December 20188Future of Automation in InsuranceBy Matthew Marino, AVP, UnumIn the time that has passed from when I was asked to share my views on automation I've had a surprising shift in my thinking. In my day job, I am responsible for our operational effectiveness program which includes all things automation (RPA currently in broad use, NLP, ML, and AI in development for pilots and capability building). In the evening, I like many of you, study to stay on top of emerging trends most recently as a student taking part in MIT's program "Artificial Intelligence: Implications for business strategy program".What had I been thinking and where am I now at? Originally, I was impressed by the power and promise of these new capabilities. Even pessimistic views, while fearing the end of mankind as we know it, shared a view that massive transformation was in the very near future. I was more and more bought into how big of a change and more importantly how fast this change would become reality powered by better machines that could be taught to do so many things. Sharing a view that we need to be mindful of how roles evolve to best utilize the human skills and how to redeploy talent to these areas. What has changed for me is not the potential of these tools so much, but rather my view on how rapidly we will be willing to adapt to leverage these tools to the extent they are capable. Put simply, if we look at recent comments made by visionaries such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, AI may be one of the scariest new technologies to be introduced in recent history and when combining that with an industry that is by its very nature often risk averse, one can take pause IN MY OPINION
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