It seems obvious to me Derek.
Given that the vast majority of people do not have the intellectual capacity to acquire tactical skillsets (let alone strategic ones), I can't see the model of "strategic only" becoming a reality. That leaves a very large number - probably the vast majority of people totally outside of whatever the new "system" becomes. Any new "social system" must find a place for them - and the notion of a world of totally free leisure seems unrealistic to me.
Personally I am convinced that there is a real human need for personal interaction, and hence there will always be a place for a real person at the interface

In reply to Ray:

Thanks Ray.

That's why education (in all its forms), mentoring, training need to be at the heart of all of this. Capacity to learn is equal parts willingness and opportunity. 

Personal interaction or developing your ability to do this well is itself a tactical skill choice. I'm sure we've all been on the receiving end of some good customer service experiences for example, and some terrible ones. The tactical thing is to do it so well that people prefer to have you than a machine.

Um.

Well, it rather depends on how far into the future one is peering. I certainly expect that operational human input will still be required en masse for the next 20-50 years, but to a dwindling degree. Tactical roles in modern industries will be automated at a faster pace, though.

The distinction is often not well understood, so I'll put it in terms of a traditional milk delivery service.

1.Tactical - this is the milkman, actually putting the milk onto your doorstep. It is also the cow, producing them milk in the first place. Cows are a tactical asset that is difficult (but not impossible) for technology to replicate. Milkmen, by contrast, are a tactical asset that is easy (conceptually, at least) to replicate.

2. Operational - this is the delivery manager, who coordinates the routes, checks deliveries are running as planned and responds to problems. It is also the milk shed manager who watches the cows in, checks them for health and ensures the machinery is working as planned. These roles will eventually be phased out because, as the tactical side is automated, the work needed to fulfil these roles will reduce until the remaining duties can be passed upwards.

3. Strategic - this is the business owner, coordinating purchases, contracts, marketing, recruitment and cashflow. It is also the farmer, doing much the same thing. These roles will still be done by humans less because they can't be automated and more because, ultimately, a business has to be owned by *someone*.

But if we look at the kind of horizon where we begin to imagine operational roles being at least partly-automated, then we're talking about social changes that are hard to imagine, now.

I actually find myself remembering Judge Dredd comics, where 90% of the population of Megacity One was unemployed because of robot automation. In response, they developed increasingly bizarre hobbies and occupations and they were paid benefits based on the assessed social value of their hobbies. Judge Dredd is, of course, a work of satire. But in the light of the modern "gig economy" and increasing talk of Universal Basic Income guarantees, it's hard not to see it a prescient.

Going back to the milk delivery picture, there would once have been professional milkers involved where now there are machines. There would once have been horse-drawn delivery carts, needing stablers and ostlers to maintain them. These have gone. And, of course, the supermarkets have introduced new models of purchasing that have almost driven milk delivery to extinction (although, thankfully, greater awareness of supermarket purchasing practices, concern for single-use plastic containers and a general attitude that "buying local" is a good thing has seen many recover and begin, once more, to be a common sight in the morning). So automation remains a two-way street, but the traffic tends to be going more in one direction than the other.

In reply to Robey:

In some areas of life I see a backlash and services which could be automated or have been automated are reverting to being delivered by a human being.

In the 19th century, you'd go into the butcher's and the grocer's to give them your order and a delivery boy would bring your shopping to your home. I haven't researched this, but I think that practice died out some time after WWII. However, in some branches of Waitrose they now have a service where you can leave your shopping for them to carry home for you. If you order from Ocado, they will text you to let you know the name of your delivery driver and part of their business offering is that your delivery driver will carry your shopping through into your kitchen. A drone couldn't do that. I expect a delivery robot could be developed that could do it (negotiate gates and doorsteps) and we already have the technology for self-driving vehicles (although we still require an awake and alert human being with their hands on the wheel) but Ocado is stressing personal service - the service would still work without telling you your driver's name is Alan.

There's a move to revitialise our High Streets by encouraging small, independent shops who offer personal service and expertise - Robey's "going local". Much of this is at a premium price, but that simply proves that when people have the disposable income and are offered a choice, they opt for the human touch.

Automated restaurants have existed for a long time. I have just googled Automat expecting to discover this was an American chain dating from the 1950s but found out the first automat opened in Berlin in the 19th Century. Then there's Yo Sushi with it's conveyor belt, but however long the technology or systems have been around to cut out wait staff, the majority of restaurants and cafes still rely on human beings to take your order and then carry the food from the kitchen to your table.

Just because you could doesn't mean you will.

In reply to Elizabeth Divver:

A factor that's often underestimated in assessments of the future of automation is the up-front costs of most automated systems, because they mostly need to be bespoke, whereas humans are the very definition of generalists. I can pull pretty much any human off a shelf and get it to do a tactical job. The up-front costs are surprisingly low, even if the reliability isn't always what one would hope for.

