Category Archives: Automation

Democrats tackled several issues on the debate stage Tuesday night that had previously gone untouched. One of those was automation the idea that robots and technology will replace workers and destroy jobs.

It prompted a confusing discussion about whether automation is actually killing jobs or whether free trade policies are. And it didnt offer up much of a clear answer.

CNN moderator Erin Burnett cited a study predicting that a quarter of US jobs will be lost from automation, then asked a few of the candidates what they would do to prevent such job losses.

Sen. Bernie Sanders said guaranteeing a federally funded job for every person is one solution. Andrew Yang pointed to his universal basic income plan. But things got testy when the moderator turned to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who downplayed the impact of automation on jobs:

The reason is bad trade policy. The reason has been a bunch of giant multinational corporations who have been calling the shots on trade. Giant multinational corporations that have no loyalty to America. They have no loyalty to American workers. They have no loyalty to American consumers. They have no loyalty to American communities. They are loyal only to their own bottom line. I have a plan to fix that. Its accountable capitalism. You want to have one of the giant corporations in America? Then 40 percent of your board of directors should be elected by your employees. That will make a difference when a corporation decides, We could save a nickel by moving a job to Mexico.

Yang didnt like that answer. His entire campaign for universal basic income is based on the idea that robots will take away everyones livelihood.

Senator Warren, I have been talking to Americans around the country about automation. They are smart. They see whats happening around them. The stores are closing, Yang responded. They see a self-serve kiosk in every grocery store, every CVS. Driving a truck is the most common job in 29 states, 3.5 million truck drivers in this country. My friends are piloting self-driving trucks.

Whether or not machines or free trade are responsible for destroying US jobs is an understandable disagreement. Economists have been having this same discussion for decades, ever since President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, which opened up free trade between Canada, Mexico, and the United States for the first time.

Heres the truth: Neither automation nor trade policies are responsible for overall job losses in the past few decades, generally speaking. But globalization (a.k.a. free trade) is more to blame for the decline of manufacturing jobs in the US than automation is.

Another thing: No one has any clue how many future jobs may be lost to automation; the estimates vary wildly and the methodology for trying to guess is questionable.

Lets break it down.

The reason why so many people say robots will take our jobs one day is because thats what economists and politicians have believed for the longest time. They worried that subway ticket machines would cause mass unemployment in the transportation industry. They also worried that concrete mixers would lead to fewer construction jobs. Those fears never materialized.

In the 1990s and 2000s (post-NAFTA), there was a sharp decline in factory jobs and it coincided with a huge surge in productivity. So factories were producing more or the same, but with far fewer workers. That led economists to believe that technology was displacing workers and creating more efficiencies that, in turn, made factories more productive with fewer employees. But they could never prove that automation was the direct cause.

Recent research suggests this theory of displacement is wrong. A 2018 study by economist Susan Houseman at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research explains that the surge in productivity has been limited to the computer and electronics industry.

Without the computer industry, there is no prima facie evidence that productivity caused manufacturings relative and absolute employment decline, Houseman writes. In her paper, she also reviewed the latest research on the subject and concluded that trade significantly contributed to the collapse of manufacturing employment in the 2000s, but finds little evidence of a causal link to automation.

Just take a look at NAFTA. In the US, NAFTA didnt lower overall US wages as some feared, but it was linked to lower wages in some manufacturing jobs. The trade deal was also directly responsible for the loss of more than 840,000 US factory jobs, most of which were moved to Mexico. Just last year, Ford announced it was closing one of its auto factories and opening another one in Mexico.

US companies are still doing this because factory workers in Mexico are still making poverty wages.

Economists Scott Andes and Mark Muro at Brookings also point out that other countries with high productivity growth in recent decades havent seen a similar steep decline in manufacturing jobs as the US has seen.

The evidence suggests there is essentially no relationship between the change in manufacturing employment and robot use, they write.

This helps explain why no one seems to agree on how many jobs will disappear in the future.

Study after study is published every year warning the public about the looming threat of robots. The McKinsey consulting firm estimates that automation could kill 73 million US jobs in the next 10 years. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates 13.6 million lost US jobs. Nearly a dozen separate studies say it could be anywhere from 3 million to 80 million. Thats a huge difference.

Yet the headlines that follow are always a variation of Robots are coming for your job.

But these studies are flawed, mostly because they depend on surveys of managers and business owners. They are usually asked to guess how many of the jobs at their business will likely be replaced by machines in the near future. Their answers are often just that: a guess.

Often, the studies try to predict market trends that are impossible to predict.

I have dedicated my career to worrying about the labor market. ... I am not worried about this, Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute told Voxs Joss Fong.

So will a quarter of all US jobs really disappear, as one of the debate moderators suggested?

No one has a damn clue.

Excerpt from:

Democratic debate: The fight about automation and job losses, explained - Vox.com

As a finalist for the Google Premier Partner awards, I recently had the chance to visit Googles campus in NYC. There, I spoke to a Googler about the state of agencies and he lamented the fact that a large wave of PPC agencies that got their start during the last economic downturn in 2008 are still managing accounts like they did 10 years ago hardly a strategy for success when we might be on the verge of another economic slowdown.

Considering how much Google Ads has changed in the past decade, it stands to reason that successful account management should also have evolved dramatically.

My friend and industry pioneer Andrew Goodman recently put this idea of agencies not keeping up with the times in slightly different terms and wrote that self-proclaimed PPC experts dont keep up with the nuances of all thats changed in Google Ads because they settle for good-enough rather than going for greatness.

So what follows are my thoughts on how to whip your PPC management skills into great shape for 2020 and beyond. The core idea is that using automations from Google is inevitable, so if you want more control, you can regain it by layering your own strategies on top of Googles through a concept I call automation layering.

