What kind of change will digital employees bring when they quietly appear?

With the development of information technology, especially the continuous iteration and updating of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality, various industries have begun to explore the application scenarios of virtual digital humans.

With the development of information technology, especially the continuous iteration and updating of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality, various industries have begun to explore the application scenarios of virtual digital humans. For example, Baixin Bank has launched its first virtual digital employee AIYA, Jiangnan Rural Commercial Bank has launched VTM digital employees, and several banks have also experimented with the metaverse by launching virtual digital humans. At the end of last year, the news that "Cui Xiaopan," a digital employee of Vanke Group, won the 2021 Vanke Headquarters Best Newcomer Award, aroused great social attention.

In the context of deepening digital transformation and rapid development of the digital economy, the deep integration of digital technology with the real economy and social governance is accelerating the transformation and reconstruction of economic development and governance models. What exactly are digital employees? How should we coexist harmoniously with them in the future? How should we actively respond to the economic theories, management models, and self-awareness changes brought about by the integration of data elements and digital humans into production? These are new issues that currently require high attention.

What exactly are digital employees?

According to the IDC Future Scape: Global Artificial Intelligence Market 2021 Forecast report, "By 2024, 45% of repetitive work tasks will be automated or enhanced through the use of 'digital employees' supported by AI, robots, and robotic process automation (RPA)From a conceptual definition perspective, digital employees are highly anthropomorphic new types of workers created through the deep integration and application of multiple technologies such as "AI+RPA+data+robots".

Digital employees are facing the digital transformation of enterprises, and the practical benefits they can bring have been valued by various institutions. Deloitte has demonstrated the practicality of "digital employees" through a research report - a company with a revenue of $20 billion and 50000 employees can generate over $30 million in annual profits if 20% of their work is automated using RPA. Imagine a future work environment where digital employees can mimic human work patterns and automatically execute simple, repetitive, tedious, and rule-based business processes on PC and mobile devices. This can free ordinary employees from the mundane and repetitive tasks and enable them to engage in more valuable and creative work. While reducing labor costs for the company, it can also stimulate employees' creativity, innovation, and potential, better serving the growth of the enterprise.

But there are many concerns about this seemingly valuable novelty. Why is that so? The four awakenings of human cognition mentioned by futurist Kevin Kelly in "Out of Control" are worth referring to. He proposed that the fourth one is the awakening of machine intelligence cognition, which is the era we are ushering in where biology and machines are intertwined. Both organisms and machines are actually evolutionary entities. As a result, humanity will usher in a completely 'out of control' world, and this uncertainty has caused anxiety and fear.

So, will the artificial intelligence possessed by digital employees truly threaten humanity? Many film and television works believe that this type of digital human with artificial intelligence will destroy humanity in the future, mainly as a result of humans shaping digital humans to compete with humans and generate unreasonable fear. This type of fear is certainly a warning against the uncontrolled development of technology, but it may hinder the progress of human cognition and increase the possibility of the emergence of harmful artificial intelligence, which needs to be changed. What people need to do now is to establish the foundation for good artificial intelligence, shape it into a more humane form, and steadily promote the evolution of good artificial intelligence towards super artificial intelligence. If done well, it will be benign and controllable.

未来我们该如何与数字员工共处？

未来，人机耦合将会成为趋势。为了更好地培育和释放这种新型集体潜力，需要积极面对数字员工加入职场的新变化，发挥科技进步带来的新红利，加快实现治理方式的新变革。

第一，利用数字员工新技术拓宽工作范围，提高质量效率。未来的岗位设计会将多个传统岗位的工作与职责相结合，利用数字技术、数字员工拓宽工作范围。同时将人类和机器各自擅长之处相结合，提升工作成效业绩。以浦发银行的数字员工为例，它承担着对客服务、运营提效及内部管理等职责，近年来已形成10多种数字员工岗位，包括智能客服、智能外呼、财富规划师、AI培训、AI营销员、数字质检员、文档审核员、AI大堂经理等角色。这些数字员工岗位大大扩展了银行服务的覆盖面，有效简化了客户挑选理财产品的过程，提高了银行对客服务的质量和效率。

第二，促进人机协同，加速数字化转型。以往人类与计算机的交互是由人类向计算机发出指令来工作；未来，随着人工智能技术进一步成熟，计算机将变得更加智能，可以自主完成部分工作，成为人类重要助手。人类与计算机交互、融合、共创，提升人的潜能，释放更多能力，创造更大价值。比如，科大讯飞的数字员工已经可以在招聘、财务、办公等专业领域协同企业员工高效完成企业业务。如文档翻译，每一万字大致需要人工翻译4小时，而人机协同只需要24分钟，效率可提升9倍。

第三，创建“混合型”人机团队，形成新型集体智能力量。人机搭配组队的“混合型”工作团队将成为企业人力资源发展的主流。有调研表明，90%以上的受访中国企业认同，管理一支人与计算机混合的员工队伍并确保二者间的协作对企业高效运营很重要，仅凭单独的力量——人或机器都无法推动企业未来数十年的发展。

数字时代的职场，人不仅要和自己的“同类”打交道，还要具备和“异类”——虚拟数字员工协作共事的认知和技能，适应和迎接“混合型”人机团队的新型工作方式已成为一种趋势。对企业和公共部门管理者而言，根据业务任务和人机各自优势，积极构建包括数字员工在内的高效人机团队，持续推动人有智能和人工智能一起思考、共同进化，引领人机共生，共同应对未来挑战，并确保技术发展始终受到科技伦理的约束，成为重要任务。我们期盼，人类发明创造的技术，能够朝着帮助人类向更有尊严、更加自由的方向发展，协助人类一起迈向智慧水平的新高度和文明发展的新阶段。

Information source: Intelligent Manufacturing