuade the first nations to sign on the equity sharing agreement, Enbridge has to pay considerable amount of money to first nations for compensation, which actually increases the cost and reduce the profit. Another important thing to consider is that it may have long-term effects on the business. If the pipeline were built, as the environmental degradation become more and more serious, there would be more and more complaints about the project. This might influence the political factors that may have negative feedback on the business. For example, to eliminate the unrest among the first nations, the government will probably impose more tax on energy companies like Enbridge to compensate first nations.

Reference:

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/There+will+pipeline/10122968/story.html

Trent Abraham’s post’s link:  https://blogs.ubc.ca/tabraham/2014/09/10/protecting-your-privacy-on-the-new-facebook/

While I was reading blogs from my classmates, Trent’s post “Protect Your Privacy on the New Facebook” caught my eyes. In his post, Trent concisely summarizes an article whose topic is the privacy updates implemented by facebook. And he claims that it is ethical of facebook to use users’ information to make profit under the law. I would like to bring a different point of view on this issue. I agree with him on the point that there is nothing wrong with using users’s information to make profit. However, in my view, whether it is ethical depends on how far facebook goes on this track. If facebook use the privacy information just to help companies to allocate advertisements so that the commercials could be more effective and more targeted, then it will be totally fine. But if it uses the information to help other companies manipulate consumers’ behavior (which they have already had the capacity to do it), there will be a serious problem. Since this will be actually controlling consumers — a type of aggressive selling, which is totally different from normal commercials. This seems like a paranoid imagination. But according to the assumption that  companies will do whatever they take to maximize their profit, I think the concern is reasonable and necessary.

The time when there is no laws to regulate is the time when companies should consider business ethics. Unfortunately, improvement of laws can never keep up with development of technology. So it is especially important for IT firms to take ethics into consideration so that the society as a whole could be better off.

Once again, GM is recalling its vehicles. 524000 cars has been called back due to a defect about airbags. Recently, another big automaker Toyota also recalled a substantial amount of cars, which is resulted from a safety problem as well. In recent years, it seems that the big scale of car recalling has become a common phenomenon in auto industry. It looks like the quality of their products is decreasing. However, this is not the case. According to Craig Trudell, Yuki Hagiwara and Ma Jie, three main factors lie behind this increase of recalls: more complex technology, heightened regulatory scrutiny and increasing use of standardized parts that can be commonly used in different models. (“Toyota-GM Seen Ushering Era of Big Recalls”) I totally agree with them. And as the carmakers are continuously creating new models and the technology is never perfect, I believe that recalls will be likely still inevitable in the future. So the question now is what those automakers could do to minimize the loss of recalls. In my view, the most important thing is to keep good communication with customers. Clearly telling customers what happened and what they should do helps companies eliminate customers’ feeling of doubt and worries. Thus it can keep firms from losing their “points of parity”, such as safety and reliability. And sometimes, carmakers might be able to improve their reputations by having an effective communication with customers because it could be a good chance to convey the company’s values to customers.

web links:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-09/toyota-gm-seen-ushering-in-era-of-big-recalls-as-scrutiny-mounts.html

http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/03/autos/gm-recall/index.html?iid=HP_Highlight