Back in 2007, Google launched Conversion Optimizer which helped advertisers with at least 300 conversions over a 30 day period reach a CPA target for their ads. Today that strategy is called Target CPA and requires 20 times fewer conversions (15) to achieve similar results.

There are now also about 11 types of bid management strategies to choose from. Some, like Target CPA and Maximize Conversions almost seem like different flavors of the same thing, showing that things have progressed far enough that the differences in strategy can be down to nuanced differences in goals. It takes serious know-how to make sense of all those strategies and how they interact with manual controls such as bid adjustments.

The point is that there has been a lot of progress in automation for bids. And thats not even to speak of automations in creatives, targeting, etc.

The creep of automation into all areas of PPC will continue unabated due to two driving forces:

So please, figure out how automation fits into your business plan. Too often I hear its something people are too busy to figure out right now. We might get to it another day, they say Well duh! If you used some automation you might actually have time to get strategic about your own business, and maybe even for the clients who pay your bills.

Even if you dont live in California like I do, youve probably read that PG&E, the utility company, turned off power to 800,000 customers to prevent catastrophic wildfires due to aging and poorly maintained transmission lines to avoid the type of wildfire that destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018. What does this have to do with PPC? Well, it showed me how bad people are at long-term thinking and planning.

Now that the powers gone out, all of a sudden everyones upset at PG&E because households are in the dark. And while the utility company is certainly not blameless, theyve been advising customers for months that this likely would happen. But until the warnings turned into reality, few consumers took time to prepare.

Google executives, industry bloggers and industry peers have all been saying that automation is coming to disrupt us. And yet too few agencies heed the warnings and will wait until its too late to change.

So if its inevitable that automation is here to stay, a modern account manager better figure out how to make it part of their routine. But if for some reason, you still believe that you can compete against automation and win, listen to this advice from Hal Varian, Googles Chief Economist.

He said:

If you are looking for a career where your services will be in high demand, you should find something where you provide a scarce, complementary service to something that is getting ubiquitous and cheap. So whats getting ubiquitous and cheap? Data. And what is complementary to data? Analysis.

You know whats getting ubiquitous in PPC? Automation. Many of these automations are not just cheap, theyre free and available to all takers in Googles own Ads management interface. Sounds exactly like the type of thing Varian was talking about. Heeding his advice, to me it seems smarter to become a great complement to automation than to fight it by continuing to do the same old things manually.

The reality of PPC automations is that results vary from one advertiser to the next so not everyone will see case-study-worthy results when deploying the latest Google smart feature. But on average, automated tools deliver better results with less effort, so if you find yourself as an outlier whos not successful, you have to first determine why. Then you can plan a strategy to get on the right side of the averages.

For now a lot of the automation we see solves very narrow problems. There is one system for automating bids, another for optimizing ads, and yet another for matching those ads to likely prospects. The role of the agency is to piece the right solutions together and ensure they work well together. For a more in-depth look at this, check out my post about how the wrong combination of automations can destroy an account.

Through the example of making the mistake of using an attribution model like last-click that wont work well with other automations, it should be clear that the results of automation can be extremely dependent on the knowledge and skill of the account manager. If you dont see the results others are achieving, consider that the fault may not be with the tool but with the person using the tool.

As someone who builds PPC tools for a living, I know that even if the user is to blame for bad results, its still the tool creators problem. A tool that is amazing at automating ad testing is useless if its too difficult for the average advertiser to use without making mistakes. But the best advertisers dont let shortcomings of technology get in their way and will work to produce amazing results with whats out there.

Theres this interesting cycle that tools from Google often seem to go through. They start out manual, then become automated, and eventually, some new controls are added. In essence, this turns the automation into a new type of manual tool.

Bid management is a good example. First, we managed CPCs and bid adjustments manually. Then it became automated as a smart bidding strategy like target ROAS. But then Google added the ability to set ad group level targets, mobile bid adjustments, and seasonality bid adjustments. If you will, the automated target ROAS bid strategy is pretty manual if you consider all the settings you can now control.

Just the mere fact that there are several settings and controls for automated tools should be a dead giveaway that the automations can be optimized if advertisers are motivated enough.

I recently asked advertisers the last time they had an account with a single CPC bid. Or the last time they had manual CPC bids that they never changed. The answer for most was: never! Target CPA and target ROAS goals should likewise not be the same for the whole account, nor should they be static. They should be managed for better results, and certainly not treated as a set-it-and-forever-it tool.

Curious why I say target CPA and target ROAS should be monitored and managed rather than left alone? We should do this because there are factors in everyones business that affect conversion rates that Googles prediction systems may not be picking up on. The automation only detects a change in metrics and in its narrow scope of what it can do, may very well use this data to do entirely the wrong thing for the business.

Heres an example that Ive personally encountered Automated bidding one day noticed that conversion rates dropped significantly and so bids were reduced in an effort to maintain the target CPA. As a result of the much lower bids, the advertisers conversion volume went off a cliff and never automatically recovered.

Heres what happened. The bidding automation correctly saw a decline in conversion rate and adjusted bids downwards. But as a dumb automation, it never asked why the conversion rate dropped. The humans knew it was because a new landing page launched. Humans would have known the correct response to this event was to revert back to the previous landing page rather than decrease bids.

Machine learning is bad, very bad at explaining why and how. Show it a picture of a cat, and it knows its a cat. But good luck getting it to explain why its a cat.

In my book on the future of digital marketing, I explain that one of the roles humans need to play is that of PPC pilot, someone who monitors the automations and can make course corrections if bad data is causing bad actions to be taken.

Understand what the machine is doing and make sense of the data it is using to make its decisions. That is pretty much what Hal Varian said in the quote I mentioned before.

If you believe that automation will become even more pervasive in PPC in the future, then it makes sense that we must learn how the automations given to us by the engines work so that we can optimize them by managing their settings.

