Insurance firm replaces staff with Artificial Intelligence

Robots stealing our jobs has been a growing concern in recent years, but it has become a harsh reality for employees at an insurance company in Japan.

Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance is making 34 employees redundant and replacing them with an artificial intelligence system based on IBM’s Watson Explorer, according to The Guardian.

The move is said to increase productivity by 30%. And although a return on investment won’t be seen from the £1.4million system straight away, it will save the company £1million annually and only cost £100,000 a year to maintain.

The technology will be used to calculate pay-outs to policyholders by reading tens of thousands of medical certificates and factoring the length of hospital stays, medical histories and any surgical procedures. However, no sums will be paid until they have been approved by a human member of staff, according to the Japanese newspaper, Mainichi Shimbun.

This comes after CareerCast.com predicted the top 10 most endangered jobs of 2016, of which ‘Insurance Underwriter’ featured.