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Don’t expect to Upskill with Current Employer

Need to Upskill to Stay Employed. Don’t Look to Your Current Employer

In a rather remote corner of the internet news world, an article / press release appeared on Yahoo Finance that is worthy of consideration by those who are concerned with the potential of losing their job to artificial intelligence. It is natural to assume that if such disruption is imminent, that one’s employer would be eager to help their employees upskill and migrate to new, hopefully, more profitable work. Of all the areas of the economy, one would naturally think that “Tech” is the one space that would be heavily involved in upskilling tech workers for the future. Many headlines read that STEM related jobs and tech jobs in particular, which will be the hot, in-demand jobs of the future, would need workers.

Unfortunately, this piece published by KPMG seems to have popped that bubble. The title, Tech CEOs Hesitant to Upskill Workforce Despite Anticipated Impact Of Artificial Intelligence On Jobs: KPMG Report reports that only 42 percent of tech CEOs surveyed planned on large scale workforce upskilling in the next three years.

If the Tech Sector is not interested in serious upskilling due to job loss from AI, what will become of the all the workers in other, less in-demand industries?

Lets us know what you think.

Electronic Strike Zone: Human Umpires vs. Robo Umps

The technology is here, but are baseball fans ready for robo umps? Human umpires will keep their jobs, but the job will not look the same.

The electronic strike zone could be one of the most significant changes to the game, according to the Bleacher Report. Throughout baseball history, players and fans trusted the eyesight and judgement of the human umpire. But, while he’ll continue to stand behind the plate, the ump now rely on laser readings of balls and strikes.

Some players worry that robo umps will remove the human element from the game, but others are excited about improving call accuracy. And to make matters more complicated, the umpire contract ends after this season. on.

Do you think an electronic strike zone will make baseball better or worse?

20 Million Manufacturing Jobs Displaced by Machines

Machines are expected to displace about 20 million manufacturing jobs across the world. That’s according to a recent report from global forecasting and quantitative analysis firm Oxford Economics. Because of this, Amazon is helping U.S. workers stay employed in this increasingly automated economy.

To do so, Amazon will spend $700 million over the next six years to help retrain a third of its U.S. workers, reports CNN Business. The voluntary training—available to 100,000 by 2025—comes in addition to the company’s existing programs and initiatives.

Consequently, the training will enable Amazon employees move into more advanced jobs or, if necessary, into new positions outside the company. Warehouse workers in fulfillment centers, for example, could be trained technical roles in IT. Amazon’s initiative comes in response to the replacement of human workers by robots and artificial intelligence.

“While many of our employees want to build their careers here, for others it might be a stepping stone to different aspirations,” Amazon’s Beth Galetti said in a prepared statement. “We think it’s important to invest in our employees and to help them gain new skills and create more professional options for themselves.”

What will happen to your job when robots displace 8.5 percent of the global manufacturing workforce?

Will AI Steal Food and Fashion Jobs?

Teaching artificial intelligence how (in what order) to construct a pizza may lead to bigger things. But can a computer ever replace your favorite pizza maker?

Researchers and MIT and Qatar Computing Research Institute built an AI system that can look at a photo of a pizza and deduce whether the sauce, cheese, or toppings come first, reports CNN Business. Computers can already learn how to identify specific objects in images, but when some of those objects are partially hidden, it becomes more difficult for them to figure out what they’re looking at.

But why bother? “Food is a big aspect of our lives, and also cooking, so we wanted to have a model that could understand food in general,” MIT researcher Dimitrios Papadopoulos told CNN Business. He believes that this research could lead to non-food applications as well.

Take clothes, for example: a digital shopping assistant may one day us AI to figure out how to assemble a fashionable ensemble. “It’s exactly the same idea,” explains Papadopoulos. “You don’t try to add pepperoni; you try to add a jacket.”

Do you anticipate a day when computers replace pizza makers and stylists?

RaaS: Building Security Industry Hits Automation Tipping Point

In 2017, the world employed an estimated 20 million private security officers. But, robots can perform the same work as these humans at a cost of about 30 to 65 percent less. For the building security industry, Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) is the biggest automation threat to human workers so far.

One human managing a few remote robots can replace a building that once housed three to four people. The robots can collect and optimize data for about 30 percent less than humans. It’s the automation tipping point (ATP) for this market.

Security is just one of many markets that disrupted by RaaS. The service will soon impact crop dusting, industrial cleaning, and warehouse management, among others. A market hits its ATP when RaaS can conduct a task for less than its human counterparts. “We are at the start of a massive shift in how work gets done,” reports Venture Beat, adding that the changes will “deeply impact consumer markets, and ultimately society, in profound and potentially challenging ways.”

RaaS pushes physical jobs to robots and enables humans to focus on more challenging problems. As manual or repetitive labor shifts to machines, some jobs will disappear, others will change, and new types will be created. Society must focus on education and training as these jobs evolve.

How has RaaS impacted your livelihood?

Amazon to Pack Orders Using Machines Instead of Human Workers

Amazon is beginning to use machines to box up customer orders. Will thousands of human workers who currently do this work soon be out of a job?

The CartonWrap technology, reports Reuters, can pack up to 700 boxes per hour, which is five times the rate of a human packer. Amazon is considering installing two such machines at dozens of warehouses around the world. Unfortunately, each CartonWrap installation can eliminate 24 jobs: that’s about 1,300 cuts across 55 fulfillment centers in the U.S. alone.