Its the simple premise that humans + machines are better than machines alone. But I think in PPC theres an additional meaning to that premise. Perhaps the equation should be:

Human (account manager at my company) + machine (automation created by Google) is better than machine alone.

An advertisers worry is not just that the machines are taking over our jobs, but its that the machines are built by Google, who also collects many of our advertising dollars. As an ex-Googler, I trust that Google tries to do the right thing, but theres nothing wrong with wanting some guarantees and putting oversight in place, especially when even Googlers cant really explain exactly how their machine learning automations are arriving at their decisions.

So thats why PPC managers want to be in the equation rather than letting machines do PPC on their own. Humans can monitor the machines decisions and provide corrections and guidance when those decisions appear sub-optimal.

But adding manual human labor to the mix is counterproductive to efficiency and economic growth. Automation would be better. So what account managers should really strive for is to have their own automations to monitor and optimize the automations from the engines. Thats automation layering.

So instead of striving for:

Human + machine

We should strive for:

Advertiser controlled automation + engine controlled automation

But as enthusiastic as marketers are about building their own automation (thanks to everyone whos been downloading my scripts over the years), the truth is it doesnt always come naturally. Thats when third-party tools can be helpful.

They help advertisers control what automations do to their accounts. Ive explained how to use automation layering to monitor and control close variants that can muddle the meaning of exact match keywords. The following graph tries to explain it more conceptually but check out my previous post if you want a more tactical guide.

Close variants allow Google to target ads for exact match keywords (the small circle in the middle) to a much larger set of search terms (the big outer circle). Google is in control of how big they make this outer circle. If they want more revenue, they can literally change some settings in the code to make the circle bigger to make ad auctions more competitive. Advertisers want more certainty and control. So with automation layering where they control the automation, they can scale back the search terms (the dotted circle) to a level they feel comfortable with.

Automation from the engines is already disrupting PPC agencies and will continue to do so more. Anyone whos been coasting and doing PPC like its 2008 needs to come to terms with the fact that this is not a future-proof strategy. Figure out how to bring automation into the mix of what you do. And if you havent because you dont trust it, know that techniques like automation layering can restore some level of control.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

Read more:

PPC automation will disrupt your business, but automation layering will save the day - Search Engine Land

Inside Taylor Farms massive, 120,000-square-foot warehouse in Salinas, California, millions of pounds of lettuce, cabbage and spinach are processed each day. Its loud, and the temperature is kept at 35 degrees, so workers wear earmuffs and multiple layers of clothing.

Vegetables from nearby fields are sent hereto get chopped, washed, dried and packaged. When theyre ready for packing, a yellow robotic arm called a Quik Pick & Pack uses suction to pick up a 5-lbbag of greens and carefully place it in a box with the help of cameras and sensors. This job used to be done by humans.

In another room, nine large robotic arms stack boxes into pallets, which are then shipped off to restaurants, schools and commissaries. Just two years ago, people did the stacking. But now, humanworkers are monitoring the robots.

Ana Gutierrez, an immigrant from Guadalajara, Mexico, has worked for Taylor Farms for 23 years. She has seen big changes in the agriculture industry since she started working in the fields as a teenager in 1984. Back then, she harvested vegetables by hand.

Today, American agriculture businesses are turning to automation using computerized machines to take on tasks in production that used to be done by humans as a way to alleviate a nationwide farmworker shortage. And immigrants like Gutierrez are getting education and training to ensure they wont be left behind.

Gutierrez remembers when she first saw what the robots can do.

I thought that it was something good because I thought it would make work easier, she said.

The work has gotten easier, to an extent: Now, machines do most of the heavy lifting. Gutierrez welcomes the changes and signed up for trainingto learn how to run the robots. But she saidother workers are concerned automation will eliminate the need for their jobs.

I see that many people are worried that this is the future, she said.

As many as 800,000 farmworkers are employed in California, according to some estimates. Automation is changing the way they work. Job security for this largely immigrant workforcehinges on people'sability to change with technology and become a new type of worker, one who is more technically skilled. One survey from the US Department of Agriculture found that 90%of crop workers in California are foreign-born. Many have not completededucation beyond high school.

The machines, they don't run themselves, said Marcus Shebl, vice president of operations at Taylor Farms. We don't want [employees] to feel in any way threatened [by the new technology].We want to bring them along for the ride.

That means major US farm businesses, including Taylor Farms, are investing in preparing their workers.

The turn to automation in the agriculture industry has been spurred, in part, by worker shortages. A recent survey of California farmworkers found that 56%of businesses reported difficulty recruiting workers to harvest and process their crops. Existing farmworkers are getting older, and there isnt a younger generation in the US willing to replace them. Meanwhile, the flow of immigrants from Mexico, historically a major source of farm labor, is decreasing.

To alleviate the shortage, companies have increased wages. But the work both in the field and inside plants is not attractive: Its tedious, difficult and often seasonal. And while more agriculture businesses are usinga visa program that allows them to bring in temporary overseas workers, its not enough.The Trump administrations restrictions on immigration arecompounding the problem, according to industry experts.

Thats where machines and robots come in, said ChristopherValadez, president of the Grower-Shipper Association of Central California.

Automation may be another tool that will help you as the employer get some handle onto these tasks that must be performed in a way where you're not as dependent on labor to perform each and every job, Valadez said.

But there are concerns that automation will displace workers. Crescencio Diaz, president of Teamsters Local 890, a union that represents workers in the Salinas Valley, including at Taylor Farms, said he understands why companies are depending more on technology: Its harder to recruit workers under the Trump administrations anti-immigrant policies, and companies have to stay competitive in a world where consumers demand cheaper goods.

But he is skeptical that automation will create enough new jobs for everyone.

