Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagJob Displacement

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industry 4.0 concept: Man is holding product and teaching robot arm the points with control panel ( teach pendant ) on smart factory production line background. Selective Focus.

Preparing Students to Work in an Artificial Intelligence World

Technology innovations are rapidly changing the nature of work. Advancements in artificial intelligence are especially transforming the workforce landscape at an accelerating rate. Jobs of tomorrow will not resemble those of decades past, nor even those of today. Read More ›
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Cars on road highway in traffic jam

Autonomous Vehicles Are Not a “Rich Person’s” Technology

A transportation expert tells Jay Richards, alternative transport may disrupt the transportation industry but only in the short term

Jay Richards talked recently with Tom Alberg, Founder of the Madrona Venture Group and Co-chair of the ACES Northwest Network, about ACES’ efforts to bring Automated, Connected, Electric, and Shared vehicle technologies to the Puget Sound region: The Benefits of ACES Vehicle Technology A partial transcript follows: Jay Richards: Well, you were chairing the panel on autonomous vehicles and you’re part of an initiative here in Seattle. What do you think is the most important takeaway from that? Tom Alberg: I think that it’s really a combination of technologies. It’s both new technologies and it’s changed business models. So we formed a group here in Seattle called ACES, Autonomous, Connected, Electric, and Shared. “Shared” is really kind of the Uber Read More ›

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gray vehicle being fixed inside factory using robot machines

Bingecast: Jay Richards on The Human Advantage

Will machines take over human jobs? Jay Richards discusses artificial intelligence, virtue, job displacement, and collaboration using technology with Larry L. Linenschmidt. This interview is about Jay’s book, The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines. This interview was originally aired by the Hill Country Institute and is included here in its entirety. This Read More ›

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Jay Richards: Prepare For AI, But Don’t Panic — Part II

Will machines take over human jobs? Larry L. Linenschmidt discusses Artificial Intelligence, job displacement, and collaboration using technology with Jay Richards. This interview is about Jay’s book, The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines. This interview was originally aired by the Hill Country Institute and is included here in its entirety. This rebroadcast Read More ›

COSM-3104

Tech Entrepreneur Peter Thiel says Silicon Valley is losing its touch

Peter Thiel also compared universities today to the Catholic Church at its worst

About the Big Tech companies, he says, “The story is not that they have done a lot of bad things but that they have not done enough good things. That remains the core challenge of Silicon Valley.”

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Technology Kills Jobs, Creates New Ones

On this week’s podcast, Jay Richards looks at the way new jobs have historically grown from the turmoil around the deaths of obsolete ones

Despite the continued march of technological change in recent years, the American employment picture has been bright, though many remain dissatisfied with their current circumstances or prospects.

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Jay Richards on the Greatly Exaggerated Death of Human Jobs — Part I

Rumor has it, artificial intelligence and robotics will make humans obsolete. Larry L. Linenschmidt discusses artificial intelligence, job displacement, virtue, and machines with Jay Richards. This interview is about Jay’s book, The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines. This interview was originally aired by the Hill Country Institute and is included here in Read More ›

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business, technology, mass media and people concept - close up of male hand holding transparent smartphone with internet news web page on screen

Random Thoughts on Recent AI Headlines

There is usually a story under those layers of hype but not always the one you thought

When Thomas Sowell was writing his syndicated column on economics, I always looked forward to his sporadically appearing “Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene.” Reminding readers that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I offer my own “Random Thoughts on Recent AI Headlines.”

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Machinist working a loom

Remember the Luddites!

The Luddites became famous for breaking machinery during the Industrial Revolution. Were they entirely wrong?
People often think that the Luddites were merely anti-technology because they opposed automation during the Industrial Revolution (1760–1840). The story is more complex. As we face increasing automation today, we might want to see what we can learn from their history. Read More ›
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camera record on crane in production on studio and light to stage for entertainment industry

1: IBM’s Watson Is NOT Our New Computer Overlord

AI help, not hype: It won at Jeopardy (with specially chosen “softball” questions) but is not the hoped-for aid to cancer specialists
One problem that has dogged Watson has nothing to do with AI or medicine. The journalism around the introduction of projects like Watson is long on the Gee Whiz! An Electronic Brain! It Won at Jeopardy! And it is short on systematic inquiry as to outcomes versus goals. Read More ›
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Advertising billboards at Times Square

The Death of the Ad Agency Was Widely Publicized

But, like so many industries, advertising turned out to be weathering the digital storm after all

A recent surge in jobs could be temporary. But it’s beginning to look as though the iconic ad culture is adjusting to the digital age. There's a film in that too. Probably a lot of them.  

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Hardworking

Meet the everyday people behind AI

Not famous, not lone geniuses, usually not even well-paid. Without them, ambitious systems would gather dust.
Although you probably haven’t heard much about the 26-year-old single mother in the hi-tech news, Brenda is one of the intelligences behind artificial intelligence. For $9 a day, Brenda, who lives in the slum district Kibera in Nairobi, along with a thousand co-workers helps code information for self-driving cars for San Francisco-based Samasource (founded 2008). Read More ›
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What Humans Do That A.I. Can’t

AI can do many things faster and better than humans. It can beat humans in chess, outsmart us in Jeopardy, and defeat us at GO. The question remains. Is there anything a human can (and always will) do better than an AI? Show Notes 01:00 | Eric Holloway Introduction 01:57 | Fold It, a showdown between AI and amateurs 03:40 | Jay Read More ›

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Karl Marx’s Eerie AI Prediction

He felt that capitalism would fall when machines replaced human labor
Because Marx held that the value of goods resided in the labor required to produce them, if goods were produced by automatons, without human labor, the economy would fall apart and capitalism would fail. Read More ›
man with headset at the conference

Jay Richards asks, can training for an AI future be trusted to bureaucrats?

We hear so much about how the AI revolution gobbles industrial era jobs that we don't notice the digital era jobs unfilled.

On Tuesday, entrepreneur Ivanka Trump told Wall Street Journal readers, The assembly line, energy plant and retail store have changed dramatically in the past 25 years—and the jobs have, too. Nearly 1 in 5 working Americans has a job that didn’t exist in 1980, many in technology, the fastest-growing segment across all industries. Such rapid change is one reason 6.6 million U.S. jobs are currently unfilled. More. Currently unfilled? We hear so much about how the AI revolution is gobbling industrial era jobs that the shortage of people trained for digital era jobs takes a while to register. Trump goes on to discuss new legislation to address the shortage by providing more relevant education to future jobseekers (paywall). Meanwhile, from the Read More ›

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The Threat, Promise, and Limits of AI

New Center to Explore the Possibilities

What is a human being? Are we unique creatures, bearing evidence of purpose in our making? Or are we meat-clad robots, a race of glitchy natural machines sprung up by chance through unguided evolution?

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