As Amazon rapidly opened warehouses across the nation to deliver goods more quickly, it became a major employer. But now, the company wants to increase safety, speed delivery times, and add efficiency. And, undeniably, it’s also looking to boost profits by automating as many parts of its business as possible.

Amazon hopes to invest these efficiency savings in new services for customers, which may create new jobs. But, as one of the nation’s biggest employers, Amazon has begin aiming for a leaner workforce via attrition. In other words, the company will not lay off its packing workers – it just won’t replace them when they leave.

Should an employer be responsible to offer technology training to workers replaced by automation?

Will Tesla’s Self-Driving Cars Ever Actually Drive Themselves?

Over the years, Elon Musk has boasted about Tesla’s self-driving capabilities. But, honestly, just how autonomous is the car—and will it really ever be able to drive itself?

Reuters reports that Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, began touting “Autopilot,” the car’s “full self-driving capability,” back in 2015. Now, it’s 2019, and we’ve yet to see Musk’s promises come to fruition.

Setting the Groundwork

In October 2015, Musk declared that all new Teslas would be built with the hardware that is required for full self-driving. One year later, Tesla began offering a $5,000 “Enhanced Autopilot” option and an additional $3,000 “Full Self-Driving Capability” option. These options would make the cars ready for the eventual rollout of the corresponding software. At this time, Musk predicted that, by the end of 2017, a Tesla would be able to drive across the county in full autonomous mode “without the need for a single touch.”

No Forward Progress… Yet

In June 2018, Musk tweeted that the Autopilot driver assistance system would soon get full self-driving features. And, in October 2018, Tesla introduced software intended to help the car “navigate on Autopilot,” particularly for on/off ramps, lane changes, and highway interchanges.

Bold Predictions for the Future

But now it’s April 2019, and although the Tesla is still not driving itself, the company says it’s making “significant progress” on the Full Self-Driving (FSD) computer. The Autopilot system is now standard on all Tesla vehicles, and Musk says it’s the only company to have a full self-driving suite of hardware. In fact, he’s now making even bolder predictions about the great self-driving things to come:

In 2020, Tesla will have “over a million cars with full self-driving, software, everything.”
“Probably two years from now, we’ll make a car with no steering wheels or pedals.”
Tesla will have autonomous “robotaxis” without drivers in some U.S. markets in 2020.

What Do You Think?

Will the arrival of self-driving cars be good or bad for the U.S. job market?

Service Robots Begin to Take People’s Jobs

For most American’s, particularly those working in the food service and hospitality industries, automation has been very minimal and hasn’t taken peoples jobs away. That is about the change.

Enter the “Service Robots”. This new addition to the world of robot workers is aimed at one thing. Replacing workers. Workers who support their families. Workers are known by another name, “labor costs”, and robots keep labor costs low.

The proof is coming from our neighbors across the Pacific, in China. A great article posted on technode.com by Nicole Jao covered the rise of service robots in China and how orders for new service robots has increased by 44% and is continued to expand by double digits going forward.

American companies in the service industries are ripe to jump on the bandwagon. As more companies enter the robotics manufacturing space, prices will fall and mass implementation will take place. American workers, like their counterparts in Asia and Europe will end up facing extinction in many sectors.

Let us know how you feel about service robots taking jobs away from workers?

Can You Save Your Job from the Robots?

Over the next 15 to 20 years, up to 47 percent of U.S. jobs may be replaced by robots and artificial intelligence. Here’s what you need to know.

The job-stealing robots are not the clunky, blue-collar machines of the past. Rather, reports The New Yorker magazine, they are white-collar robots (aka globots) that will come in the form of algorithms and remote intelligence. In fact, says economist Richard Baldwin, they will come for the “good, stable jobs that have been the foundation of middle-class prosperity” in the U.S. and abroad.

So, how can you tell if your job is one of the endangered? “If your job can be easily explained, it can be automated,” says Anders Sandberg of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute. “If it can’t, it won’t.” Meanwhile, economist Richard Baldwin advises workers to 1) avoid competing with artificial intelligence, 2) build skills in things that only humans can do, in person, and 3) realize that humanity is an edge, not a handicap.

What human skills can save you from being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence?

Blockchain Enables Overseas Military to Vote in 2020 Presidential Election

Military voters stationed overseas will be able to cast votes for the 2020 presidential election, thanks to a mobile app that uses a private blockchain. But is it too risky?

Startup Voatz created an app that can enhance participation by overseas voters, reports MIT Technology Review. And West Virginia’s elections director Donald Kersey thinks it’s a better, more secure alternative to using mail-in ballots. But not everyone agrees. Election security experts, in particular, oppose online voting of any kind. In fact, cryptographers, computer scientists, and political scientists, have determined that internet voting systems cannot preserve the secrecy expected from democratic elections. Furthermore, blockchains have their own, unique security vulnerabilities.

Despite these concerns, West Virginia plans to move forward with the blockchain app. Kersey was pleased with the “really good response rate” of the pilot program during the 2018 midterm elections. “We are not saying mobile voting is the best solution to the problem, we are not saying that blockchain technology is the best solution to storage of security data,” says Kersey. “What we are saying though is that it’s better than what we have.”

Would you cast a vote for president via a mobile app?