They will eliminate hundreds,thousands of jobs.

There's going to be a job for two or three mechanics, five or six technicians, but that's about it, he said. I mean, they will eliminate hundreds,thousands of jobs.

Shebl said no Taylor Farms employees have lost their jobs because of automation. Instead, he said, jobs are changing.

Related:Automation could have a disproportionate effect on women's jobs

Agriculture researchers and industry experts say education is one way to ensure workers are not left behind. Some companies are providing in-house training and development, while colleges and universities are creating programs to help students of all experience levels.

Automation is happening about four times as fast as we can keep up within education, said Clint Cowden, dean of career technical education and workforce development at Hartnell College, a community college located four miles from the Taylor Farms processing plant.

Cowden said the college educatestwo primary groups of people. Theres the younger generation thatis being introduced to computer and plant science for the first time. Then there are programs for experienced farmworkers, who are learning electric theory and basic hydraulics.

So when the plant changes, we don't have to do a complete retooling of the employee with a complete retraining but only small amounts, to keep them moving forward, Cowden said.

Last year, Taylor Farms created its own training facility next door to its processing plant. The idea is for longtime workers to gain new skills and become operators and technicians.

Matias Ramrez, director of facilities and automation at Taylor Farms, recently conducted a training on automation. About 25 workers sat behind long desks while listening tohim go through a powerpoint in Spanish. Afterward, these employees took a close look at a Quik Pick & Pack, the machine that puts packaged vegetables into boxes.

In the past you rode a bike. Now you drive a car, you better [know how to] check your air pressure, your oil levels, maintain the equipment, Ramreztold them. As we've been through this technology change in our business, you need a lot more tech-savvy people. Or someone that knows the [production] line has been that's been there for a long time that could adapt to a more tech-savvy piece of equipment.

Gutierrez wants to be one of those workers who can adapt. Though she never went to college,she said she likes to learn and wants to keep training.

It wasnt difficult learning about the new robots, she said. Because Ive seen how they work, and I can learn by watching.

At age 50, Gutierrez is now an operator, manning the Quik Pick & Pack robot and another machine that puts the vegetables in a bag. She makes about $22 per hour.

The pay isnt a big jump, considering shes been at the company for more than two decades. She started at Taylor Farms making $11 an hour. But her job today is less physically demanding, and she said she sees herself working for the company for a long time.

Gutierrez said she wants to keep looking ahead.

I want to learn, I want to move forward, I dont want to get stuck, she said. If you set your mind on something, you can achieve them, and transform for yourself and your work.

See the original post here:

How immigrant workers are preparing for automation in agriculture - PRI

A customer uses a teller at the redesigned TD Bank branch inside the TD Centre in downtown Toronto. Chris Donovan/The Globe and Mail

Chris Donovan/The Globe and Mail

Technology advances are upending tens of thousands of jobs across the global financial sector, including at Canadas big banks.

As global banks unveiled plans to slash tens of thousands of jobs this year, those in Canada held staffing levels fairly steady. But that doesnt mean this country has been immune to the forces of automation and artificial intelligence that are reshaping banking around the world.

Beneath the surface, there are tectonic shifts under way in the nature of work and the kinds of skills Canadas banks need. Experts predict that as many as a third of all Canadian bank employees face a substantial possibility that their jobs will change meaningfully or in some cases, disappear altogether. In response, bank executives are trying to assuage fears of disruption by focusing on the potential to replace rote tasks with more productive and rewarding work.

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But Canadian banks are also grappling with how to prepare employees for the transition.

All jobs will be impacted, but [for] probably 30 per cent [of them] over the next 10 years, youll see a more significant impact," said Helena Gottschling, Royal Bank of Canadas chief human-resources officer. And what were really looking at is, what does that mean to our employees?

New forms of automation, often driven by advances in artificial intelligence, could render scores of jobs built on repetitive tasks obsolete. An analyst at Wells Fargo Securities recently estimated that 200,000 U.S. banking jobs could be done away with over a decade, mostly in back offices, branches, call centres and corporate functions though new hiring would offset some of those losses. And nearly two thirds operations leaders at banks surveyed by consulting company Accenture PLC last year expect to shed 10 to 30 per cent of middle- and back-office jobs in three years as new technologies take hold.

Aside from taking an occasional restructuring charge, however, banks in Canada have avoided the aggressive cuts undertaken by banks abroad. Global giant HSBC recently reportedly plans to axe 8,000 to 10,000 jobs in an effort to control costs or about 4 per cent of its 238,000 employees. Other global giants, such as Britain-based Barclays PLC, Spains Banco Santander SA, and scandal-plagued Deutsche Bank AG, have also shed thousands of jobs.

Canadian banks employ about 275,000 people, according to the latest figures from the Canadian Bankers Association, which date back to 2017. That total was down just 1 per cent from about 280,000 in 2013, though gains in Ontario where banks expanded technology operations are concentrated mask declines in every other province.

But most bank executives agree that the pace of change in their ranks is getting faster. A recent report from consultants at McKinsey & Co. surmised that advances in robotic process automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence could reduce costs in areas from branches to back offices by 30 to 40 per cent, and fundamentally change how work is done.

Some of those changes will be apparent to customers. As transactions and day-to-day banking are increasingly done online, tellers and branch staff who have been seen as endangered since the advent of automated teller machines in the 1960s will be expected to give advice to clients, and to sell products and services.

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But much of the upheaval will be behind the scenes. Manual tasks in line to be automated range from workers in call centres resetting customers passwords, to compliance staff vetting suspicious transactions for possible money laundering, to small armies of employees doing the voluminous paperwork that still underlies the financing of global trade.

