The term automation originated in 1948, in the manufacturing sense, coined by Ford Motor Co. Vice President Delmar S. Harder, from automatic (adj.) + -ion. Earlier (1838) was automatism, which meant "quality of being automatic" in the classical sense.

Companies dream of automatic sales growth, automatic processes, and automatic profits. How do companies automate processes? The combination of AI and robotics can break down jobs, reduce repetition, and increase safety of physical jobs. Text analytics can analyze the processes within jobs and decide which tasks should be automated and which tasks should be performed by humans. Who wants to repeat the same tasks daily? Robots do not mind doing the same thing daily. Humans program robots to perform repetitive tasks. How about welding and other somewhat hazardous jobs? Robots to the rescue. Increase the quality of being automatic by analyzing all tasks and selecting the tasks that are better performed by humans. Let AI and the robots perform the mundane tasks.

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Classical robots, symphony of the mundane, enlightened humans