by Peter A. Arthur-Smith

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”  Warren Bennis, Famed leadership author (1929-2014)

During the early twentieth-century Henry Ford was famously quoted as referring to his production line workers, who literally came from nearby farm fields, as just “pairs of hands.” This was concurrent with his view that he didn’t wish to deal with all the inherent issues associated with people; he just needed their physical output. Today we have literally translated his people metaphor into “clicks.”

The financial and “techie” brethren among us, aided by Wall Street’s numerical drum, just add up their e-commerce fortunes by the number of “clicks.” Commerce can be calculated by all those brusk office emails, texts and websites with their resulting “clicks.”  Note the term “brusk,” since we rarely use friendly salutations, people’s names, or acts of appreciation in our curt electronic messaging…a sad indictment of the computer age and a nod that people’s feelings rarely count anymore!

Worse still, we aim to distill all our activities down to numbers. Something financial executives love and computer techies drool over in order to convert human desires and behavior into bits, bytes and clicks. Providing everything adds up as expected, the matter is concluded, and we can move onto the next task at hand – “click”! How many people were interested? – count the “clicks.”  This is where society is heading from “counting pairs of hands” to “counting the number of clicks.”

» Is it possible to create realistic and exciting visions, if they’re just based on numbers of “clicks”?

To make matters worse or better, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has now come into play. It will now convert people actions into systems and robots that can be corralled as required regardless of people’s circumstances or needs – all in the name of efficiency; our term for squeezing, finding shortcuts and creating threadbare products. I’ve been trying to get IRS attention on an important matter, only to find that their likely AI systems keep churning out standard “postponement” notices –the standard reply – and then “click.”

Increasingly, we’ll have to be ready for this efficiency-play as all our enquiries will just be dealt with by “clicks.” Meanwhile, the people responsible for responding to our calls just have another cup of coffee or take an early lunch break. One client has refused to allow AI into its everyday systems due to concerns about authenticity. Since it deals with the “government,” it’s concerned that using AI will undermine its chances of winning sizeable contracts.

However, we should be prepared to find it even more difficult to reach a customer service person, as so many firms are eyeing AI robots as their means of handling customer interaction –“click.” Some ventures just don’t care. The short-term numbers generated by their efficiency thinking obscure their thoughts about human feelings or needs. No wonder so many people think their human world is falling apart…with purely “clicks.”

What’s even more disconcerting is that our younger generations are swallowing these efficiency moves hook, line and sinker…all in the name of addressing their meager budgets through cost savings. They don’t know any different, as they’ve grown up in a world where “clicks” suffice. They likely shrug their shoulders when a customer question is left unresolved due to robotic responses…there’s no human available to take care of their issues. So gradually that pile-up of unresolved customer issues become a tidal wave. Then what?

It may take a generation or two, before a numbers/clicks rebellion occurs due to people becoming fed-up with such nonsense. AI is being driven by Big Tech and it’s imperative to constantly upgrade generations of their products to feed bottom lines and satisfy a voracious Wall Street appetite for numbers as “clicks”. It’s not necessarily being promoted for the good of society. “Clicks” directly translate into short-term profits!

At some point there could well be a backlash, where people demand human interaction versus just “clicks.” They will bring back human customer service, where they can be met and greeted in Facebook fashion. Companies will start talking directly with customers once more rather than through AI – where sentiments and feelings are lost. Commerce will hopefully come to the conclusion that “people really count” rather than just force-feeding them through electronic systems and “clicks.” Can we really let our world get away with this? When will we start pushing back against all the clicks?