Where there is disruption, however, banks also see huge opportunities. They expect to make employees more productive, and services to clients more personalized. Advisers in wealth management and relationship managers in commercial banking could spend more time with clients if time-consuming administrative and compliance work is automated. And with help from AI-powered tools, they should be able to better predict customers needs.

But while one bank might use the gains from that extra productivity to hire more bankers and expand its book of business, another could choose to do more with less and shed staff.

It is much less a big-bang type of transformation," said Miklos Dietz, a senior partner in McKinseys financial services practice. Its much more a transformation that is already ongoing, its incremental, but its quite deep.

One central challenge is how to redeploy the human capital displaced by automation. Canadian banks have ramped up retraining and skills programs in recent years, offering a range of options from in-house courses taken online to subsidies for classroom learning outside the bank.

RBC uses assessment tools offered by outside vendors to create reports for employees who may be affected by automation, gauging their ability to learn and propensity for certain types of work, to help them find training and chart new career paths. Toronto-Dominion Bank has signed up 45,000 staff to a self-serve learning platform called TD Thrive, which offers interactive courses, videos, Ted Talks and more topics ranging from digital fluency to how to be a risk manager. And HSBC provides training to staff around the world through HSBC University.

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The challenge, I think, is one of pace of change in the workplace and how we equip and invest in our people to have the agility to manage through that pace of change, said Chris Hatton, chief operating officer for HSBC Canada. The perishability of skills, the half-life of skills, I think, increases.

Not everyone is expected to make the leap. Many roles jeopardized by technological advances are clerical in nature, while skills in high demand are in areas such as data analytics, software engineering and agile project management. But to implement new technology, banks need new teams of people to deploy, maintain and explain it. As AI-enabled machines make decisions about whether to extend credit, for example, banks need people trained to explain the reasoning behind those decisions to clients or regulators.

The opportunity to retrain, redeploy, reskill is certainly there," said Robert Vokes, managing director of financial services for Accenture in Canada. In some cases it will be difficult, and certainly in some individual cases it will be close to impossible. But in aggregate, its not."

Read more from the original source:

Bank jobs changing as automation and AI reshape the sector - The Globe and Mail

It is safe to say that technology is evolving and expanding at an exponential rate. This is what many are calling digital Darwinism, a time where technology and society are changing faster than most businesses can naturally adapt.

A 2018 report found that organizations that are highly invested in digital transformation are more profitable and possess higher market valuations than those that do not. As the founder and CEO of a platform for complete candidate skills and job fit assessment launched in 2003, I have witnessed the rapid evolution of the pre-hire process thanks to technology.

It is no surprise that recruiters need to adapt quickly to the ever-evolving environment around them in order to succeed in todays tidal wave of digital progress. While video interviews have been around for some time, recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are able to streamline and advance the hiring process even further, but not without introducing some newfound risks and pitfalls.

Automation And Artificial Intelligence

The advent of video calling as we know it, ushered in 10 years ago, provided recruiters the ability to interview candidates remotely. Since its emergence, it has been embraced by top organizations. Just like with most technologies, advancements have been made to video interviewing that can speed up the recruitment process and rely on less human power to operate. One-way video interviews, which firms like ours are increasingly making available, are a relatively new method in which candidates do not see the interviewer; instead, they simply record responses to preset questions at a time convenient for them.

Now, AI is emerging as the next potential digital revolution, automating the interview process even further. Unilever reportedly began using AI to detect facial expressions during video interviews in 2016. Candidates record their one-way video interview, and AI measures their facial expressions to assess personality traits, mood and even the honesty of their answers, vocabulary and question response speed. In April, IBM CEO Ginny Rometty announcedthat AI had replaced 30% of the company's HR staff. And although humans will always be needed in the HR field, IBM believes that eventually, machines will understand individuals better than the HR personnel.

As a word of caution, for both accuracy and legal compliance, it is still critical to make sure any AI used for scoring has scientific backing to prove that scoring correlates with job performance. Its an even better step to test the AI on your own employees to see if AI interview scoring correlates with performance within the most relevant population your actual staff.

Talent Is Everywhere

Whereas hiring was once limited geographically due to the high cost of flying in candidates for face-to-face interviews, today, candidates can be properly vetted no matter where they are located and in large numbers, thanks to the speed of automation and AI. This can increase the talent pool infinitely. Not only are companies able to recruit from locations they would not have previously, but they are able to do so faster and more efficiently than traditional interviewing processes would allow. The speed of analysis afforded by being able to review candidate interviews at any time and anywhere is revolutionizing the hiring process.

Improve The Candidate Experience

Jobseekers value video interviews, too: Nearly62% of candidates believe video technology gives them a competitive edge. Prioritizing the candidate experience is critical to attracting top talent in a tight labor market. The 2018 Talent Board North American Candidate Experience Benchmark Research Report found that organizations that created a positive candidate experience were more likely to reduce their cost per hire and time to hire. Maintaining a competitive edge throughout the recruitment process is vital to cost-efficiently securing talent in a tight job market.

The Downside Of Dehumanizing The Process

Although job seekers do find value in video technology, some see this as yet another hurdle to jump over before ever have the opportunity to speak live with a person. This obstacle may prevent qualified candidates from moving on in the interview process, resulting in a smaller candidate pool. Others who proceed with the one-way interview may be uncomfortable speaking to a machine, ultimately negatively impacting their performance. Since candidates are not able to actually interact with a hiring manager, there is not a chance for either party to ask clarifying questions, leading to possible misinterpretations.

Given the risks of dehumanizing the interview process, it is important for recruiters to take steps to mitigate the negative impact by maintaining open communication throughout the process, following up quickly once candidates complete interviews and creating opportunities that encourage candidates to provide feedback.

