Being a human is hard, being a bot should be easy.

As the world progresses, it is becoming increasingly difficult to be a human. With the rise of automation and artificial intelligence, any jobs that were once done by humans are now being done by machines. Even in our spare time, we are overwhelmed by computers. Where we used to be dominant in creative thinking during a game of chess, the now most unlikely moves are being accused of cheating, embroiling the chess world in the biggest cheating scandal it has seen in years.

But is it really that black and white? Are humans the disposable element in this world? To me, this negative message of the adaptation of automation is at the heart of the misperception of what want to achieve from automation: not to automate the human, but to strengthen the human.

In many ways machines are more efficient than humans, can work 24 hours a day, and analyse data within seconds. But none of these technologies can automate entire jobs, rather just job tasks. Technologies on the factory floor can “think” to a certain extent and emulate certain (simple) types of actions, but they move according to the programme written by the engineer. Through this programme, the human does not need to perform that boring, repetitive task, and therefore does the combined function quicker. Therefore, automation ought to help human beings so that they can get more done by saving time.

While the time savings realised by different companies may be a few minutes or a few hours a day, every second can add up to big savings over a week or a year. As a result, employees and customers save time, have less stress and have more meaningful interactions when they don’t have to worry about tedious processes before, during, or after an interaction.

This may give us humans a chance to reclaim our game of chess…