One of the ideas we’re going to hear about a lot over the next few years is the Turing Test. It describes the point at which a machine’s behaviour becomes indistinguishable from a human’s, so that a typical person is unable to work out if he or she is interacting with a machine or an individual. This matters for lots of reasons; functional, philosophical and ethical.
While it is the kicking off point for dramas such as Westworld (pictured) and Humans that explore our new relationship with machines, we’re most likely to encounter it at first with the automation of mundane things like customer service and information. Indeed, its creator Alan Turing first defined it as an issue of language and communication. Of course, somebody getting annoyed at an automated help desk won’t make drama as appealing as the idea of a robot theme park going wrong in murderous ways, but that’s life.
We are already seeing the advent of managers who will assume responsibility for weaving together the strands of building, technology and culture
Something akin to the Turing Test is about to become important in the workplace. The erosion of the demarcations between the people responsible for the built, technological and cultural workplace means that it is less important whether you are talking to somebody with a background in facilities management, HR or IT. Indeed it will become impossible to tell, and irrelevant anyway.
That is not to say that this won’t create challenges but they will not be of any particular interest to the people who occupy the workplace in any of its facets. Just as the person chatting to a legal help desk won’t know or care whether they are interacting with a bot or a bod, so it will become irrelevant which profession makes decisions about the workplace.
In the end, the outcome is likely to be a new discipline, based on an amalgam of the various professions, and we are already seeing the advent of managers who will assume responsibility for weaving the strands of building, technology and culture to create a cohesive infrastructure for people to work within. The people who do the job are already amongst us and we cannot tell and we do not care what’s on their CV.
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The challenges related to this will be of most interest to the various professional sectors involved. The current profession that seems likely to inject most of the DNA into any new order is HR. Anecdotally, I understand that HR managers are now increasingly likely to make decisions about the built environment that were once the sole preserve of FM. The reasons for this are clearly that they are closer to the main challenges facing the modern workplace and they are already closer to the boardroom. Theirs is arguably the most natural fit. There are facilities managers who operate at this level, but they are in the minority.