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Filling Jobs of the Future Requires Effort to Upskill Workers Now

Right now Texas has a red hot economy with t a thriving job market. Deloitte & Touche is one of the world’s premier consulting and advisory services. In an article published in March of 2019 edition of the Houston Business Journal titled “Workforce of the future: Now’s the time to start closing the skills gap”, the Houston Office managing partner of Deloitte, Amy Chronis, makes the case that too many of today’s workers don’t have the core skills that they will need to work in a number of jobs of the future. She is correct to point out that the skills gap lies ahead and the manufacturing sector is humming along currently in Texas, but more needs to be done now to meet the future demands.

One of the most impactful points in the article reads as follows: “We need far more participation across companies and institutions to make progress on this front: only two in 10 manufacturers say they collaborate with the government, while just over three in 10 report relationships with private education or training institutes to train workers, according to Deloitte’s manufacturing study.”

If many of today’s top-performing manufacturing firms and colleges are not investing in this upskilling to fill the jobs of the future, how will those who want or need to transition into new lines of work, or those who will be just joining the workforce in the future be able to be relevant?

What do you think?

The Future is Now: Robots Are Coming for Your Job

The workplace is changing, and Americans have to prepare. Doing so requires having a realistic vision of what the future holds: just how many jobs will robots replace, and what will displaced workers do?

“In the long run, nearly all current jobs will go away,” says UC Berkeley computer scientist Stuart Russell. Russell envisions “an economy where far fewer people work because work is unnecessary.”

Expect to see less work in manufacturing, less work in call centers, and less work driving trucks, reports CNN. In fact, study after study reveals that automation will have an enormous effect on the workforce—from moderate displacement to a total workforce overhaul. One such study predicts that hundreds of millions of people worldwide will have to find new jobs or learn new skills.

But AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler isn’t caving to the dystopia. “The scare tactics are a little extreme,” she argues. “Every time a technological shift has taken place in this country, there have been those doomsday scenarios.”

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Perhaps. But automation has sped up, making it harder for workers, employers, and the government to adjust. So, ideally, workers will have to meet the robots in the middle. “We’re going to work alongside technology as it evolves,” says Shuler. “New work is going to emerge.”

While Shuler works on the here and now, others are envisioning the long term. “We need a radical rethinking of our educational system and our scientific enterprise to focus more attention on the human rather than the physical world,” writes Russell. “It sounds odd to say that happiness should be an engineering discipline, but that seems to be the inevitable conclusion.”

How are you preparing for the robots’ arrival?

Future Proof Your Job

“Future Proof” Your Job…. What To Do?

In an interesting article, TechRepublic (www.techrepublic.com) tackled the tough and uncomfortable subject of job elimination due to technology advancements.

In the article entitled “How to future-proof your career: 5 tips“, they report that “The rise of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) has brought a bevy of concerns for many US workers, who remain fearful that these technological movements could take their jobs. While many believe humans will work with robots instead of being replaced by them, the reality is that robots will kill 36 million American jobs in the next decade”. There is no doubt that many people are rightly frightened by the coming job elimination due to technology, so some tips to staying relevant are certainly welcome. Unfortunately, it would seem that these tips, while well-intended, may not be tangible enough or even available to use in a meaningful way.

The “tips” include “Be Open, Be Greedy About Experiences and Bounce Forward”. Hmmm. Let’s assume that one is already open to the idea of staying employed and being able to eat and pay rent. We doubt that there are many people who are more open to having their job eliminated than to transitioning to a new position. Be Greedy is basically their way of better your self when you can. Not a real stretch to assume that if you are worried about your job, that you won’t try and better yourself when you can. Unfortunately, many current jobs don’t really allow us lots of new opportunities to take advantage of. Lastly, Bounce Forward means to turn your failures into life lessons and come out of them in a better place. Well, it seems like that too is some generic advice and, by the way, doing this is one of the most common for challenges in all aspects of life for everyone, everywhere. Not really the job elimination due to technology help one didn’t already grasp.

Take a look at their article and tell us what you think.

Upskilling Will Save Worker’s Job

The fear of losing ones job to technology is real. While the global economy is positioned to see job growth for the next few years, it is important to understand that the real effects of job loss from AI, robotics, blockchain and autonomous transportation haven’t really begun.

A leader in the development of AI and a benefactor of robotics / automation and the potential for autonomous transportation is obviously Amazon. Yes, these efforts will disrupt jobs, but Amazon recently announced that they intend to invest in upskilling much of their human workforce to become viable employees performing new jobs.

In a recent press release Amazon pledged to upskill 100,000 US based workers through programs like their Associate2Tech and Amazon Technical Academy programs.

Obviously this is great news for Amazon employees who face job elimination in the future, but what happens to the millions and millions of people who don’t work for the few firms like Amazon that have such programs? Certainly other employers will also have new jobs being created as advancements threaten existing jobs. The real problem will be for the average person, whose job is seeming swept away overnight, to react and find a way to upskill quickly and still feed a family.

Do you currently see any real opportunities for the average person to upskill on their own outside or enrolling in college or a formal training school?

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?