As industrial automatics, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) steadily improve, the advances in technology will have a deep impact in the economy, lifestyles and society. What could keep the human workforce busy in the near future, when machines will replace most of our jobs? How much longer will we need to have a job in order to pay our bills?
At the recent Rise conference in Hong Kong, Girish Mathrubootham, CEO on customer support service at Freshdesk and Amit Singh, Google for Work president, shared their vision on the future of workplace and productivity.
According to Singh, desktop apps are already on their way out. Few people still work on their desktops, but we experience an increasing trend towards getting more done on mobile devices. In the years to come, we will be spending even more of our working time on mobile devices, away from our desk.
Mathrubootham added some insights from his company's helpdesk service. According to him, today companies want to be able to access their customer support email from wherever their workforce is. Traditional software used to chain employees to their desk and for security reasons requires using a VPN when the employees are on the move. But modern apps offer the convenience of working from anywhere. They are driving the shift from software that is focused on a desktop to cloud-based solutions and mobile apps.
According to Singh, designing new work apps for the future is focused more on collaboration for increased productivity rather than on individual contributions. The millennial generation's way of thinking and the new sharing economy have come together to create a "new collaborate work culture." People are working now on common projects formed in different locations, messaging each other and editing the same files together, all in one place. Today's business applications are more about transparency and real-time teamwork rather than individual effort.
Certain aspects of email are still useful in our work, as a method of communication, including keeping business correspondence on record and searchability. However, even if email won't just vanish in the near future, it is expected to lose in importance and to adapt and evolve in accordance to increased needs for more streamlined and faster collaboration.
Singh explained that people are even sending more on email now than before and "there's actually more email now." But the way email is being used at work is changing. Today, "it's more about real-time communication" and a step in that direction is inbox by Gmail, according to Singh.
Since the cloud is a lot more secure than the traditional security infrastructure of companies, the migration to cloud in the business environment will continue in the years to come. Singh gave the example of Google's own secure system, which was built entirely from scratch, from data centers to platforms. According to Singh, the transition to cloud-based infrastructure will happen "because of security and not in spite of it."
Mathrubootham, at his turn, trusts large-scale cloud-based systems and compared them with a bank where your money are safer than in your own home. According to him, cloud companies are not selling just software, but they are in the business of selling data security.
Singh predicts that in the next five years AI-based assistants will increase their role in ensuring human productivity. Google search giant acquired DeepMind last year, an AI company focused in machine learning projects. This illustrates the interest of Google to boost its AI efforts.
At his turn, Mathrubootham expressed his conviction that, since the content has moved steadily onto mobile devices and into the cloud, the tools for content creation cannot remain tied anymore to desktops. By 2020, most of the companies will move away from traditional computing to more portable and personal solutions.