The Risk Of Bias

Companies may be hesitant to utilize video interviews due to the ability to see the candidate in the early stages of the recruitment process, which could lead to unconscious or conscious bias. Therefore, recruiters must specifically define the relevant job competencies, behaviors and attributes that are required in each role. Candidates must be specifically rated against these requirements to prevent video interviews from being susceptible to bias.

The ability to monitor when recruiters end their viewing of individual video interviews will help to shed light on biases. For instance, if male video interviews are being watched to completion 85% of the time and female video interviews are being watched to completion only 46% of the time, it is possible to prove the recruiter is biased and needs to be retrained or replaced. Maintaining a data-driven approach in all aspects of recruiting is becoming more essential, and fortunately easier to monitor as technology continues to advance.

In an era of digital transformation, it is wise to heed the advice of Jack Welch: Change before you have to, and prepare your business for the future now.

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What Video, Artificial Intelligence And Automation Mean For The Future Of Recruiting - Forbes

In 2015, Emerson repositioned its portfolio of technologies and services around two business platformsCommercial & Residential Solutions and Automation Solutions. Obviously, our interest is in the Automation Solutions division, formerly known as Emerson Process Management. This change in name has proven to be more than just a corporate branding initiative. Its a message of intent surrounding Emersons role as an automation technology supplier.

This new direction for Emerson became more evident in 2017 when Emerson made bids to acquire Rockwell Automation. Though this acquisition attempt did not pan out, just a year later the company acquired GE Intelligent Platformsgiving Emerson access to an array of discrete industry automation technologies.

Considering Emersons long history as a process industry-oriented company, Automation World met with Peter Zornio (pictured at left in image accompanying this article), Emersons CTO, and Stuart Harris, group president of Emersons new Digital Transformation business, to get a better understanding of the companys changing position in the industrial automation market.

This is a conscious effort to expand into discrete industries, said Zornio, describing how Emersons repositioning in 2015 provided the company an opportunity to focus on automation and enable it to serve as big a space as possible. He noted that Emersons discrete industry technology acquisitions are part of a two-fold strategy to build discrete solutions aimed at factory automation and take them into hybrid manufacturing. Were not going to ignore bringing that [discrete technologies] into process and hybrid.

From a business point of view, our strengths have been in the process and hybrid industries, added Harris. But weve interfaced with PLCs for a long time around specific applications, such as high-speed control. Having the GE PLC gives us a control platform in the discrete space. We see this (the GE Intelligent Platforms acquisition) as an opportunity to connect islands of automation. He also noted that Emersons recent acquisition of Aventics, along with the companys acquisition of ASCO in 1985, have also provided the company with a number of instrumentation technologies for the discrete industries.

Zornio pointed out that the two worlds of industry (process and discrete) are becoming more technologically close than they were 30 years ago. This reality is behind Emerson plan to bring PLC control into its DeltaV distributed control system (DCS) for applications such as compressor control.

When it comes to approaching control from a process or discrete automation point of view, Zornio said, the biggest difference is in the software design. Are you designing a system from the beginning to have everything in an integrated suite that cant be taken apart easily? If so, thats a DCS with a single database. Discrete automation is the opposite, where best in class componentssuch as controls and historiansare selected and then knitted together. We broke the mold in this area with the DeltaV PK controller, as this controller can be part of an integrated DCS suite or be taken out of the DCS and run stand-alone on a machine.

Zornio noted that, as important as DCS technology is to the process industries, 90% of control in a refinery is not done in a DCS. They have lots of packaged units that use PLCs, like the PK controller.

The fact that refineries dont need high-speed motion controls is a big reason why the PK controller was not developed to address applications such as robotics or high-speed packaging applications. This capability gap, coupled with Emersons intent to broaden its reach into the batch and discrete industries, was a factor behind Emersons acquisition of GE Intelligent Platforms.

Further explaining the broadening of Emersons reach as a technology supplier, Zornio said there are two major shifts the company is focusing on: expanding its presence in the automation space and Digital Transformation. At its core, Digital Transformationand the creation of the Emerson business focused on thisis putting us into different space. This is more software oriented and incorporates pervasive sensing, but its also more app oriented around things like reliability, safety, and energy use. So, in some ways, it was more natural for us to expand horizontally in automation (as the company did with its GE Intelligent Platforms acquisition); the bigger leap for us is into software, data integration, and connection with ERP systems.

Facing the growth required by Emerson to play in the bigger automation space its targeting, Harris observed that Emersons PlantWeb architecture, first introduced in 1997, already addresses many of these [digital transformation] concepts around instrumentation and rotating equipment. Now were looking to handle that information with analytics in the cloud; so, its new and different, but also just an extension of what we already had. It really gives us a chance to more fully capitalize on what weve long been doing.

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Emerson and the Integration of Process and Discrete Automation - Automation World

You have to have a certain level of fearlessness to compete in the crowded world of tech startups. The industry is filled with high-risk, high-stakes entrepreneurs dreaming of birthing the next unicorn. Showing them how its done is robotic process automation software provider UiPath Inc.

After its initial seed funding in 2015, UiPath became a unicorn with a $1.1 billion valuation in early 2018. Thats when things started to go crazy. UiPath hit triple unicorn status in late 2018, more than doubled to a $7 billion valuation by early 2019, and just last month hit the Forbes Cloud 100 list in the number three position, leaving closest RPA competitor Automation Anywhere Inc. trailing back in 29th place.

We were not the typical Silicon Valley company, said Daniel Dines(pictured), chief executive officer of UiPath Inc. We went global from day one.

Dines spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Medias mobile livestreaming studio, during the UiPath Forward event in Las Vegas. They discussed UiPaths fast rise to the top of the RPA market and the companys plans for the future (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

People often question the necessity of RPA under the assumption that any business process that can be automated already has been. Before he started UiPath, Dines was one of them.

Im a software engineer, so I didnt believe there are so many inefficiencies within the business world, he said. I thought that large enterprises should have been automated completely. Everything should run as smooth, as effectually. But the reality is far away from this.

