Future Forward: How Machine Learning and Human-in-the-Loop Approaches Are Expanding the Capabilities of Automation

Digital transformation efforts in a number of industries have driven massive adoption of robotic process automation (RPA) over the past decade. The hard truth is that RPA is a decades-old technology that is brittle with real limits to its capabilities. It will always have some value in automating work that is simple, discrete, and linear. However, the reason automation efforts often fall short of their aspirations is because so much of life is complex and constantly evolving – too much work falls outside of the capabilities of RPA. In this talk, Varun Ganapathi, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of AKASA will discuss how exceptions and outliers can actually make automation stronger and how emerging machine-learning-based technology platforms combined with human-in-the-loop approaches are already expanding what it is possible to automate across a number of industries.