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Are VBA automation jobs taken over by Robotics and Bots

ThrottleWorks

Excel Ninja
Hi,

Just heard a conversation regarding this at my office.

I am not paranoid about this change, however I am totally unaware about these development in VBA automation fields.

Can experts here kindly share their views about the same.
Can VBA automations jobs get taken over by Robotics ?

My guess was Robotics is aimed at designing complex tools, systems.

Kindly advise. Have a nice weekend. :)

PS - Please check the link below regarding automating administrator jobs.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...-keynes-britains-first-robotic-office-manage/
 
I don't think we're at that point, at least in next 20 years. Part of the human aspect is the ability to be creative and come up with solutions. Now, might be that humans feed the ideas (somehow?) to a robot, who does the actual writing of code, but that wouldn't be eliminating the job imo.

An analogy is that you could probably go through a list of XL functions and teach them to an AI. Having the ability to get creative and combine those function, such as we've seen in the formula challenges of Formula foresencis, is where you start to add in creativity.
 
Hi Luke ,

The fundamental issue is that millions of people who work in offices are doing run-of-the-mill jobs , and these are prime candidates for automation.

In fact , even coding , which is such a complex activity can be automated :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_programming

Also at risk are executive jobs which involve decision making ; after all , chess is the ultimate decision making challenge , and if computers can outwit everyone but the top 10 players in the world , then the kind of decisions that most managers take , can easily be automated.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article...es-90-of-humans-with-robots-production-soars/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_out_(manufacturing)

Narayan
 
@ThrottleWorks
Sorry I am not expert but if you allow me to join this interesting discussion I heard that in Japan they have robots that are run by Excel VBA. (with Excel Interface)
So if these robots become mainstream, VBA/Excel developers will be at advantage, and they will be ruling the robots, hence the world...:)
 
Even with best AI. I don't foresee it over coming human logic (or lack there of) in our life time. Can you imagine? Robots trying to convince your boss that they need to learn PivotTable ;)
 
I would like to share my experience. I do feel, automating VBA automation might be possible but not sure about it's feasibility.

For example, driver less cars is a possibility but looks un-feasible to me if you consider our real world road scenario.

My work involves, taking requirements from multiple users and automating these requirements.

These requirements can be as simple as formatting a table or populating VLookUp or sometimes a bit complex.

Designing an automation tool for such un-structured requirements (in near future) looks tough for me considering the cost and effort required.
millions of people who work in offices are doing run-of-the-mill jobs , and these are prime candidates for automation
However I 100% agree with @NARAYANK991 sir, sure, platform for these automation possibly would be different but lots of jobs are getting automated.

@ppp1812 , aim of discussion at 'Lounge' is, everyone can share their view.

PS - We don't need to be expert to share our views our seeking advise. :)
I consider myself to be in later category.
 
Hi Sachin ,

The basic fact is that we think our work is unstructured.

Most programmers would think coding is unstructured , even though the end result is supposed to be structured programming !

The starting point for any automated tool is a standardization of the process.

If you think about it , Excel has standardized the way we think !

When ever we have a problem to be solved , we always think of whether we can structure it so that data can be entered in cells , rows , columns , worksheets ; what ever be the output required , we see how we can use the standard Excel functions to get what we want.

This same methodology can be extended to solving any other problem ; if the problem is not amenable to standardization , the user can be !

Ensure that users can enter their requirements in a standardized fashion , and you can build a tool to resolve the problem emanating from those requirements.

AI tools that diagnose diseases operate by requiring the patient to go through a structured questionnaire.

Narayan
 
Frankly speaking I don't foresee this happening any time in the near future.

Every automation needs you to do some requirement gathering. Which means first learning the current process, then finding out what changes need to be done to the process, then implementing the changes and making the process more efficient.

The one thing I learnt during requirement gathering is that most of the time, the people you ask for the requirements can't really clarify what they want themselves, that's why its such a lengthy process to automate something, as you need to sometimes come up with the solutions yourself.

For a machine to be able to understand what is needed, where it is needed & how it needs to be implemented would be too complex without either human intervention to input parameters or AI interaction.

So your job is safe for now.
 
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