Robots ‘set to take over marketing’

Marketers and other professionals have been warned their roles will soon be taken over by robots, although the humble tea lady’s job will be safe as houses, according to one Government minister.
Universities minister David Willetts made the claim at an event at the think tank Policy Exchange, entitled “The Rise of the Robots”, in which he said the rise of technology would lead to “dramatic changes in the pattern of work” although not to a reduction in the number of jobs as a whole.
Willetts claimed professions which require “quite high level cognitive” skills are more likely to be replaced by robots than ones that involve manual tasks, such as making a cup of tea for an old lady.
He added: “You kind of intuitively think that beating a grand master at chess must be a harder challenge, but in this world… giving a cup of tea to a little old lady is a bigger IT robotics challenge than playing chess.
“Quite a lot of stuff that we think is really rather sophisticated cognitive work is also routine and can be replaced by systems. In areas like accountancy, clearly [there will be] very significant changes – for several years we have had computer generated financial reports.
For marketers, the rise of programmatic technologies – such as real-time bidding and event triggers – is already having a major impact on their roles, although many are at a loss to explain how they work, according to recent research from the Internet Advertising Bureau.
Willetts claims coincide with the publication of an Associated Press analysis of employment data from 20 countries, which showed jobs that had disappeared in the past four years tended to be in well-paid positions in traditionally middle-class careers.
Recent research has shown three in 10 Britons believe that they will soon be replaced in their job by a robot.

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