GPT Party 3.0. Dmitry Karpov “Differences between robots and people: lessons of labor automation” GPT Party 3.0, the largest Russian-language networking event dedicated to artificial intelligence, took place in Silicon Valley on March 9-10. More than 450 people gathered at Plug and Play to meet leading experts, entrepreneurs, and investors, discuss the latest trends in artificial intelligence, and gain practical knowledge. At GPT Party, Dmitry Karpov, serial entrepreneur and founder of ElectroNeek Robotics, spoke on the topic “Differences between robots and people: lessons from labor automation.” Dmitry talked about how artificial intelligence affects business and why it is important to take a balanced approach to automation. Dmitry Karpov, Founder of ElectroNeek Robotics The story of how we came to the business of manufacturing robots for companies “I chose this topic for my speech for a reason. It has a special meaning for me, because this issue almost cost me my career. I am a physicist by education, originally from the Moscow region. Having arrived in the USA 15 years ago, I was going to work in laser electronics. However, fate brought me together with the creation of a small company for the automation of marketing in social networks. This company was quickly acquired by an American enterprise. This experience inspired me to create bridges between Russia and the USA, and I decided to devote myself to this field. I went to study at Georgetown University, where I prepared for a career in international relations. However, in 2014, I realized that my interests lay in a different direction. That’s how I ended up at EY as an innovation consultant. In 2014, one of my colleagues sent me a presentation that changed my understanding of automation. It described a new type of software that allowed the creation of algorithms for the automation of robots in computer systems. This moment struck me as I saw the potential in automating many processes. With this technology, companies could outsource tasks to robots that worked 24/7 without errors. This led to a revolution in outsourcing, where tasks previously outsourced to employees in the Philippines were now handled by automated systems. Three years later, there was a small room in India that had 20,000 robots doing the work of 5,000 employees. These robots handled financial transactions between systems. However, in 2018, our company faced a problem: there were 20,000 more employees in the systems than there should be, and this led to metrics failures. The question arose for me: how to distinguish robots from people in the systems? And I realized that from a technical point of view, this is almost impossible. During this period, I continued to work on startups, and in 2018, my future business partner Sergey and I began traveling around the United States with a suitcase containing silicone bodies, virtual reality glasses, and plastic surgical instruments. Our goal was to solve the problem of the high cost of cadavers for training surgeons. That year, we met the current head of OpenAI, Sam Altmon, who made it clear to us that our idea with a corpse was a failure. That evening, Sergey and I went to a bar, where I shared my thoughts that it seemed like the future belonged to automation and robotics. Upon returning to Russia, he founded the first consulting company specializing in the implementation of robots in the banking sector. He invited me to become his partner, and together we developed a website where we presented automation solutions. Our marketplace lacked inexpensive solutions, so we came up with “Elektronika”. This attracted a lot of customers, and in three months we had orders from pharmacies, construction companies, summer cottages, etc. We decided to develop this idea and raised $20 million to develop software for small businesses. Now our robots work in 50 countries and automate about 20 million tasks per month.” The scale of changes in the labor market with the advent of artificial intelligence “One of the most interesting places to see how artificial intelligence and robots affect business is the freelance exchange. Let’s look at how the trends on the Upwork platform have changed since the advent of ChatGPT. Everything related to writing and translation has gone into the red, while there are certain areas, such as user support and video production, where everything is going in a positive direction, but this is more the exception. When you order services from a freelancer, it doesn’t really matter whether the work is done by a person or a robot. With the development of artificial intelligence, agents have begun to appear who automatically respond to tasks on the platform, place bids and even win projects. Upwork has banned any automation within the platform since November last year and requires that all products created using artificial intelligence be clearly marked. Let’s look at the dynamics of ChatGPT usage six months ago and now. Which sector is leading and where is the largest number of layoffs now? In the tech sector. On the one hand, we are in the center of artificial intelligence in San Francisco, where everything is bubbling and developing. On the other hand, the highest unemployment among highly qualified specialists is now right here. I was told that for one vacancy in the tech sector, there are more than 100 applications per day. This is due to the fact that companies working in this sector do not outsource. Now, when there are massive layoffs, everyone openly says that this is happening because of artificial intelligence. When I worked on the implementation of automation in the largest banks, all the CEOs were most afraid of becoming those who replaced human labor with robots. However, now the situation has changed: company executives are already openly announcing layoffs, citing artificial intelligence as the main reason. This speaks to a change in the CEO mentality: for them, there is no difference anymore between the work done by robots and people.” Trusting Humans to Create Customer Love, and Robots to Do the Rest “I was really interested in the topic of future autonomous companies. Sam Altman was asked when there would be a $1 billion company made up of one person, and he said this year. I decided to conduct 50 interviews with CEOs of companies that had at least 50 employees. I tried to find out where exactly artificial intelligence frees up human resources by asking the question: “Where are you proud of your investments in AI automation?” The answers I received were very revealing: lead generation, sales research, creating marketing content, and customer support. However, what really interested me were the answers to the question of where attempts to implement AI have failed. It turned out that in any area where there was an attempt to use generative AI to communicate with customers or prospects, the results were unsatisfactory. Generative AI is not able to create the emotional connection that is necessary to successfully close a deal or attract a client. It can generate interesting content that attracts attention, but it does not light a spark in the heart of a person that motivates him to buy. So my point is that the main difference between a human and a robot is love and empathy. This is what customers value in business – namely love for the company and its product. Here, humans are needed because only they can create this empathy from the depths of their soul or mind. Robots are not capable of this. Among the companies I interviewed, there was one that stood out. It was much smaller than the others, with only 12 people. The reason I chose to interview them was because they make a lot of money. They are the market leader in vegan dog food in San Francisco. Each employee brings them in about $1,000,000 a year, which is more than most supply chain businesses in the US. Their automation systems work as seamlessly as the parts of a machine. The CEO of this company says this about automation: “For me, the main benefit of automation is that I can send the entire company on vacation and go on vacation myself. And everything will work: advertising will bring in customers, deals will be made, food will be delivered to customers. But if we don’t come back in a week, everything will falter. This happens for two reasons: planning and business development. These are the things that people should be doing. I invest further so that the vacation can be two weeks long.” That’s the kind of thinking that I think is worth embracing. It’s the thinking that the company of the future is not just not hiring people because they want to save money, but creating conditions for employees to work happily, so that they can do strategic planning and business development, and have more time to relax.”
