Words from Web Worker

80% of those polled said their own job will "probably" or "definitely" still exist at that time ​Most Americans Think Robots Will Take All the Jobs, Just Not Theirs. Some two-thirds of the Americans believe that in fifty years, robots and computers will "probably" or "definitely" be performing most of the work currently carried out by humans. While we might believe automation is a threat to the workforce at large, individually, we seem mostly confident that we're irreplaceable. This natural strain of narcissism could create a blind spot, enabling workforce automation to take us by surprise. Younger people (ages 18-29) and people who work in the public sector (including educators and government employees) were both slightly more likely to believe their job is secure. Both groups were also slightly more skeptical of workforce automation in general. #workautomation #futureofwork #robotics #artificialintelligence #automation #jobs #bots https://...

By 2065, the productivity growth that automation could add to the largest economies in the world is the equivalent of an additional 1.1 billion to 2.2 billion full-time workers Today, about half the activities that people are paid to do in the global economy have the potential to be automated by adapting demonstrated technology. All economies, from Brazil and Germany to India and Saudi Arabia, stand to gain from the hefty productivity boosts that robotics and artificial intelligence will bring. The productivity growth enabled by automation can ensure continued prosperity in aging nations and could provide an additional boost to fast-growing ones. #workautomation #futureofwork #robotics #artificialintelligence #automation #productivity #bots #jobs #disruptivetechnology https://hbr.org/2017/04/the-countries-most-and-least-likely-to-be-affected-by-automation

We'll experience a new age of productivity about a decade from now, and it will come from all of today’s advances: AI, robotics, large amounts of data that allow us to better understand our world and our humanity, creating a positive future. Long-promised, long-awaited, and still missing, corporate productivity gains driven by all our technology will be in 2028. Weldon set a target date for achieving the long-promised, long-awaited, and still missing, corporate productivity gains driven by all our technology. 2028. “We’ve quantified when a Digital Age leap in productivity will occur that will resemble the leaps from the previous eras. “The good news is that we will experience a new age of productivity about a decade from now, and it will come from all of today’s advances: AI, robotics, large amounts of data that allow us to better understand our world and our humanity, creating a positive future. “The lack of significant improvement in economic productivity over past 30 years despi...

Robots could soon become advanced enough to make their own decisions ​Robots. They're here, they're getting smart, and some, at least, are being outfitted to kill. Should we meatba​gs be worried? In Inhuman Kind, Motherboard gains exclusive access to a small fleet of US Army bomb disposal robots—the same platforms the military has weaponized—and to a pair of DARPA's six-foot-tall bipedal humanoid robots. We also meet Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams, renowned physicist Max Tegmark, and others who grapple with the specter of artificial intelligence, killer robots, and a technological precedent forged in the atomic age. It's a story about the evolving relationship between humans and robots, and what AI in machines bodes for the future of war and the human race. There are basically two things which grow in parallel as society evolves right, there is the power of our technology and then there's the wisdom of us humans for how to manage the technology. If technolog...

How automating feedback with AI powered conversations can aid decision making in real-time All systems need feedback to learn, improve and course correct. The autopilot functionality in driverless cars is a perfect example. Sensors measure the desired speed and position of the vehicle — among other indicators — and send that data to control systems which adjust accordingly. Gathering rich, organic feedback on a continuous basis is necessary for managers and regulators to make informed decisions. Robust feedback means honoring people’s authentic voices, rather than shoehorning them into a multiple choice format. It means taking the time to find out how many others share what may be a surprising opinion (to management) or understanding of a situation. It means preserving minority opinions. It means listening well. But getting rich feedback from a population usually starts with in-depth interviews of a representative sample. Surveys are then created based on the interviews to see which id...

Artificial intelligence will have a major impact on employment. “Strong AI,” which has as its goal automating all the tasks, cognitive as well as physical, that humans can perform. Strong AI differs from “Weak AI,” which has as its goal simply providing help to humans. Opinions about the societal impact of this rapidly accelerating technological revolution span the spectrum from anticipated utopias to the fear of existential threats to humanity. Indeed AI and automation are already having profound effects on employment, as former assembly line workers, postal employees, and bank tellers will confirm. Also, soon to be affected are even some mid-level professionals such as attorneys, radiologists, stockbrokers, and newspaper writers. I think that the result of all of this automation will be continuing structural unemployment, especially among unskilled and not-sufficiently educated people. The question is, how will all these abundant goods and services be distributed? Just to those few w...

Lifetime learning, continued training and retraining throughout their lives are key to staying ahead of increasingly skilled machines Robots are getting very good at a whole bunch of jobs and tasks, but there are still many categories in which humans perform better. And, perhaps more importantly, robots and other forms of automation can aid in the creation of new and better jobs for humans. As a result, while we do expect that some jobs will disappear, other jobs will be created and some existing jobs will become more valuable. Workers, for their part, have to be strategic and aim for the jobs least likely to be overtaken by robots or other machines. They have to commit to a lifetime of practicing and updating their skills. There are three areas where humans have a distinct advantage over machines. These are areas that are key to job creation. Where humans beat machines. Creative endeavours : These include creative writing, entrepreneurship, and scientific discovery. These can be highl...

