Category: Work | Page 2

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Stephen Berger
Date
May 10, 2022

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health, Work

Tagged
Featured}

Would Health Care AI Mean Caregivers Spend More Time on Patients?

_{Chances are, it will just mean fewer and less qualified caregivers} _{Stephen Berger
May 10, 2022

5

Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health, Work}

Pat Baird, regulatory head of global software standards at Philips, recently wrote an article titled, “Can Artificial Intelligence ‘Rehumanize’ Healthcare?” His thesis is that “By lowering administrative burden, AI can increase caregivers’ time spent actually caring for patients.” I will argue that this vision for the contribution of AI to healthcare delivery will not happen due to some very observable forces. A place to begin the analysis is with the funding source for AI in healthcare. AI is bought or developed by healthcare delivery organizations. These organizations are following a business plan and if AI does not provide a business benefit, they will not pay for it. We can conclude that AI in healthcare will be designed and used to Read More ›

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News
Date
March 27, 2022

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Work

Tagged
Featured, Frankenstein Complex, Gretchen Huizinga, John Tamny, Robert J. Marks, Uncanny Valley, WALL-E (film)}

Lead Us Not Into the Uncanny Valley …

_{Robert Marks and Gretchen Huizinga discuss whether future developments in artificial intelligence will lead to a better future or a worse one} _{News
March 27, 2022

10

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Work}

This is the fourth and final segment of the the recent podcast, “What Does It Mean to Be Human in an Age of Artificial Intelligence?”, featuring Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks and veteran podcaster Gretchen Huizinga. In the first segment, they discussed what AI can and can’t do. In the second segment, they discussed “How did all the AI hype get started?” Then, in the third part, the discussion turned to “Straight talk about killer robots/a>” because Dr. Marks is the author of The Case for Killer Robots. And now we come at last to the Uncanny Valley, where too much AI and robotics risks making everything weird. The entire interview was originally published by Christian think tank, Read More ›

Aerial view over Cupertino in Bay Area, California on a sunny day.

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News
Date
February 11, 2022

Categorized
Economics, Education, Work

Tagged
__has-video, Babak Parviz, Bellevue (Washington), Bob Metcalfe, COSM 2021, Featured, Remote work, video}

Is It Really the End for Silicon Valley or Just a Reboot?

_{A COSM 2021 panel looked at the effect of remote work, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, on iconic locations like the Valley} _{News
February 11, 2022

11

Economics, Education, Work}

“Is It the End for Silicon Valley?” was one of the discussions at COSM 2021 (2:00 pm, Wednesday, November 11, 2021). It featured The conversation turned on whether, in the internet age, one needs to work in any specific locality, like Silicon Valley. Some of their comments relating to where people will live in relation to their work and the problems they will face are transcribed below: Work where you live or live where you work? — How can Silicon Valley keep its people together in the age of the internet? Babak Parviz: We have a title, “Is this is the end of Silicon Valley, as in the space is no longer important. It’s going to be localized and you Read More ›

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Jonathan Bartlett
Date
January 12, 2022

Categorized
Social Factors, Work

Tagged
Remote work, Zoom}

Welcoming the Post-Zoom Era

_{The Zoom era is quickly coming to an end. How should companies re-adjust?} _{Jonathan Bartlett
January 12, 2022

4

Social Factors, Work}

Prior to the pandemic, few outside of technology jobs even knew what Zoom was. Now, everyone is comfortable with video conferencing. However, while the technology works better than ever, I’m starting to sense that people are done with continual video conferencing. Many people who use Zoom do so on a compulsory basis. They have jobs that require that they Zoom for meetings or they are in classes that require online attendance. Therefore, it is hard to decipher people’s attitudes towards Zoom in those circumstances. They use it because someone told them they must. However, I regularly teach at a homeschooling co-op class. Homeschoolers, especially in Oklahoma, aren’t compelled to do anything that they don’t feel comfortable with. Don’t want to Read More ›

Competition between humans and robots in tug of war concept

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News
Date
October 29, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Work