The problem is that when employees build business processes, they always interact with the system through a user interface, which is readable only by a human, according to Dines. So, when you go and automate them, its kind of difficult to translate into APIs, he said.

UiPaths solution is to create robotic processes that replicate humans using the same tools. Its the only technology that can work at the large scale. Dines said. This is the only way you can achieve automation on these smaller type of processes but large volume.

Starting from a base in Dines home country of Romania helped the companys swift rise to success, according to Dines. Rather than being constrained by first conquering the North American market, then moving out to the world, UiPath started in Romania and quickly opened offices in London, New York, Bengaluru, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo and Washington, D.C.

The second factor is the companys combined focus on the customer and culture of humility. Humility gives a great framework of how to operate, Dines stated. It makes you listen to people; it makes you able to change your mind. It makes you actually accelerate [toward solutions] because people that change their mind are able to find faster, better solutions than people that are stuck.

UiPath currently leads the RPA market and is expected to hold that lead as the demand for automation in the workplace increases exponentially. It has been a fast ride for Dines, who is more used to the secluded life of a software engineer than addressing thousands of UiPath Forward III attendees.

Five years ago I couldnt see me even in front of a hundred people not to talk about 3,000 yesterday, Dines said.

UiPaths new status means that Dines doesnt just wear his favorite logoed T-shirts anymore; he has added a jacket now.However, his success means more to him than financial gain or the pride of creating a successful product.

We are proud as engineers to build the best technology that we can, Dines said. But its a lot more touching seeing that you can help humans to become better, to become healthier, to even save lives, to help refugees. Its an amazing feeling.

Is an initial public offering in store for UiPath? Not yet, but probably soon, according to Dines.

I think for a good enterprise software company, they will always be a place to land a good IPO, he said. We are still a young company in many ways, only four years from its initial funding. So, we wont do an IPO in 2020, but weve believe that 2021 would be a good year for that, he said.

Heres the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLEs and theCUBEs coverage of UiPath Forward. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for UiPath Forward. Neither UiPath, the sponsor for theCUBEs event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Wed like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we dont have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary onSiliconANGLE along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams attheCUBE take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.

If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here,please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors,tweet your support, and keep coming back toSiliconANGLE.

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Go-big strategy pays off for UiPath as it blazes trail toward automation stratosphere - SiliconANGLE News

Varsha Saraogi (VS): Why are airports and airline companies becoming more vulnerable to cyber attack?

Paul Farrington (PF): The consequence of a cyberattack affects an airline and has a knock-on effect on passengers.When there is a cybersecurity incident its going to get media attention and rise to the top in the news agenda.

In our State of Software Security Report published at the end of 2018, there is an excerpt for industries in infrastructure which includes the aviation industry. It found that airports did a good job in closing out the flaws or potential vulnerabilities that are found in software within the first hundred days and, they actually beat the global averages across many different industries. So in that respect, evidence suggests that aviation companies do take their responsibility seriously in addressing the potential security risk.

However, what we do see with industries relating to infrastructure is that after a period of time things remained unfixed. After 125 days they start to deteriorate and become more delinquent. Complacency does set in and thats where greater attention should actually be paid to ensure that across the software development lifecycle, developers are not just fixing the complex and sophisticated risks but actually addressing things like cross-site scripting, and preventing issues which could allow an attacker to penetrate a system.

VS: Why are airlines and airports so unprepared?

PF: Over the last 20 years an awful lot of attention and quite rightly has been paid to physical security, and ensuring that we have the tech in place to prevent a physical attack. Now, we need to ensure that were giving due attention and focus to preventing cybersecurity attacks. The Department of Transport has a five-year plan and a cybersecurity strategy which talks about all the measures that need to be in place.

The government along with the regulatory bodies in the UK, CAA and in the US, FAA are taking the responsibility seriously. But I think we also need to ensure that across the board, not just for the physical security but in software, were getting systems up to scratch. In our State of Software Security Report, [we found that] in the aviation industry, unfortunately, most software applications failed common security standards.

There is a security standard called the open web application security project and it provides a checklist of vulnerabilities the security bugs we really dont want to see in your software application. Only one in four applications that were tested against the standard passed the first inspection. The majority of those applications failed. Whether theyre on the ground or in flight, its crucial that we do a better job of ensuring that the systems which people rely on are safe and secure and the attackers dont have any bail to breach.

VS: How does Veracodes Greenlight software work?

PF: [Chris Wysopal and Christien Rioux created] a security tool, which when they co-founded Veracode became known as static analysis. Think of this as an MRI scanner, where youre looking deep into the tissue that makes up the software for the potential weaknesses that an attacker could actually exploit to damage the system. But in the early days, static analysis was looking at the entire application which can take time to address the different potential weaknesses.

In the culture now, with the DevOps sentiment analysis in the last decade, developers are demanding faster analysis techniques because theyre under pressure to ensure that theyre producing software at a higher velocity. Greenlight actually uses the static analysis techniques, but rather than just looking at the entire application, it is able to look at the incremental and analyse the things that have just been changed in a file. Greenlight is able to give developers feedback on the code theyve created within seconds. The reason why we call it Greenlight actually is when they write a secure code, they get a green light, as an affirmation that what theyve just done is correct.

Where security vulnerabilities have been spotted in the code, the software will actually highlight it and say this is a potential security vulnerability, or a flaw has been found and this needs to be addressed in the following ways. Developers can then make the changes when they get the results in seconds. If you compare that to receiving results an hour or a week later, the focus is lost and the incentive for the software engineer to actually address the issues are less.

VS: How can technology help airports combat cyberattacks?

PF: There is indeed too much emphasis on using clever human beings to find issues that automation would do ten times faster. So we need to make sure were getting that balance correct.

