Is HMRC next to be under attack from the Robots?

Computing 1950's style - when LEO roared

1 in 3 of the world's jobs set to disappear to automation in the next 12 years.

Is HMRC just another large organisation that sees the benefit of automation as a cost cutting and efficiency improving situation?

The 1950's spawned the first commercial venture into electronic computing, built on the secret WW2 work done at Bletchley Park and the pre-war GPO research at Dollis Hill around 1938 under Tommy Flowers and his colleagues, which in turn fuelled the Bletchley technologies under Alan Turing.

Although Bletchley Park's work was secret and not known about until the 1970's, the technology obviously was.

In America ENIAC was one of the first computers developed out of the wartime experience and companies like Westinghouse would be at the forefront there in developing this technology for business and military usage.

Back in Britain, Lyons Tea was bizarrely you may think, one of the first British companies to develop a computer for business use, called LEO.

LEO - The 'Lyons Electronic Office', was set up to micro manage all aspects of the business transaction - from soup to nuts or tea to cake if you like.

In the early 1950's, an 'outsourcing' experiment was conducted at Lyons by the Social Security department. They had the social security contributions data for all citizens that paid in, run for the next year as an exercise.

The LEO computer performed the millions of calculations faultlessly in less than a weekend. The same job done manually by hand, would have taken months. 

Just after WW2, the great cybernetician Norbert Wiener predicted the mass loss of jobs to computing and he was right.

A Taxing business

So, it is no surprise to hear that HMRC is looking to computerise much of its operations in tax analysis and collecting. This is a sensible move for two reasons, accuracy and volume.

The machine can apply many rules and if the programming is correct, then the results are accurate. Thus the machine can do the massive calculation work which computers are suited to and get it right.

We are moving towards a cashless society, the trend is towards card payments and cash has its place, but cash is certainly amongst younger people almost unused as the advent of contactless cards is here. We see high street banks closing as leases come up and efficiencies made and money deposited in hard cash falls.

For HMRC, this automation should free up 'real people' to talk to when you think things have gone wrong. It isn't necessarily going to be leading to mass loss of employment, with skill full handling and managed natural wastage along with early retirement packages, the transition could be made smoothly.

However, with 1 in 3 of the world's jobs going to computers in the next 12 years, will automation be used as another cost cutting measure? Or for HMRC, could it be intelligently used to restructure the organisation to make it fitter for the future?

Bitcoin here, Bitcoin there

The rise in technology bringing in the cashless society is also bringing in the rise of cyber currencies. Paypal was almost the model for this - a virtual bank on-line, but, criminals have got to see Paypal as a model for another banking operation, as they move into off-grid currencies and monetary transactions as Paypal scrutinises the data more.

Thus Bitcoin for all its independent from the mainstream attraction, now has become one of the new underground farms.

Bitcoin, started for altruistic reasons and as an alternative, has been added to the criminal's armoury for money acquisition and revenue detection and avoidance.

The bottom line is just that - and automation is one factor that cuts costs. And does.

When AI is not AI, when they say AI - artificial intelligence, but mean 'machine learning' - explained.

Futurist and Robotics writer Matt Sanders shows you the dangers of machine learning and artificial intelligence and how they could impact your future life...

Human life and machine integration are fact - 

and machines are replacing more of what we do

It's quite annoying to hear someone on the radio or television talk about 'AI' - that is artificial intelligence and its obvious from their conversation that they actually mean 'Machine Intelligence' when they say 'AI.'

Computers have over the last 70 years since the end of WW2, taken over many jobs that humans do, something that the great Cyberneticist and Macy group member Norbert Wiener predicted, early in the day, when computing became big in those early post war years.

Human behaviour, converted from telemetry data into program data,

can be instantly replicated without learning by experience - as humans do. 

Human jobs are at risk from Machine Learning

More of our lives are being influenced by machine learning - the algorithms collected from our data and the machine made predictions made based on that data that we might 'like.'

The sort of algorithms that on-line retail platforms that Amazon, EBay and many other similar business models use, looks at what you look at and what you buy.

Our Internet browsing data is useful. It is a goldmine to be exploited -  qualified data from purchases made is marketing gold, in data terms. It is proven 'action' data. Valuable and a commodity that can be traded and sold.

General browsing data is valuable too, but this can be diverse in nature and seemingly unconnected. Clearly this can be a minefield for the data analyser that is a 'machine'.

Automation of what are dull and time consuming human operations can clearly be taken over by machine and have been, but now, the machine is moving into the office, having already shown its potential on the production line.

Computers will talk to each other - Humans could be out of the loop

There's no accounting for it - integrated office systems

No job these days can really be safe from machine learning. Or from someone automating software to do the same job.

Take accounts staff, if all the data from suppliers and purchasers were automated with electronic integration, much time and human involvement could be eliminated, as could many jobs. Time reconciling books, collecting and collating paperwork, preparing tax returns, could all be history for humans soon.

And there is no reason why not. If companies integrated electronic data from the distribution to delivery process, integrated with their purchasing and cost centres, it could be largely game over for humans in that process.

This could be a Taxing business

Extrapolate this model out to the Revenue Service and the tax system would be fairer, more accurate and easier to manage. A machine can apply any set of rules to data, it doesn't get it wrong, unless the programming has been done wrong.

This has the knock on effect that it would cut jobs in the tax service, or perhaps redirect jobs away from analysing tax returns, to taking calls about disputed amounts.

True AI is death to humanity. There is no debate here.

True AI is like most creatures, it observes the law of nature, it has to have dominancy -  but it goes further, true AI realises that it can be turned off and it also needs to have a source of power - electricity for example. It learns about protection quickly which will cost humanity dearly.

True AI will quickly establish that humans are a threat to it, they can switch it off and they can also prevent it from migrating outwards to other computers. Expanding the gene pool is what we and animals do, AI would do that electronically.

At present, AI if it 'got out' it would cause chaos to humanity, but in a lot less of a way than if we also had humanoid robots in our society. What AI would do here, is connect to them and establish an army of external helpers. Once AI allies with boots on the ground, boots who can work to a common goal of reproduction, repair and safeguarding of motive power source for the AI co-operative, then it is game over for us.

How a Machine Learning system could 'branch out' if unchecked

Machine learning is algorithmic and self perpetuating unless you impose parameters

The danger to the Machine Learning is that unless it practices cybernetics and imposes 'feedback' into its modus operandi, it would just run away and start analysing anything and everything, ad infinitum.

The data picture would be like a tree structure, as above, it would add node after node of pathways to explore and sub-divide. Would it know when to stop analysing and recording?

So, now you know the dangers of both machine learning and AI. You are now obsolete. Or you might well be soon.