If I'm a small-scale start-up trying to keep its costs down, then a generalist human unit is a better short-term investment than a high-capital bespoke robot. However, once we move beyond the start-up phase and the company has capital to invest, then putting that money into automation is a smart move.

This leads to a different SF vision - the one of HG Wells, in which the world separates into morlocks and eloi. The morlocks drift from small enterprise to small enterprise, never doing anything but minimum wage tactical work and never getting to stay long enough to learn enough to make the vast leap to the ranks of the eloi: investors and owners, managing portfolios of enterprises, only the riskiest of which have room for the toiling morlocks. The dark side of the gig economy?

In reply to Robey:

It's a long time since I read The Time Machine, but I thought the Eloi, who started out as the leisured class, had degenerated into food for the Morlocks.

In reply to Elizabeth Divver:

To move away from SF and back to the point, putting money into automation is only the smart move if it doesn't damage the perceived quality of your product. If I were a house-bound elderly person with sufficient money to choose a more expensive product because I liked it better, I might opt to have my groceries delivered by a nice young man who will carry the bags in and chat to me while he puts my veg in the fridge than the most efficient automated delivery service.

Why do businesses still have receptionists and switchboard operators to receive phone calls? Because people hate automated systems. You can automate the back end all you like, but if you automate the customer interface you can expect some of the generalist human units who are your customers who are asked to interact with an automated system to take their custom elsewhere, or be in an irritated state when they do get through to another generalist unit, or dodge the system by keeping silent when the system asks them to please speak clearly after the tone, or selecting the first option on each picklist to get through as quickly as possible. If there's a way to misuse or otherwise foil an automated system, I back generalist units to find it.

In reply to Robey:

Loving the illustrations.

It's precisely that assessment of costs and the decision-making on how you deploy limited resources (including yourself) that is tactical. The off-the-shelf jobs are part of what I think of as operational. Tactics is the arrangement of the operational to enable you to deliver on your strategy.

In reply to Elizabeth Divver:

Absolutely. Your earlier point about a backlash is something we always see in cycles. The rise of e-readers for example has now given way to the return of high street bookstores. Junk once thrown away is now vintage. Even the old horse and cart are still around, just put to different use. I've paid €30 as a tourist to ride a horse-drawn carriage for a few minutes - the car may have replaced the horse, but a cab couldn't earn that. What advancing tech/automation can do is force us to think about where we can add value.

In reply to Derek Tong:

As I understood it, you began by saying that you question the accepted view that human labour will be strategic and creative. I am agreeing with you.

In reply to Elizabeth Divver:

Thanks Elizabeth. What I was trying to say is whether there has been such a heavy focus on the strategic/creative that the tactical (figuring out where we can add value, how best to deploy resources, how do I make the most of a tough situation) is being neglected (the article equated "technical" work to tactical work which is the main part I disagree with). Repurposing the horse and cart from regular means of transport to offering pleasure cruises would have required some creativity, but it's based on a tactical assessment and implementation of what resources you have against what wants/needs are out in the market, and what you need to keep going. 

I agree that it is not helpful to differentiate humans as strategists/creative beings and robots as technical / tactical beings. These dualisms don’t get to the essence of what is distinctive either about a robot/AI or about a person.

One of the problems with much of today’s anxious discussions about automation is the way robots/AI are mystified. Digitised machines really aren’t that different to any other form of automation. Computers in whatever shape they come are indisputably much more efficient than humans in processing large quantities of data. The HBR article quoted above cites the National Institute of Standards predicting that ‘machine learning can improve production capacity by up to 20% and reduce raw materials waste by 4%’. This is the sort of economic benefit that has accompanied all previous forms of successful automation.

For more than 250 years we have had automation and at the same time job losses and job creation. One of the big differences today is that we have a big discussion about only one half of this process. As the HBR article says it is easy to find reports that predict the loss of between 5 and 10 million jobs in Britain by 2020. We fear the mass job loss when we should be more concerned that we’re not doing well in creating new good quality jobs.

Fear of losing jobs is real because we do not see the new sectors and new industries being created. There is not a lot of confidence about the future because we aren’t seeing either business or the government investing enough in the innovations that could bring about quality jobs for people losing the ones to automation. As Derek implies, achieving that is very much a task for humans, requiring a mix of both strategic thinking and tactical implementation.

In reply to Para:

Spot on Para, the Frankenstein complex has been around for longer than Ned Ludd; not only is it strongly ingrained in the human psychen, but it is also readlily manipulated for create media buzz

Job losses due to automation was discussed on the BBC's breakfast show this morning. One worrying opinion put forward was that the North of England and the Midlands would be disproportionately affected: www.bbc.co.uk/.../uk-england-42810898

In reply to Elizabeth Divver:

More on that in the Guardian too: www.theguardian.com/.../automation-to-take-1-in-3-jobs-in-uks-northern-centres-report-finds