{"id":1227,"date":"2026-06-11T22:10:51","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T22:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1227"},"modified":"2026-06-11T22:10:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T22:10:51","slug":"tech-leaders-argue-ais-real-future-is-task-augmentation-not-mass-layoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1227","title":{"rendered":"Tech leaders argue AI\u2019s real future Is task augmentation, not mass layoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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That is the consensus from Dave Bozeman, chief executive of third-party logistics giant C.H. Robinson, and Peggy Johnson, chief executive of Agility Robotics, speaking Tuesday at Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Aspen, Colorado. While both executives acknowledged deep societal anxiety around job displacement, they argued that the immediate future belongs to so-called task augmentation, allowing humans to move higher up the value chain.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe will have humans doing contact with customers, solving customers problems, and going up the value stack to really get their minds to work,\u201d Bozeman said. \u201cAgents are doing a lot of that upfront work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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C.H. Robinson has rebuilt itself as a tech organization serving logistics, Bozeman said. It relies on an in-house team of 450 software engineers and data scientists to build bespoke tools. The pivot from legacy machine learning to generative AI has yielded a fleet of more than 30 specialized AI agents that executed millions of shipping tasks over the past year.<\/p>\n

Bozeman said C.H. Robinson has \u201cgotten it swagger back\u201d by embracing AI. He pointed to a coding agent the company has for transactional quoting. Human employees, he said, previously took up to 20 minutes to handle only 60% of quotes. The agent now handles 100% of quotes in around 30 seconds and does so at all times of the day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wall Street has rewarded C.H. Robinson for its high-tech transformation. Its stock is up more than 100% in the past year. But Bozeman insisted this isn\u2019t tied to mass layoffs. Instead, he said automation is targeting entry-level operational roles that historically suffer from high turnover rates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet fears of job loss are grounded in action by the country\u2019s largest companies. Amazon, for one, has been reported to be planning to replace more than half a million jobs with robots. The company has also been at the center of AI-tied job cuts among its corporate staff, a trend that has surfaced at many U.S. employers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Johnson, meanwhile, said Agility is emphasizing safety when it comes to its 150-plus pound walking machines. By the end of this year, Agility\u2019s humanoids will be able to walk safely among humans, she said. Agility has many competitors, including Tesla and Figure AI, but the company has benefited from large partners like Amazon, which has tested its Digit robot on its warehouse floors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Discussing why a humanoid form factor is better than a simpler wheeled robot, Johnson said the reality of existing supply chain infrastructure requires it. Manufacturing and production environments are built for humans, featuring stairs, tight corners, and waist-high counters. Wheeled robots are useful in open spaces, but they become \u201ctippy\u201d when lifting heavy objects, she said.<\/p>\n

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She also noted the deployment of humanoids may aid a U.S. labor shortage. Its humanoid is designed to step into the roles people actively avoid, she said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf that\u2019s part of someone\u2019s job, they say \u2018that\u2019s a part I don\u2019t like doing,\u2019 \u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s repetitive. It\u2019s mind-numbing. It\u2019s injury-prone.\u201d<\/p>\n

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CEOs of C.H. 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