35% of UK jobs are at risk of being automated over the next two decades According to Oxford University, in the years ahead, millions of jobs in sectors such as accounting and auditing will be replaced with machines that can so the same tasks much more cheaply and effectively than human workers - without requiring salaries, holidays or sick pay - while administrators, paralegals and bank clerks will also be hit hard. We need to help people develop skills that machines are still relatively bad at, such as creativity, empathy and problem-solving . When it comes to the real-life race against the machine, we have no time to lose. Either we can rise to the challenge of automation, and radically overhaul our education, training and skills system, or wage a losing battle trying to compete. #workautomation #futureofwork #robotics #automation #jobs #disruptivetechnology #fourthindustrialrevolution http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/11858391/The-new-white-collar-fear-will-robots-take-your-job....

Robots could soon become advanced enough to make their own decisions Robots will be able to make some decisions on their own—like where to bring a load of car parts—whether or not they will result in benefits for workers will be up to the humans deciding how they'll be used. While automation and robotics certainly have the potential to save workers from lives of toil and misery—if they are indeed miserable—they also hold the possibility to deepen current inequalities, depending on whose hands they're in. In most cases, repositioning labour doesn't mean that everyone gets to keep their jobs. Ultimately when you redeploy people from one job to another, there's a cascading effect that does eliminate jobs unless they're bringing in more work. #workautomation #futureofwork #robotics #artificialintelligence #automation #jobs #robotprocessautomation #disruptivetechnology https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3dk4m8/robot-workers-will-only-be-as-ethical-as-their-master...

Safe jobs in 21st century are among three bottlenecks to automation: creativity, social intelligence, and the ability to interact with complex objects and environments The digital age is set to cause more upheaval than previous technological revolutions because change is happening faster than ever before and is fundamentally altering the way we live and work. Technology is now enabling not just the automation of repetitive but also cognitive tasks involving subtle and non-routine judgment. Through robotics, big data, the digitisation of industries and the Internet of Things the nature of occupations and whole industries is changing and also the dynamics of economic growth. We should equip workers to engage with developing technologies, so they're able to benefit from them, and focus on those bottlenecks still faced by automation. Giving people those skills could help them find jobs that aren't readily replaceable by technology, but also help them to develop new technologies and...

Robots may take our jobs, but they bring us freedom as well The robots and software applications we are building to take away jobs are simply not something we can or should attempt to compete against. We won't win. However, as human beings, we can evolve and be happier and more fulfilled than we've ever been before. The key is a shift in our thinking—and in the value we place in the kind of work we want to do and how we enjoy free time. In the future—with less work and responsibility due to robots taking our jobs and leaving us only to collect our UBI—we might find there is a lot more to life than buying the latest trinkets from Walmart, or zoning out late at night in front of a television, or worrying about how poorly our bosses treat us at work. Let the robots come. They bring us freedom. With that freedom, we can become the best human beings we are capable of—a people full of passion, education, and a newly discovered drive of what it means to be alive. #workautomation #futu...

Places that have specialised in creative work are most likely to prosper in the 21st century The chance of finding yourself replaced by a robot varies depending on where you work, the field you work in, and how much you earn (factors that are obviously linked) Across the whole UK, jobs paying less than £30,000 ($48,000) are nearly five times more likely to be lost to automation than jobs paying over £100,000 ($159,000). The finer points of how automation will affect the workplace: jobs in administrative support, transportation, sales and services, construction, and manufacturing as among the most high-risk from technology. Meanwhile, jobs in sectors like financial services, senior management, engineering, law, science, education, and the arts and media are at the least risk of being roboticized. That broadly echoes and reflects where automated systems are at now: great at repetitive drudgery, not so much at creative thought and people skills. Cities that maintain their ability to shift...

Quantum robots are being designed to become the worker of tomorrow If robots are ever going to start learning, thinking, and creating on their own, they're going to have to go quantum. Robots are still mostly designed to complete specific tasks and aren't learning from their past mistakes. But the coming quantum computing revolution will change all of that, in a decade, and will lead to real artificial intelligence and smart, creative robots. Quantum computers can be used to allow robots to remember situations they've encountered before in "classical environment"—that is, the real world, where things are constantly changing. The robots will then be able to react and learn at a quadratic rate (that is, very fast, perhaps in real time) and be able to recall memories at that same speed. #workautomation #futureofwork #robotics #artificialintelligence #automation #jobs #machinelearning #bots #quantumcomputing https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3dkpk8/quantum-ro...

Robots and the corporations have been taking our jobs for years, and they're going to take a lot more soon Clearly, many of robotics and automation technologies are ways off from mass adoption. But they're there, and if they become cost effective—for giant retailers or fast food chains or the inevitable robo-lawn care multinational—another slice of the economy will fall asunder to automation. Dislodging that major swath of the workforce will be much more problematic—we're going to need to improve our safety net and rejigger income distribution to account for the coming disruption, lest our menial labor bots service only the rich and/or eventually get smashed to bits in the inevitable Luddite 2.0 revolution. The benefits of robots taking our crappy summer jobs and thankless permanent ones will only be manifest if we take the proper steps to prepare for them politically and socially. #workautomation #futureofwork #robotics #automation #robotprocessautomation #jobs #universalb...

We are in for a great disruption and those most disrupted will be the middle and working classes Jobs have been created — but many, in the service sector, are both insecure or what the academic-activist David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs” — jobs which give neither pleasure to their holders nor benefit to society. More, the service jobs are often wearying, and don’t provide a decent living — especially for those who live in expensive cities like New York, London or Paris. Gone is the era of the lifetime career, let alone the lifelong job and the economic security that came with it, having been replaced by a new economy intent on recasting full-time employees into contractors, vendors, and temporary workers. Work — making sure it’s there, making it meaningful, giving it the dignity of being part-constructed by the worker — will be the largest domestic issue in our economies. #workautomation #futureofwork #jobs #automation #disruptivetechnology http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/0...

702 occupations would soon be computerized out of existence Advances in data mining, machine vision, artificial intelligence and other technologies could, put 47 percent of American jobs at high risk of being automated in the years ahead. Loan officers, tax preparers, cashiers, locomotive engineers, paralegals, roofers, taxi drivers and even animal breeders are all in danger of going the way of the switchboard operator. Since the end of the Great Recession, job creation has not kept up with population growth. Corporate profits have doubled since 2000, yet median household income dropped from $55,986 to $51,017. Somehow businesses are making more profit with fewer workers. Business researchers at MIT, call this divergence the “great decoupling.” In their view, it is a historic shift. The conventional economic wisdom has long been that as long as productivity is increasing, all is well. Technological innovations foster higher productivity, which leads to higher incomes and greater well-b...

Robots won't just be taking our jobs; they'll be forcing us to confront a major existential dilemma: if we didn't have to work anymore, what would we do? Optimists say that more robots will lead to greater productivity and economic growth, while pessimists complain that huge swaths of the labor force will see their employment options automated out of existence. What if both are right? As robots start doing more and more of the work humans used to do, and doing it so much more efficiently than we ever did, what if the need for jobs disappears altogether? What if the robots end up producing more than enough of everything that everyone needs? A future that looks more like Star Trek than Blade Runner, a lot of people could end up with a lot more time on their hands. The answer is both a quantitative and qualitative exercise in defining what makes human intelligence distinct from the artificial kind, a definition that seems to keep getting narrower. Humans will continue to be us...

It becomes tempting to reserve the best of ourselves for the short-term gains of work and “automate” the long game of life. Would you pay someone in the Philippines to answer your email for you — even your personal messages? Or hire strangers on the internet to plan your spouse’s big birthday party? Or throw meat, vegetables, and butter into a blender and call it dinner? These are just some of the actual “life-automating” techniques of busy entrepreneurs today. Maneesh Sethi, best known as the easily-distracted man who paid a woman to slap him in the face every time he checked Facebook. He spoke at South by Southwest in Texas about how he’s now hired a man in Manila (Caleb) to check his email for him. Caleb, who Sethi found through Staff.com, goes through Sethi’s email — both work and personal — every morning and flags important messages for follow-up, as well as categorizing and drafting responses for the rest. By the time Sethi wakes up, his email has already been sorted; and by the...

An Oxford Study shows that 47% of US jobs are at risk of being displaced by automation and computerization   The study from 2013 examined over 700 occupation types to reveal which may be vulnerable in the coming decades and finds that the precarious jobs are not limited to those based on computation and routine tasks. Google's self-driving car, for example, proves that new technology can perform both routine and non-routine tasks, as well as manual and cognitive work, potentially rendering humans redundant to driving and navigation.   As automation and computerization develop, new technologies will disrupt the lives of many workers. But these developments will also create large surpluses of wealth through gains in efficiency. We can choose where and how that wealth is directed. As jobs are displaced, we can pursue policy platforms that strengthen the social safety net and ensure that workers who have been pushed out of the labor force are able to meet their basic needs. If we want ...

In the new world, Full-Time Employees(FTEs) will become APIs Developers are rapidly finding ways to put future developers out of jobs. Much has been made about how the dropping cost of website infrastructure has spurred a boom in startup formation, with Amazon Web Services held up as the prime example. The capital cost of servers has been eliminated, but even more important is the plummeting human cost. How the startup landscape is changing. The knowledge of the world’s leading experts is available as an API for a fraction of their former salaries. A decade ago, a VP of engineering at a startup might have evaluated the resumes of five solid front-end engineers. Five years ago that VP would have looked at GitHub profiles. Today, they are just as likely to evaluate a front-end framework like Ionic, Meteor or Aurelia and build it themselves. It’s not just front-end options. We’ve seen a massive proliferation in frameworks, libraries and other tools that allow a single talented engineer to...