Tagged
Creativity (and AI), Featured, Gary Smith, Jay Richards, Jeffrey Funk}

Robots Will NOT Steal Our Jobs, Business Analysts Show

_{Doomsayers typically do not factor in all components of the job that a robot would have to replace or all of the true costs of trying, they say} _{News
October 29, 2021

4

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Work}

At Fast Company, data analyst Jeffrey Funk and business prof Gary N. Smith dispute the claim that robots are coming for all our jobs. They point to a history of overblown claims: In 1965, Herbert Simon, who would later be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics and the Turing Award (the “Nobel Prize of computing”), predicted that “machines will be capable, within 20 years, of doing any work a man can do.” In 1970, Marvin Minsky, who also received the Turing Award, predicted that, “in from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being.” The implications for jobs were ominous, but robotic-takeover predictions have been in the air for a Read More ›

T-shirt made in Bangladesh. Customer looking at the origin and import country of a cheap fashion product in clothes store or shop. Ethical consumer behavior. Woman holding label and price tag with tex

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News
Date
September 28, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Work

Tagged
Automation, Garment industry}

What Do Robots Find Hard? Sewing a T-shirt, For One Thing

_{Humans automatically and constantly adjust hand movements to the ever-changing alignment of cloth. Robots just freeze} _{News
September 28, 2021

3

Artificial Intelligence, Work}

Menswear entrepreneur Harris Quinn wrote a thoughtful piece at Wired recently on the mixed success of efforts to automate sewing via Sewbots, for example, developed by SoftWear Automation CEO Palaniswamy Rajan: One reason that sewing lends itself so well to the grinding labor of sweatshops is that it is very difficult to automate. That’s because cloth is pliable and constantly moving. The Sewbots face unexpected hurdles: But no two batches of cotton are exactly alike, often varying from harvest to harvest; variations in the fabric and dyes further complicate matters. Each variation can necessitate recalibrating the system, interrupting operations, and SoftWear has to train its machinery to respond accordingly. “The biggest challenge we have faced getting to a production system Read More ›

senior woman is receiving post from an futuristic robotic delivery service

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News
Date
August 14, 2021

Categorized
Work

Tagged
Boston Dynamics, robotics}

Don’t Plan Your Career Around Driving a Delivery Van

_{Or doing a variety of tasks where repetitive movement is the key to success, if Boston Dynamics' robotics are anything to go by} _{News
August 14, 2021

3

Work}

Boston Dynamics is a cutting-edge robotics company that’s spent decades behind closed doors making robots that move in ways we’ve only seen in science fiction films. They occasionally release videos on YouTube of their life-like machines spinning, somersaulting or sprinting, which are greeted with fascination and fear. We’ve been trying, without any luck, to get into Boston Dynamics’ workshop for years, and a few weeks ago they finally agreed to let us in. After working out strict COVID protocols, we went to Massachusetts to see how they make robots do the unimaginable. From the outside, Boston Dynamics headquarters looks pretty normal. Inside, however. it’s anything but. If Willy Wonka made robots, his workshop might look something like this. There are Read More ›

Reflection of a man looking at a help wanted sign in a business window, economy concept

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News
Date
July 12, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Work

Tagged
COVID-19, Jay Richards, The Human Advantage}

AI vs. the Pandemic: A Hopeful View of the Future of Work

_{A look at what was predicted and what really happened} _{News
July 12, 2021

11

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Work}

In 2019, philosopher Jay Richards offered some thoughts on whether robots would take all our jobs, as widely predicted. In the meantime, the unforeseeable COVID-19 pandemic idled many more people than robots did or could have. But let’s take a look at how well Richards’ reflections in “Creative Freedom, Not Robots, Is The Future Of Work” have fared. Note: Dr. Richards was speaking at the launch of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence in Dallas, Texas on August 18. https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-142-Jay-Richards.mp3 A partial transcript, Show Notes, and Additional Resources follow. Richards started by pointing out that vast numbers of pundits were committed to the view that AI and robots will take our jobs: Jay Richards: Let me give Read More ›

communicator technology on wood table top view

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Heather Zeiger
Date
May 17, 2021

Categorized
Business and Finance, Ethics, Global Technology, Work

Tagged
Ken Buck, Xinjiang}

Apple’s Supply Chain Includes Forced Labor in China

_{Big companies like Apple claim they try to avoid forced labor but maybe not hard enough} _{Heather Zeiger
May 17, 2021

6

Business and Finance, Ethics, Global Technology, Work}

The Information, an online periodical covering the tech industry, found that Apple’s supply chain includes companies that use the forced labor of members of minority groups in China, particularly Uyghurs — Chinese citizens who are ethnically Turkish and mostly Muslim: The Information and human rights groups have found seven companies supplying device components, coatings and assembly services to Apple that are linked to alleged forced labor involving Uyghurs and other oppressed minorities in China. At least five of those companies received thousands of Uyghur and other minority workers at specific factory sites or subsidiaries that did work for Apple, the investigation found. The revelation stands in contrast to Apple’s assertions over the past year that it hasn’t found evidence of Read More ›

Frozen British traditional post office mailbox

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News
Date
May 10, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Ethics, Law, Work

Tagged
Automation failure, Automation planning, Featured, Karl D. Stephan}

Who Will Your Boss Believe? You or That Glitzy New Computer?

_{In the largest miscarriage of justice in decades, the British Post Office chose to believe the computer, resulting in bankruptcies, jail, and suicide. At last the truth emerged…} _{News
May 10, 2021

6

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Ethics, Law, Work}

Texas State professor of electrical engineering Karl Stephan (pictured) has the story, reprinted with permission from his blog Engineering Ethics. Dr. Stephan is the author of Ethical and Otherwise: Engineering in the Headlines, a collection of his writings on ethics and technology: Suppose you enjoy a secure government job at which you work diligently, and you have advanced to the managerial position of a sub-postmaster in Post Office Ltd, the quasi-public organisation that provides postal services in most of the UK. Then your organisation installs a new computerised system called Horizon that promises to eliminate a lot of paperwork accounting and make things easier for everybody. But soon after it is installed, you find that your accounts are not matching up with Read More ›

Collage of portraits of young emotional people on multicolored background in neon. Concept of human emotions, facial expression, sales. Listening to music, delighted, winner, shocked. Flyer for ad

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News
Date
April 26, 2021

Categorized
Business and Finance, Education, Ethics, Science, Surveillance, Work

Tagged
Emotional recognition technology (ERT), emotions, Human emotions, Kate Crawford}

AI Prof Sounds Alarm: AI “Emotion Detectors” Are Faulty Science

_{An industry worth over $30 billion uses emotion recognition technology (ERT) on school children and potential hires} _{News
April 26, 2021

4

Business and Finance, Education, Ethics, Science, Surveillance, Work}

Kate Crawford, a principal researcher at Microsoft, and author of Atlas of AI (2021), is warning at Nature that the COVID-19 pandemic “is being used as a pretext to push unproven artificial-intelligence tools into workplaces and schools.” The software is touted as able to read the “six basic emotions” via analysis of facial expressions: During the pandemic, technology companies have been pitching their emotion-recognition software for monitoring workers and even children remotely. Take, for example, a system named 4 Little Trees. Developed in Hong Kong, the program claims to assess children’s emotions while they do classwork. It maps facial features to assign each pupil’s emotional state into a category such as happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise and fear. It also Read More ›

Two HR specialists man and woman analyzing the market of alumni to boost the intern program at international consulting company. Hiring new talented officers. Social media hologram icons.

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George Bara and Jeffrey Funk
Date
April 19, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Work

Tagged
Featured}

AI’s Future: Combining RPA With AI to Augment Knowledge Workers

_{The work machines can’t do is usually the rewarding part, both personally and financially} _{George Bara and Jeffrey Funk
April 19, 2021

6

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Work}

Counterterrorism requires analysts to work through millions of Twitter and Facebook messages, YouTube videos, and websites in multiple languages, far too much work for humans. But a combination of AI (artificial intelligence) and RPA (robotic process automation) can help humans do this work, leaving humans in charge of the most complex and important decisions. AI systems can crawl through documents in any language, automatically translating them, extracting names of people and organizations, and doing sentiment analysis of conversations to identify key text to be considered later by humans. This text can be automatically organized into proper bins using RPA, enabling a data processing and analytics pipeline that can handle large amounts of content at speeds never possible in the past. Read More ›

Businessman working with skeleton in office

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post

News
Date
April 10, 2021

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Work

Tagged
Science fiction, Unemployment}

Sci-fi Saturday: When “The Workplace” Is Anything But

_{The short film (less than 10 min) starts with a woman reassuring herself, unsettlingly, “I AM the boss”} _{News
April 10, 2021

10

Arts & Culture, Work}

“The Workplace” at DUST by Carlyn Hudson (April 1, 2021, 9:32 min) We’ve been warned: “You are very qualified.” For what though? “In a future economy subsumed by technological employment, humans continue to find meaning through their ‘work’ — where the lucky ones get to show up to an “office” from 9-5 and live out their mundane workplace fantasies.” This sci-fi short will appeal to many who have had a job at the corner of Rat and Race and sense that’s a blessing compared to the alternative. It starts with a woman reassuring herself, “I AM the boss,” and cuts to her interviewing a job candidate who seems off-putting at first but appears qualified — and then things get weird. Read More ›

Bangkok, Thailand 25 AUG 2020. Men hand using digital tablet for search information on Google. Wireless Smartphone technology with intelligence search engine.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
December 8, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Work

Tagged
Culture, Emily M. Bender, fake news, Google, large language models, Timnit Gebru, Whistleblowers}

Google’s Leading AI Ethics Researcher Fired, Amid Controversy

_{Her research team targeted Google’s “cash cow”: advertising} _{Denyse O'Leary
December 8, 2020

6

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Work}

Timnit Gebru, a leading AI ethics researcher, was fired from Google early this month under circumstances that have raised suspicions across the industry: On December 2, the AI research community was shocked to learn that Timnit Gebru had been fired from her post at Google. Gebru, one of the leading voices in responsible AI research, is known among other things for coauthoring groundbreaking work that revealed the discriminatory nature of facial recognition, cofounding the Black in AI affinity group, and relentlessly advocating for diversity in the tech industry. But on Wednesday evening, she announced on Twitter that she had been terminated from her position as Google’s ethical AI co-lead. “Apparently my manager’s manager sent an email [to] my direct reports Read More ›

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Jonathan Bartlett
Date
November 25, 2020

Categorized
Education, Mathematics, Work

Tagged
Featured, Motivation, reason}

Helping Students See How Math Benefits Them in the Long Run

_{To keep them motivated, we need to answer the “Why bother?” question honestly and directly} _{Jonathan Bartlett
November 25, 2020

5

Education, Mathematics, Work}

In this series we are looking at ways that math education can be reformed. In contrast to some other math reform efforts, we are not trying to fundamentally rewrite what math education is doing but to simply admit that we can do better and see where that takes us. (See Part 1 and Part 2.) Here in Part 3, we will concentrate on making the curriculum more “conscious” of what students are supposed to be learning in mathematics. One of the primary complaints students have about higher mathematics is that they don’t see where they are going to use the information later in their jobs. There are a number of ways of answering this question but first I want to Read More ›

smart retail concept, robot service use for check the data of or Stores that stock goods on shelves with easily-viewed barcode and prices or photo compared against an idealized representation of store

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post

News
Date
November 3, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Work

Tagged
Amazon, Autonomous cars, Boeing, driverless cars, employment, Featured, Jobs, Jonathan Bartlett, Robots, self-driving cars, Walmart}

WalMart Shelves Its Robot Inventory Clerks

_{These costly experiences are helping businesses better understand when automation works and when it just doesn’t} _{News
November 3, 2020

5

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Work}

The WalMart automation project started in 2017, as part of an effort to compete with Amazon: Walmart, which posted record online sales in its recent quarter, now has more workers walking the aisles to package online orders, extracting new data on inventory problems, people familiar with the situation told the Wall Street Journal, which was the first to report this news. Reuters Staff, “Walmart drops plans to use robots for tracking inventory” at Reuters Here’s some background: Walmart ended the partnership because it found different, sometimes simpler solutions that proved just as useful – something that came to light during the coronavirus pandemic as more shoppers flock to online delivery and pickup, forcing Walmart to have workers physically walk store Read More ›

Virtual meeting with many people together. African-American young guy talking online with employees via video connection. Multiracial team. Back view

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post

News
Date
September 18, 2020

Categorized
Work

Tagged
attention economy}

Three New Concepts That Can Help You Plan Your Career

_{The post-Covid internet economy isn’t so much difficult as it’s different} _{News
September 18, 2020

6

Work}

Concepts aren’t magic but they do focus the mind. Consider, for example, the new economy: “new, high-growth industries that are on the cutting edge of technology” (Investopedia). In the 1990s, putting all the changes we were going through together in one phrase helped many people redirect job or career searches and stay in the game. Here are three new concepts that might help us understand the job market today: First, the attention economy: In an internet-dependent culture, attention is a form of currency (money). Your attention is valuable and many people are competing for it. That’s a big change from yesteryear: For most of human history, access to information was limited. Centuries ago many people could not read and education Read More ›

Video call. Online zoom conference. Business team gathered for an online meeting in zoom app. On a computer monitor a group of people online

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post

News
Date
September 11, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance, Surveillance, Work

Tagged
___longform, Automation, COVID-19, Gen Z, Gig economy, Remote work, Security, Workplace, Zoom}

COVID-19: Technology Trends That Are Sneaking Up on Us Faster Now

_{Most of these changes, for better or worse, are probably here to stay} _{News
September 11, 2020

13

Business and Finance, Surveillance, Work}

We knew big changes were coming. And that COVID-19 has ramped them up. But when experts expound grand generalities and wave their hands a lot, it can be hard to clearly see what a change means where we live and work. One writing teacher, for example, learned how to massively adapt all of a sudden: Each spring, I teach Writing about Oneself, a class on first-person reading and writing, to 12 Yale undergraduates chosen from 100 or so… Every year I fill out the registrar’s Pedagogical Needs Request Form, leaving 14 of the 15 “Technological Needs” boxes unchecked. (No, I don’t need a SMART board. No, I don’t need a digital projector. No, I don’t need a Blu-ray player.) The Read More ›

People on railway station and man in face mask using on phone while epidemic and covid19. Coronavirus and travel and public transport.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
May 5, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance, Global Technology, Medicine and Health, Work

Tagged
Amazon, Consumer robotics, Gen Z, robotics, Travel tourism}

Top Consumer Trends COVID-19 Will Change Long Term

_{Data from 40 countries suggests that, post-COVID, people will continue to stick close to home} _{Denyse O'Leary
May 5, 2020

7

Business and Finance, Global Technology, Medicine and Health, Work}

According to analysts, robotic devices are becoming more popular for a reason few would have guessed earlier; they reduce the need for physical human contact. Recycling, however, has taken a hit and weaning consumers from disposables post-COVID may prove a challenge. Huge firms are riding the storm, however, and Gen Z is spending the lockdown improving its career chances. Meanwhile, consumers surveyed around the globe say they plan to travel less.

Post-COVID: Five Ways Your Job Could Change

_{This is a good time to be a creative thinker and innovator.} _{Denyse O'Leary
April 25, 2020

7

Business and Finance, Data Privacy, Surveillance, Work}

Many COVID-driven innovations will likely endure, whether it’s vets doing telehealth, trolls harassing Zoom users, or cybercriminals targeting remote workers, the new opportunities and risks will stay with us.