Sberbank may replace some jobs with robots to increase employee productivity, Albert Efimov, head of the Sberbank robotics laboratory, told RIA Novosti.
“This cannot but be, it will definitely be so. We just don't make robots to replace people. Under no circumstances will we do this. We make robots to increase human productivity. These are two different tasks,”he said.
“I'll give an example. Suppose there are three people in a certain area who operate three large professional banknote counting and sorting machines. Using collaborative robotics, we make it so that these three people can operate not three of these machines, but ten. That is, labor productivity has increased, the opportunities for these people have increased. Sometimes there is a heavy load in the evenings, sometimes there are holidays, and people withdraw more money from ATMs, and robots help to cope with the increased load. But people shouldn't be cut because of this,”he added.
Sberbank, according to Efimov, considers robotics in five directions: industrial collaborative robotics, logistics robots, unmanned vehicles (air and ground), industrial exoskeletons and personal service robots-assistants.
Sberbank's robotics laboratory plans to increase its staff to 20 by the end of 2018, Yefimov said.
“My task is to assemble the most talented team in Russia. We have grown from zero last September to 15 people today. Now I have a plan to increase the staff to 20 people by the end of the year,”he said, answering the relevant question.
“We will always have jobs for talented people,” added Efimov.
In December 2017, the head of Sberbank, German Gref, announced the launch of a mass robotization process. According to him, there will not be a sharp reduction in jobs because of it, because employees still have time to master new specialties. At the same time, the head of the largest Russian bank said that in 2018 Sberbank will create 30 robotic centers of cash circulation. Gref drew attention to the dynamics: in 2016, three such centers were created, in 2017 - five.
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