Can automation really make all of us better at our jobs? Secretaries, writers, astronomers, Uber drivers, sous-chefs? It may sound like a stretch, but it’s the gist of Automation Anywhere Inc.’s mission to democratize automation. To test the theory, it’s serving its whole suite to the masses for free in its new community edition.

Automation, artificial intelligence, analytics, and robotics process automation enable workers across industries, according to Neeti Mehta (pictured), co-founder and senior vice president of brand strategy and culture architect at Automation Anywhere. These are the technologies in the company’s platform that slash repetitive, manual or mundane work from users’ agendas. The idea is to shift their brainpower to more creative or higher value-add tasks.

Mehta spoke with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Automation Anywhere Imagine event in New York City. They discussed the company’s research, the potential of AI to eliminate human faults like bias, and the new community edition (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Automation for the masses

The company has conducted research with Goldsmiths, University of London on automation’s ability to boost human creativity. “We wanted to see and validate … did people actually free themselves of their repetition and mundane tasks and become more creative and innovative and solve problems that they wanted to and they couldn’t before,” Mehta said. The answer was overwhelmingly yes.

The research also found that only 38% of respondents had actually worked with automation. Automation Anywhere’s community edition will no doubt give skeptical companies and workers a reason to see for themselves. The free software will no doubt create more proof points of automation’s benefits, according to Mehta.

“We could actually … give that opportunity to every human who wanted to get rid of the repetition and mundane tasks, give them the opportunity to be better at what they do, to create more and innovate more,” Mehta said. “We’ve had such a great response from the market on it, and the idea … is to create opportunity for automation for everyone.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Automation Anywhere Imagine event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Automation Anywhere Imagine event. Neither Automation Anywhere Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE