Category Archives: Automation

Twitter today is introducing a new feature that will allow accounts to self-identify as bots by adding a label to their profile. This feature is designed to help people better differentiate between automated accounts like bots that retweet the news, public service announcements or other updates from those operated by humans. Its not, however, designed to help users identify the bad bots, which are those that pose as people, often to spread misinformation or spam.

The company has been contemplating labeling bots for years.

In 2018, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was asked during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing whether he believed users had a right to know if they were speaking to a bot or a human on Twitters platform. He agreed that Twitter should add more context to tweets and was considering identifying bots, to the extent that it could. However, Dorsey also pointed out it would be more difficult to identify bots that were using scripting to give the appearance of being a human, compared with those that were leveraging Twitters API.

Last year, the company finally solidified those plans, saying it would later introduce new features that would allow users to be able to distinguish between human-run accounts and those that were automated. When Twitter launched its account verification system in May, it reminded users that it would soon offer other ways to identify different types of accounts beyond the long-coveted blue badge such as labels for bots.

Image Credits: Twitter

Today, Twitter says its new Automated Account label that identifies good bots will be made available to over 500 Developer Accounts. This group will test the feature and provide feedback before its opened up more broadly to all Twitter developers. As its still a test for the time being, the label wont be required.

However, when Twitter updated its Developer Policy last year, it did ask developers to indicate in their account profile or bio whether the account was a bot, what the account is and whos behind it. These account labels would allow developers an easier way to comply with that policy rather than having to handwrite this information in their bio.

Twitter tells TechCrunch that based on what it learns during this experiment, it may decide to make adopting the label a requirement for all developers who run automated accounts in the future, once it becomes broadly available.

Image Credits: Twitter

To be clear, Twitter doesnt have any problem with those who run good bots, as it understands how automation can allow accounts to update people with helpful, relevant or, sometimes, just fun information. The company even celebrated a few of its favorite bots when announcing todays developer news, including the public service account @earthquakesSF; a bot offering COVID-19 updates, @vax_progress; a bot that offers an ongoing breakdown of the last 100 bills introduced in Congress, @last100bills; an accessibility-focused bot, @AltTxtReminder; and others that just add value in their own way, like @met_drawings, which shares public domain works from The Mets Drawings & Prints department, or the goofy @EmojiMashupBot, among others.

All these will be a part of the initial test group.

Twitter is also less concerned with how consumers may use automation to update their own accounts, perhaps by using third-party tools like IFTTT to post links or other content.

You are ultimately responsible for the actions taken with your account, or by applications associated with your account, Twitters policy advises Twitter users. Before authorizing a third-party application to access or use your account, make sure youve thoroughly investigated the application and understand what it will do. It also adds that Twitter users that adopt automation will still need to adhere to Twitters guidelines.

The company has been on a tear lately in terms of rolling out new features. Just this week, it has launched Communities, tests of emoji reactions, support for full-width photos and videos and a way to soft block followers, among other things.

Twitter has not said how long the test would run before the Automated Account labels are rolled out more broadly.

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Twitter introduces a new label that allows the good bots to identify themselves - TechCrunch

Like their cloud-native counterparts, many large or long-standing enterprises aspire to automate as much of their operations as possible. As a result, many of them get overly ambitious with their process automation goals, and attempt to roll out sweeping, company-wide digital transformation initiatives. While ambition is a good thing, many of these initiatives take years to complete, and often require ripping and replacing legacy systems.

Few organizations consider that end-to-end process automation takes a change in mindset that spans people, processes and technology. Lets take a look at three of the most common process automation mistakes, and how organizations can work together to fix them.

Rolling out strategic automation initiatives too fast is the first. While theres nothing wrong with being strategic, thinking on too large of a scale is a common pitfall of overly ambitious automation projects.

Taking on too much strategic work too early runs a high risk that the organization doesnt see any business value for a long time. As a result, developers will most likely get completely stuck in shaping a complex platform without understanding its use case.

Instead, try to break down larger strategic initiatives into component parts, starting with the most urgent or important projects first. Heres one way to approach it:

Start with Pilot Project: The goal of this project is to define and validate both architecture and stack. Very often, this pilot project is set up as a proof-of-concept (PoC). However, it is important to go-live with that pilot to really learn about all aspects of the workflow solution throughout the full software development life cycle (SDLC).

Accelerate to a Lighthouse Project: Soon after running a successful pilot, you should tackle a lighthouse project. This project should have a broader, but still realistic scope which can be better leveraged to show off architecture, tooling, and value of workflow automation to other people and teams within your organization.

Progress to Broad-Scale Transformation: Leverage the lessons learned from the lighthouse project, empowering the people on that project team to run a Centre of Excellence (CoE) to break down silos across teams and drive organization-wide change.

I call this approach the art of gradual transformation.Ideally, before approaching a large-scale automation project, try to map out the entire ecosystem of processes including the people, systems and devices at work in the background. Start by modernizing high impact processes that affect customers the most. Then design a transformation approach that fits the business or customers needs, rather than your technology stacks requirements.

Handling Automation Projects in Silos

Even though a gradual transformation approach is recommended, it does not mean siloed or without structure. If each team chooses its own tools, it can be hard to effect organization-wide change, or end-to-end process automation. Technology decisions are a commitment for years and sometimes even decades. These decisions and the resulting maintenance affect more than just the current team in the trenches.

As mentioned above, a CoE approach can help break down organizational silos and share best-practices on what has worked or not worked in previous automation projects. Ideally, this group does not dictate arbitrary standards, but maintains a list of approved tools and frameworks that can be reused across the entire company.

Beyond tooling alone, a CoE can also maintain start guides, project templates, and reusable open source components/libraries for teams to leverage. In addition, they can serve as advocates for automation, by running a community to raise awareness for new automation initiatives within the company. Within this framework, more teams can get inspired by the potential for automation within their departments.

Failing to Embrace Microservices Architectures

One important factor to address is the way software is built within the company. Embracing a microservices architecture in a legacy company is easier said than done. Often, there are legacy systems in place that are difficult to unseat.

By one estimate, there are still more than 200 billion lines ofcode written in COBOL, a decades-old programming language. A wholesale replacement of these systems could cost upwards of $US4 to $US8 trillion (or more).

Thats where the gradual transformation approach comes into play. For example, many companies have surface-level automations in place with RPA implementations sitting on top of legacy systems (like those written in COBOL). A good approach for these scenarios would be to go through a modernization in three main stages:

The advantage of a microservices-based automation workflow is that it allows for a decentralized architecture where each team owns its own isolated processes. In the event something goes wrong with a single process, it can be easily controlled and fixed. From there, a process engine can drive these microservices-based processes across the organization, and unify them where it makes sense.

To sum up, end-to-end process orchestration cant happen in a vacuum. Stakeholders from across the organization should be involved, and projects should start small. Without a clear pilot project, large-scale, strategic automation efforts can easily fail to prove their business value. By working together to define priorities, create best-practices, and roll out the technological changes needed, organizations can ensure that end-to-end process automation happens successfully.

To learn much more about process automation, sign up for the virtualCamundaCon 2021event on September 22-23. Jakob Freund is CEO at Camunda, a business process management solution provider.

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3 common process automation mistakes (and how to fix them) - IDM.net.au

With key front-end software in place at most financial advisory firms, the time has come to seize opportunities in the back office. Docupace, which describes itself as the connective tissue for back offices, explains how and why process improvement and automation is central to gains in efficiency and improving a firms overall performance.

Below, in an InvestmentNews Create interview, Ryan George, chief marketing officer at Docupace, discusses how process improvement and automation create lasting enterprise value.

InvestmentNews Create: A passion for process typically is not a hallmark of financial advisory firms. Why is that the case and does it really matter?

Ryan George: Docupace is in the process automation business, so obviously we approach work with a process mindset and care about it a lot. But thats not how others necessarily think, which actually is a good thing. The financial advisory business has done so well because it has always focused on attracting and serving clients by delivering the best possible advice. The processes needed to accomplish that objective are important, obviously, but not an end in themselves. Whats more, success in the financial advice business requires passion about people and helping to solve the problems they face, not on the best way to handle forms. And thats the way it should be. As a result, however, processes at many advisory businesses evolved over time in piecemeal ways, with lots of ad hoc fixes and inconsistencies. It all works, but its not optimal and its risky. Without establishing efficient, consistent and, ultimately, automated processes, financial advisory firms seriously hamper their ability to provide excellent service, as well as to attract and retain advisors and clients. Given todays increasing pressure on margins, process improvement becomes even more imperative.

InvestmentNews Create: Give us a specific example of a process issue that often poses problems.

Ryan George: Account-opening is an evergreen problematic area. With so many different types of accounts that can be opened trust, joint, rollover, etc. there is a staggering number of combinations of forms or approvals that may be required. Without establishing and then rigorously following a standardized procedure for each account opening, firms are inviting errors and omissions that can lead to delays, greater liability and costs, and poor service. Automating the processes associated with opening a new account including the use of digital signatures not only speeds an essential task but also ensures that all necessary steps are done completely and in the proper order. Whats more, automation creates a digital track record that is invaluable for management oversight and compliance purposes. The bottom line is that codifying and automating back-office processes not only increases firm efficiency, it results in clients and advisors being more satisfied.

InvestmentNews Create: What other back-office jobs does Docupace technology handle?

Ryan George: At the highest level, our system routes tasks automatically and always provides the correct and necessary documents, so that there are no potentially costly delays or gaps. If firms need help in establishing the pathways for the automated workflow processes we offer, were there to assist based on years of experience in helping to create back-office best practices.

New-account opening, as we mentioned, is one job we handle. And let me mention that along with faster inputting of account data, we provide an advisor transition service that accelerates account transfers. Its a mixture of tech and white glove service that has led to 87% of adviser transitions being completed in less than 60 days.

Since the system sits between a firms customer relationship management software, its turnkey asset management program and its custodian, we serve as the glue that helps integrate everything and create the ecosystem to keep the business running effectively.

Finally, everything is protected with the highest levels of security, permitting safe remote access, redundancy and the ability to operate under emergency conditions.

InvestmentNews Create: Where does enterprise value-creation come in?

Ryan George: As ongoing businesses, broker-dealers and registered investment advisory firms, whether small or large, must be more than the sum of the individual books of business of the advisors in their employ or those affiliated with them. Working in teams and creating standardized elements of service such as a set number of client meetings a year, delivering reports on a scheduled basis and updating financial plans regularly, for instance institutionalize the business and make it less dependent on any one person. For this enterprise value to be truly realized, however, the back office must be integrated into these processes so that work flows smoothly and without error throughout the business.

Repeatable, fee-based business that comes from delivering high-quality service to a growing yet stable client base makes any advisory business valuable and desirable by others. In whatever way a business owner or owners wish to access the value of that business through a sale or merger, for instance, or succession advisory firms that operate efficiently and profitably as a standalone enterprise and not merely an advisors book, carry higher multiples and are more in demand.

InvestmentNews Create: What do top management and owners find most surprising when they decide to automate the back office?

Ryan George: Usually, management anticipates that there will be more than a little reluctance to changing the way the firm deals with paperwork. While its true we often encounter some skepticism at first, its typically a lot less than everyone fears. Our system, which has been updated and modified over the years, has become so intuitive and so specialized for the unique needs of advisory firms that most back-office personnel tell us they feel more productive and more satisfied once they understand what it can do. As one administrative person once told us, Im glad I can stop putting out fires.

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Automating Process: The Key to Efficiency and Value Creation - InvestmentNews

In this interview with Help Net Security, Dr Shreekant Thakkar, Chief Researcher, Secure Systems Research Centre at TII, talks about the ever evolving threat landscape and how automation could improve the way organizations detect and respond to attacks.

As more physical systems get integrated into digital world and more digital edge devices connect to the cloud, security vulnerability will continue to increase dramatically.

Digital technology leaders estimate a 46 per cent increase in attacks on smart homes, enterprises and control systems connected to critical infrastructure as the global cyber threat landscape alters amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

A spurt in deceptive attacks on critical infrastructure elements across the world, especially in Eastern Europe, where these attacks are growing in volume has also been recorded. The most attacked regions include North America, South Asia, and the Middle East possibly due to their increasingly digitalized critical infrastructures. Interestingly, the quality of these attacks is also improving and becoming more sophisticated with each passing week.

According to the outcomes of the virtual Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit 2020, external risk is top of mind for security and risk leaders today. The pandemic and the increased reliance on digital meetings, for instance, created new threat vectors and threat actors took advantage of the urgency and chaotic nature of the changes in working environments to leverage new tactics. Gartner has observed an increase in reports of coronavirus-related business email compromise (BEC) and phishing scams, including SMS phishing (smishing) and credential theft attacks.

Gartner also predicted that deploying agile security solutions to adjust to changing threats was the best way forward. The worlds leading advisory and research company also predicted that by end- 2023, more than 50 per cent of enterprises will have replaced older antivirus products with combined endpoint protection platforms (EPP) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions

At TII and the Secure Systems Research Centre (SSRC) in particular, we are building a global centre of excellence in the development of zero trust end-to-end security and resilience for cyber-physical and autonomous systems. We take a deliberately multi-disciplinary approach that allows us to combine domain knowledge with security and resilience technologies. As a result, we deliver breakthroughs in applied research that benefit society, support smart cities and boost economic development.

Given our mission, we are building a large, state-of-the-art autonomous drone and vehicle testing facility in Abu Dhabi. Scheduled to be fully operational by end of 2021, it will enable our team as well as colleagues across TII to develop and test new innovations.

The research is leading to improvements in system security by leveraging technologies such as for instance, machine learning (ML) and Virtualization.

We are also improving the resilience of smartphones, drones, and other cyber-physical and autonomous systems. This is achieved through using approaches such as mesh networks for resilience.

The work of our researchers at SSRC is focused on a cluster of key domains, from next-generation secure smartphones to autonomous drones. In Secure Smartphones, our key research areas include Secure Sleeves, Secure Thin Phones, and Secure Autonomous Systems.

In Secure Autonomous Computing, the work covers Secure Cloud-based Autonomous Systems, Secure Autonomous Robots (Edge, Fog, Ground Drones), Secure Flight Systems on Chips (SOCs) and Platforms. Likewise, having a secure platform is a must for users, including anyone using a smartphone or a computer. These are just a few areas of focus at present.

Automation has always played a role in cybersecurity for instance, consider basic antivirus software. The pandemic of course, served as a tipping point of sorts in accelerating its adoption. Verizons 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report highlights that 85 per cent of breaches in 2020 involved a human element. Phishing accounted for the majority of the breaches via social engineering, with cloud-based email servers becoming a target of choice.

In todays highly sophisticated threat environment, automation is integral to our overall approach to cybersecurity. We must ensure that we are using automation, as well as machine learning and artificial intelligence, to simplify and accelerate our ability to respond to attacks because we simply have no room for human error anymore. Nor can automation in cybersecurity be an afterthought today it needs to be a forethought!

Only by doing so, can we reduce the pressure and complexity involved in detecting and responding to attacks as our adversaries become more innovative.

When these adversaries can scale their resources simply, exponentially and inexpensively by adding more computing power, clearly the solution is not adding human resources.

Automation is a no-brainer when it comes to staying on top of cyber risks in the 21st century threat landscape.

Some questions we need to ask however, with regard to automation include:

Automation and Al-enabled cybersecurity tools allow Security Operations Centres to respond faster to attacks with deeper insights, enabling the organization to reduce risks by keeping pace with the volume and sophistication of todays advanced threats.

According to a recent PwC report on the cyber-threat landscape, 64 per cent of the CISOs and CIOs surveyed expect a jump in reportable ransomware and software supply chain incidents in H2 2021.

Clearly, a spike is coming given our ever-growing reliance on digitalization. The same report notes that mobile and internet-of-things technologies along with the cloud are expected to be the fastest-growing threat vectors. Many CISOs and CIOs (29%) expect coordinated, organized nation-state attacks to surge this year. Cybercriminals edge out nation states as top threat actors among 31 per cent of respondents.

We need to sharpen our threat modelling capabilities with creativity and imagination. Effective threat modeling doesnt happen just once, and it shouldnt focus only on known methods of attack.

We also need to assess cyber-threats often and build resilience one step at a time. Above all, we need a concerted approach fragmented infrastructures are likely to collapse at the first sign of a threat.

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The role of automation in staying on top of the evolving threat landscape - Help Net Security

Leading US drone safety technology company Iris Automation and 65-year old German aviation supply firm Becker Avionics are teaming up to develop new detection and avoidance solutions that allow piloted aircraft and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAV) to identify potential collision risks and steer clear of them.

The pair say theyre fusing their respective talents into new technology that enhances situational awareness and ensures the safety of all aerial vehicles using it. Their plan is to harness the power of computer vision and machine learning in a product that will be able to detect nearing aircraft beyond the pilots range of sight; establish the degree of risk involved; and issue audio warnings and provide optimal avoidance measures to be taken.

That effort will match Iris Automations Casia spot-and-circumvent assets with Becker Avionics advanced communication and navigation equipment. The pair plan on making the product available to aircraft carrying people to avoid other planes, as well as nearby uncrewed drones. Operators of UAV will also be able to use the asset to navigate clear of potential collisions.

Their objective is to offer a dual opto-electric and audio system that can monitor airspace in visual flight conditions independent of the radio-based signaling systems often on board aircraft. That is intended to enhance a pilots situational awareness generally, and particularly during moments of visual distraction like scanning flight instruments or checking other craft details.

Meanwhile, by providing external aircraft scanning in areas beyond the pilots field of sight, the Iris-Becker tech aims to provide detection alerts before risks become too dangerous, and thereby leave crew more time to undertake advised avoidance measures. That, the partners say, will improve flight safety without loading additional monitoring responsibilities on pilots.

Partnering with an innovator like Iris Automation will allow our customers to exploit advanced technology to fly safer, especially as airspace congestion increases, says Becker Avionics chairman RollandBecker. Client interest in this kind of solution is very high, and our ability to service both their cockpit and remote pilot safety needs is unique in the industry.

This relationship is a pivotal move for Iris Automation as it defines and accelerates our work in the general aviation space, agreesJon Damush, CEO of Iris Automation. Our core mission is to improve air safety by avoiding collisions and this extension of our technology is a natural evolution. We are excited to be able to work with one of the most storied brands in the industry to deliver this important innovation.

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 1,450 near mid-air collisions were reported from 2016 to 2020, with 82% of all mid-air collisions occurring from behind. When it goes to market, the Iris-Becker detection and avoidance intends to provide eyes not only in front of and behind craft, but also farther than pilots themselves can see.

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Iris Automation, Becker Avionics team up in enhanced detection and avoidance project for planes, UAV - DroneDJ

E-commerce has become a fast-growing factor in Americas retail landscape, and thus so have the warehouses where goods are fulfilled. This has required a hiring spree in warehouses, but also a hunger from e-commerce firms to cut said labor costs through automation. This has led for now to the rise of cobotsor collaborative robotsthat help human workers track down and package deliveries. But it seems that the long-term goal is full automation.

Prologis, the worlds largest industrial real estate company, says automating operations can drastically reduce costs while speeding delivery. A company analysis finds that automation could produce a 20% productivity boost without acquiring additional landa critical need for firms dealing with strict land use rules. The REIT claims that in its own warehouses, automation rolled out several years ahead of schedule, out of necessity from the Covid labor shortage.

Amazon, too, is at the forefront of the race. The dominant e-commerce provider has been automating its processing facilities, most notably through the deployment of Kiva robots, which were built by a firm the company acquired in 2012. These robots deliver items to workers, who then just need to package goods, enabling more shipments to be packaged per hour. The company rapidly adopted the technology, growing its fleet to double its size from 2014 to 2015. By early 2020, Amazon had 200,000 robots in its warehouses. TechRepublic credits warehouse automation as crucial for meeting the companys demanding performance metrics.

GXO Logistics, another major U.S. warehouse firm, also makes use of robotics. The firm boasts that one robot assembles 60,000 packages daily. According to Supply Chain Dive, GXOs use of robotics grew fivefold from 2019 to 2020 alone, and automated processes aided in a quarter of online transactions.

It is not just these big companies. SelectHub projects that robotic-equipped warehouses will number 50,000 by the mid-2020s; and that its market size will double between 2020-2026 to $30 billion. A Harvard Business School analysis describes why automation is so beneficial to the e-commerce sector.

On costs, Amazon had very thin margins of 1.7% net margins in 2016, and fulfillment costs are a large part of expenses at 13.4% of operating expenses. Any improvements in warehousing costs can make a big difference in profits.

All the same, delivery delays harm an e-commerce company. I wrote for Catalyst in June about how Amazon currently struggles to achieve its same-day delivery promise in many markets. There are multiple reasons, but faster processing would be one thing that could get the company there. Malcolm Wilson, executive for GXO, agrees about the benefits of automation, claiming that what used to be a five-day logistics process is now down to one day or less.

Among the actual robots and cobots being used include automated guided vehicles that move packages around warehouse floors; and automated storage and retrieval systems. A YouTube video of an Amazon smart warehouse shows everything from high-speed conveyor belts, Kiva bots rolling along floors, and robotic arms that lift packages weighing thousands of pounds. CNBC reports that one robot is even being developed for employees to summon and pick up goods in real time.

Amazon said these types of robots could take over workers tasks of moving empty packages across facilities so they can focus on activities requiring critical thinking skills and reduce physically strenuous work, reported CNBC.

Automation has not yet caused extreme job cuts within warehouses, but that is the goalalbeit a distant one. In 2019, Amazons robotics director said it would take at least a decade to achieve total warehouse automation. But one fully-automated facility already exists in Shanghai. The factory was developed by Tokyo-based startup Mujin, and is operated by Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com. At 40,000sqft, it would normally employ 500 people, but instead needs just 5 people to manage the robots.

The path to this level of automation in America will not be seamless; Prologis notes that the cost of building out automated facilities can exceed conventional construction by 4-5 times. Still, industry observers see it as crucial to boosting productivity in an era when e-commerce demands are intense, and it is becoming harder and harder to find blue-collar workers.

This article featured additional reporting from Market Urbanism Report content manager Ethan Finlan.

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The Future of the Warehouse is Automated - Catalyst

Kennebunk High School graduate Alex Jones isn't looking to make his Biddeford-basedag-tech startupthe next unicorn. His company, Farmhand Automation, doesn't need a billion-dollar valuation to achieve the kind of scale he has in mind.

Jones said the end goals he and his team are pursuing with their battery-powered farming robots include supporting sustainable growth for small and mid-sized local farms. That, he said, would empower smaller growers toparticipate more fully in food distribution systems, which are currentlydesigned for and dominated by large-scale farming operations.

"Our baked-in mission is to advance the decentralization of sustainable agriculture across the United States," he said. "That is really what we are focused on."

As a public benefit corporation,Farmhand Automation is a business with an additional charter that outlines its mission, Jones said. And that mission has been attracting financial backing from a variety of sources.

The company, which was founded in 2019,raised nearly $500,000 from "passionate angel investors" both locally and across the countryand matching funds from theMaine Technology Institute, Jones said. That allowed the company to spend two years of development with a team of about three people, he said.

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Last month, Farmhand Automation was announced as a winner of a $250,000 grant through theMaine Clean Energy Innovation Challenge, which is a joint initiative of MTI and the governor's energy office. The company aims to raise another $500,000 for the next phase of its work, Jones said, so the team can add three positions:a systems engineer, a software developer to focus on customer-facing applications, and a second mechanical engineer to focus on the tools the Farmhand Automation robots will use.

Jones said the company is focusing onautomatingthree key farming tasks: weeding, planting and soil cleanup. (Harvesting remains a more challenging task to automate, he said.) The top focus right now is on weeding.

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The current design, which looks something like a Mars rover that travels up and down rows of vegetables, marks locations of where to place plants and records those positions using GPS that way, when the robot comes through to agitate the soil around the plants without disturbing the plants themselves, it can do so without using sight technology, Jones said.

"We're trying to create a robot that is not any faster than a person, at this point. It drives at walking speed. It moves tools around the same level a person would. And what we want to do is ... we want to price this in such a way that your annual cost on this thing for the first five to seven years is going to be about the cost of a part-time laborer."

Although the robots are still being designed and built, Farmhand Automation has set a target price of $25,000 for a base model, which is the same cost as an entry-level tractor, Jones said. With a bank loan, farmers would pay off the robot in five to seven years, with a plan to keep using it for a total of 20 years, he said, likening the business model to that used for solar energy investments.

When asked about the impact these robots would have on farmworkers, Jones said the idea is to facilitate an alternative to the realities of industrial farming that underliethetypical American grocery-shopping experience.

"The general person's food experience is being driven by underpaid, imported labor, (a situation) that is completely unethical. And we don't really have structures around that to resolve that issue," he said.

If more local farmers can produce more crops, then perhaps local produce can account for a much greater percentage of the food Americans consume, Jones said.

"There's a fundamental scaling problem that we need to solve here," he said. "My argument is I don't want more farmhands in the world;I want more farmers."

By automating the back-breaking and monotonous parts of farming, robots could help to support the local food movement as it looks for ways to expand beyond the saturated farmer's market distribution model, he added.

"We don't have enough farms operating in large-enough scale that canreach enough people to make the local food movement work, and I think that is something the local food movement is trying to grapple with," he said. "There is a shift going on right now where the local food movement is starting to identify that it has mostly been based off of this mostly bucolic idea of farming, that it's a beautiful past-time kind of thing. And it's just not. It's a business, like anything else, and it's arguably a lot like manufacturing, where you've got to do a lot of the same thing all the time, and you've got to get it out to people on time and with high quality. Those are the pressures people who actually get into farming start to face."

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Jones was quick to point out that Farmhand Automation isn't the only company building robots to help farmers grow their crops. And he's not entirely sure what solution or solutions may ultimately work for small and mid-sized farms. But he said he's happy to be pushing in a promising direction.

Those interested in contacting the team or leaning more can visitFarmhandAutomation.com.

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Farmhand Automation: How Maine ag-tech startup hopes to empower local farmers with robots - Seacoastonline.com

Ask for a roast beef sandwich at an Arbys drive-thru east of Los Angeles and you may be talking to Tori an artificially intelligent voice assistant that will take your order and send it to the line cooks.

It doesnt call sick, says Amir Siddiqi, whose family installed the AI voice at its Arbys franchise this year in Ontario, California. It doesnt get corona. And the reliability of it is great.

The pandemic didnt just threaten Americans health when it slammed the U.S. in 2020 -- it may also have posed a long-term threat to many of their jobs.

Faced with worker shortages and higher labor costs, companies are starting to automate service sector jobs that economists once considered safe, assuming that machines couldnt easily provide the human contact they believed customers would demand.

Past experience suggests that such automation waves eventually create more jobs than they destroy, but that they also disproportionately wipe out less skilled jobs that many low-income workers depend on. Resulting growing pains for the U.S. economy could be severe.

If not for the pandemic, Siddiqi probably wouldnt have bothered investing in new technology that could alienate existing employees and some customers. But its gone smoothly, he says: Basically, theres less people needed but those folks are now working in the kitchen and other areas.

Ideally, automation can redeploy workers into better and more interesting work, so long as they can get the appropriate technical training, says Johannes Moenius, an economist at the University of Redlands. But although thats happening now, its not moving quickly enough, he says.

Worse, an entire class of service jobs created when manufacturing began to deploy more automation may now be at risk. The robots escaped the manufacturing sector and went into the much larger service sector, he says. I regarded contact jobs as safe. I was completely taken by surprise.

Improvements in robot technology allow machines to do many tasks that previously required people -- tossing pizza dough, transporting hospital linens, inspecting gauges, sorting goods. The pandemic accelerated their adoption. Robots, after all, cant get sick or spread disease. Nor do they request time off to handle unexpected childcare emergencies.

Economists at the International Monetary Fund found that past pandemics had encouraged firms to invest in machines in ways that could boost productivity -- but also kill low-skill jobs. Our results suggest that the concerns about the rise of the robots amid the COVID-19 pandemic seem justified, they wrote in a January paper.

The consequences could fall most heavily on the less-educated women who disproportionately occupy the low- and mid-wage jobs most exposed to automation -- and to viral infections. Those jobs include salesclerks, administrative assistants, cashiers and aides in hospitals and those who take care of the sick and elderly.

Employers seem eager to bring on the machines. A survey last year by the nonprofit World Economic Forum found that 43% of companies planned to reduce their workforce as a result of new technology. Since the second quarter of 2020, business investment in equipment has grown 26%, more than twice as fast as the overall economy.

The fastest growth is expected in the roving machines that clean the floors of supermarkets, hospitals and warehouses, according to the International Federation of Robotics, a trade group. The same group also expects an uptick in sales of robots that provide shoppers with information or deliver room service orders in hotels.

Restaurants have been among the most visible robot adopters. In late August, for instance, the salad chain Sweetgreen announced it was buying kitchen robotics startup Spyce, which makes a machine that cooks up vegetables and grains and spouts them into bowls.

Its not just robots, either -- software and AI-powered services are on the rise as well. Starbucks has been automating the behind-the-scenes work of keeping track of a stores inventory. More stores have moved to self-checkout.

Scott Lawton, CEO of the Arlington, Virginia-based restaurant chain Bartaco, was having trouble last fall getting servers to return to his restaurants when they reopened during the pandemic.

So he decided to do without them. With the help of a software firm, his company developed an online ordering and payment system customers could use over their phones. Diners now simply scan a barcode at the center of each table to access a menu and order their food without waiting for a server. Workers bring food and drinks to their tables. And when theyre done eating, customers pay over their phones and leave.

The innovation has shaved the number of staff, but workers arent necessarily worse off. Each Bartaco location there are 21 now has up to eight assistant managers, roughly double the pre-pandemic total. Many are former servers, and they roam among the tables to make sure everyone has what they need. They are paid annual salaries starting at $55,000 rather than hourly wages.

Tips are now shared among all the other employees, including dishwashers, who now typically earn $20 an hour or more, far higher than their pre-pandemic pay. We dont have the labor shortages that youre reading about on the news, Lawton says.

The uptick in automation has not stalled a stunning rebound in the U.S. jobs market -- at least so far.

The U.S. economy lost a staggering 22.4 million jobs in March and April 2020, when the pandemic gale hit the U.S. Hiring has since bounced back briskly: Employers have brought back 17 million jobs since April 2020. In June, they posted a record 10.1 million job openings and are complaining that they cant find enough workers.

Behind the hiring boom is a surge in spending by consumers, many of whom got through the crisis in unexpectedly good shape financially -- thanks to both federal relief checks and, in many cases, savings accumulated by working from home and skipping the daily commute.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys Analytics, expects employers are likely to be scrambling for workers for a long time.

For one thing, many Americans are taking their time returning to work -- some because theyre still worried about COVID-19 health risks and childcare problems, others because of generous federal unemployment benefits, set to expire nationwide Sept. 6.

In addition, large numbers of Baby Boom workers are retiring. The labor market is going to be very, very tight for the foreseeable future, Zandi says.

For now, the short-term benefits of the economic snapback are overwhelming any job losses from automation, whose effects tend to show up gradually over a period of years. That may not last. Last year, researchers at the University of Zurich and University of British Columbia found that the so-called jobless recoveries of the past 35 years, in which economic output rebounded from recessions faster than employment, could be explained by the loss of jobs vulnerable to automation.

Despite strong hiring since the middle of last year, the U.S. economy is still 5.3 million jobs short of what it had in February 2020. And Lydia Boussour, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, calculated last month that 40% of the missing jobs are vulnerable to automation, especially those in food preparation, retail sales and manufacturing.

Some economists worry that automation pushes workers into lower-paid positions. Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University estimated in June that up to 70% of the stagnation in U.S. wages between 1980 and 2016 could be explained by machines replacing humans doing routine tasks.

Many of the jobs that get automated were at the middle of the skill distribution, Acemoglu says. They dont exist anymore, and the workers that used to perform them are now doing lower-skill jobs.

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Do we need humans for that job? Automation booms after COVID - USA TODAY

LONDON and AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Conceived as a secure and robust robotic process automation (RPA) tool, Blue Prism has had a successful history as a trusted automation partner with financial institutions, from retail banking to wealth management. Twenty years later, its leading enterprise intelligent automation platform is delivering substantial business value in multiple industry verticalsacross Forbes Global 2,000 and mid-marketbusinesses.

Blue Prism's success across industry verticals can be attributed to a strong focus on addressing the most important industry-specific business drivers with automation, for greatest impact.In energy and utilities, Blue Prism's intelligent automation platform is helping improve, among other things, customer experience, contact center operations, outbound customer service and the use of omni-channel virtual agents.

This sharp focus on industry solutions has contributed to Blue Prism's substantial growth, particularly within industries such as energy and utilities, the public sector, and manufacturing.

"As part of their transformation programs, companies and organizations in each industry are looking at automation as a way to improveefficiency, quality, service innovation, workers' effectiveness, visibility into operations performance, auditability, compliance and risk management," says Roberta Bigliani, group vice president, head of insights, IDC Europe. "Companies are on the journey to more extensively apply automation for value creation across multiple areas: in customer operations and engagement, citizen and patient experience; in core business processes, from the underwriting process in insurance, to tax management, or payment management; and in asset operations being factories, networks, pipelines, facilities or other physical and financial assets."

In Insurance, Blue Prism continues to break new ground, using intelligent automation to streamline the entire customer experience, from quotes to underwriting, mid-term adjustments, renewals, and customer service.

In utilities, Blue Prism is working with prominent businesses such as Consolidated Edison, Inc., one of the largest investor-owned energy-delivery companies in the United States, to help realize improvements across the front and back office, including areas such as customer operations, supply chain, and finance. With dozens of automations in production, intelligent automation has proven a key component in supporting Consolidated Edison's goal of delivering safe, reliable, quality service at the lowest attainable cost for its customers.

Jack Deem, finance director at Consolidated Edison, said:"Blue Prism intelligent automation is becoming increasingly utilized across our organization and is a key factor in driving operational efficiency and effectiveness. By reducing the time our people spend on repetitive, manual tasks, we are able to redeploy the hours saved to both achieve bottom-line cost savings as well as invest additional time in value-added analytical activities."

In healthcare too, intelligent automation is creating new patient engagement models that have been critical in addressing digital transformation. Blue Prism solutions have played an important role in the fight against COVID-19. Areas of deployment include patient scheduling, remote consultations, logistics and supply management, vaccine management, and many more.

In manufacturing, a successful growth area for Blue Prism, an American agricultural machinery manufacturer has future-proofed its business using the robotic operating model (ROM). The company has automated over 60 processes, returning more than 94,000 work hours to the business every year and has deployed Blue Prism digital workers in finance, purchasing, HR, manufacturing, marketing, and IT.

In telecommunications, British Telecom (BT) has used Blue Prism as its service provider of choice to roll out over 400 automations across the business.In one instance, it has stabilized the demand on contact centers impacted by the pandemic by using automation to deploy a fault diagnostics robot, providing an entirely new digital channel for its customers to reach BT. Customers can communicate issues to BT's robot via text, automatically trigger diagnostic checks, and book an engineer visit to investigate the issue.

"I see BT becoming a more interesting place to work. We'll be a much more responsive organization," said Christian Smart, head of process automation, BT. "Using Blue Prism's digital workers, we'll be able to do what we do faster, which will lead to hugely improved customer experience and, ultimately, shareholder value."

Now an integral component for digital transformation, Blue Prism's industry specific solutions are proving their versatility and importance in driving key strategic business outcomes.

Notes to editors:

Blue Prism is a global leader inenterprise robotic process automation (RPA) andintelligent automation, transforming the way work is done. We have over 2,000 customers in over 170 countries and 70 industry verticals, 30%intheForbes Global 2,000,creating value with new ways of working by unlocking efficiencies and returning millions of hours of work back into their businesses.Our enterprise digitalrobots offer high-scale automation that is secure, smart,accessible toall,enabling centrally managed human and digital workforces of the future and freeing up humans to re-imagine work.To learn more visitwww.blueprism.comand follow us on Twitter@blue_prismand onLinkedIn.

2021 Blue Prism Limited. "Blue Prism", the "Blue Prism" logo and Prism device are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Blue Prism Limited and its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

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Blue Prism Sees Growing Demand for Its Intelligent Automation Across All Industry Sectors - inForney.com

Red Hat shared that leading banks such as Alliance Bank (Malaysia) and the Asian Development Bank (Philippines) have adopted Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform as its enterprise-grade, agentless automation platform in their journey to the cloud. Both these financial institutions represent examples of early adopters for infrastructure automation technology to support business growth while increasing resiliency and reliability.

Application modernization is among todays top IT priorities. According to a 2020 Forrester report commissioned by Red Hat, automation is also an organizational necessity; three out of five respondents reported automation as one of their firms top initiatives, even amid competing priorities like adoption of cloud, containers and security management.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, together with Red Hat OpenShift, provides a powerful, scalable platform for this transformation. With dynamic global challenges requiring rapid adjustments in operational domains and environments, automation projects help mitigate the complexity that these conditions produce and provide faster responses to changing business requirements.

ADB and Alliance Bank are examples of financial services organizations in Southeast Asia that are deploying Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to automate repetitive and manual tasks, orchestrate complex workflows, improve processes and offer agility to deploy applications faster with fewer human interventions.

Bringing together teams for improved collaboration, these new services and offerings ultimately connect business managers with automation leaders to better align automation strategies with the needs of the business and expand how automation can be used.

These Southeast Asian banks are using automation to innovate and transform their businesses:

2021 has demonstrated that organizations need to accelerate, rather than pause, their digital transformation efforts. A key part of this journey should be network automation, which allows users to manage policy, enforcement and processes at the domain level. Several financial organizations in ASEAN are deploying Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to automate applications and IT infrastructure, while providing a simple language to help facilitate DevOps practices. Automation allows organizations to architect intelligently with their existing infrastructure, while bringing legacy IT toward a cloud-native future, said Josep Garcia, vice president and general manager for growth and emerging markets, Red Hat.

As Alliance Bank competes in a fast-moving and dynamic financial services marketplace, automation increasingly becomes an essential component of our cloud infrastructure. Red Hat OpenShift includes built-in automation capabilities that help our teams focus on creating and updating valuable services. By expanding our automation capabilities, we can free up our resources to implement new processes and applications and to upscale. This supports our overarching goal of delivering banking the Alliance Way: to be more empathetic to customers needs and deliver innovative digital solutions that are fast, simple, and responsive, said Ken Yong, Head, group transformation office, Alliance Bank Malaysia Berhad.

ADB was looking into technological solutions to improve operations efficiency and effectiveness by automating repetitive tasks. As we use both public and private clouds, we needed a solution that would allow us to provision our infrastructure like a tap turn it on, higher, or off as needed. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform allows us to build secure infrastructure thats supported with automation. Ansible also gives us a common language, documentation and developer toolset to make the process more efficient. Now, Ansible is our common language for orchestration in CI/CD for infrastructure as code. This ultimately frees up bandwidth for our people to innovate, and better focus on serving ADBs members and partners in order to promote social and economic development, said Krista Lozada, senior IT specialist (innovation & engineering), Asian Development Bank.

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Asian Development Bank and Alliance Bank choose Red Hat platform to better align automation strategies - Help Net Security