Trying to tackle the security problem with human beings wont scale because there are only so many security experts in the world. In fact in 2019 today, there are more than two million vacancies across the world for cybersecurity experts and manual penetration testers are a part of that deficit of people who are qualified to perform analysis.

VS: Do you think human decision making can be balanced with automation?

PF: Market pressures will move more towards automation whether youre an airport or an airline company. There needs to be sufficient emphasis from the government and from the regulators to address this issue.

In practical terms, with a combination of using automation and the right tools, we need to ensure that we have security experts in DevOps teams in companies for embedding security across the organisation. As we call them DevSecOps, which is an evolution of DevOps, and they ensure that security is part of the entire conversation.

In terms of automation, when software gets committed back to the repository, what we can do is automate the scanning of that software. So without a developer needing to press a button, the software is scanned for vulnerabilities and those results are sent to the development team. In case of a functional defect, a ticket gets created and added to the systems backlog which is a list of security issues that need to be addressed.

By doing so, it becomes just part of the normal hygiene of how software gets created and maintained. Having that as part of a company of creating code using automation and having a blinking light on the developers desktop when theres a security issue means that without any undue coercing or disincentives to the developer, the software engineers address issues as they crop up as part of just the everyday working and this ensures that the software becomes more secure.

VS: How is technology like this likely to progress in the future?

PF: If you can leverage automation it gives you greater time to think about things like threat modelling.

Through the process of threat modelling, one can pre-empt the kind of potential attack and could subvert the application even before code is being written, ensuring that the software is designed in such a way that makes it really extremely hard for an attacker to take control.

Additionally, the way software gets created today is quite different from 20 years ago as the majority of it is comprised of open source components code written outside your organisation. The problem with using open source software is that just like your own there is a tendency for it to be insecure. If it hasnt been tested then there is a significant chance that vulnerabilities will exist in that software, so ensuring that were using open source components that are secure is really important. Critically, around 80 to 90% of companies use open-source software many of which up until now have been unaware of how software is being created.

Going forward, the emphasis needs to be placed on how software is being brought in. What were talking about is a software supply chain because thats of crucial importance to aviation.

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Q&A: Veracode on automation and how to tackle cyber attacks in aviation - Airport Technology

[Watch the debate and follow our live analysis here.]

In the pivotal industrial state of Ohio, which has been devastated by the announced closure of a General Motors plant, the Democratic contenders railed against automation and the trade policies of the Trump administration during Tuesday nights debate.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said the greed of multinational corporations has chipped away at the middle class, which she vowed to strengthen with her plan to extend the solvency of Social Security and a $200 monthly benefits increase that she claimed would elevate five million families above the poverty line.

The populist pitch of Senator Warren, who has made up ground on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., came in a state that President Trump carried in 2016 and that is critical to his re-election prospects.

The data show that we have had a lot of problems with losing jobs, Senator Warren said.

She continued:

The reason is bad trade policy. The reason has been a bunch of giant multinational corporations who have been calling the shots on trade. Giant multinational corporations that have no loyalty to America. They have no loyalty to American workers. They have no loyalty to American consumers. They have no loyalty to American communities. They are loyal only to their own bottom line.

Andrew Yang, the former tech executive and entrepreneur, used the issue of automation to promote his universal basic income payment plan, which he has called a freedom dividend.

Senator Warren, I have been talking to Americans around the country about automation, Mr. Yang said.

He continued:

They are smart. They see whats happening around them. The stores are closing. They see a self-serve kiosk in every grocery store, every CVS. Driving a truck is the most common job in 29 states; 3.5 million truck drivers in this country. My friends are piloting self-driving trucks. What does that mean for the 3.5 million truckers or seven million Americans who work in truck stops, motels and diners that rely upon the truckers getting out and having a meal? Saying this is a rules problem is ignoring the reality that Americans see every day.

The former housing secretary Julin Castro said the Trump administration has not delivered on its populist message in states like Ohio, where a stalemate between G.M. and the United Auto Workers culminated with the closure of the automakers Lordstown plant and the loss of 14,000 jobs.

G.M. has said that Mr. Trumps tariffs on steel, aluminum and other goods have cost the company $1 billion in profits.

I believe that we need to address a community being impacted by automation, Mr. Castro said. We need to spark job opportunity. As I mentioned earlier, here in Ohio, in the latest jobs data, Ohio is losing jobs under Donald Trump.

Isabella Grulln Paz contributed reporting.

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Is Automation Threatening American Jobs? Democrats Debate - The New York Times

Getty

A recent report from the consulting giant McKinsey & Company paints a startling yet critically-important picture of how automation will impact the American workforce in 2030.

In this context, the term automation refers to equipment, technology and process innovations that make the effort from humans less necessary or entirely irrelevant.

When the firm conducted a deeper dive into how specific groups will be affected, one data point became clear: African Americans likely will have one of the highest rates of job displacement, compared to other groups.

Why is this happening and what interventions and solutions can we consider to make things better? Well investigate all those things below.

However, Ill preface by saying as a black man in the technology industry, its become clear to me that with all the excitement of innovation and bleeding-edge technology available to all consumers, we need to balance that with a healthy view of all the long-term risks and liabilities that may be at stake.

The recently published McKinsey article, titled The Future of Work in Black America, used proprietary data to study how automation could influence and disrupt Americans across 13 different archetypes, or groups of people with various similarities, across geographic, income and demographic segments.

For large portions of the black community, the findings may be concerning.

Key Summary Points From The Report

Reasons Behind This Worrisome Trend

Potential Solutions To Help Us Course-Correct

Fortunately, the report wasnt all doom-and-gloom. The researchers compiled a list of potential actions that could help curb the racial disparity of disruption felt from automation. While not exhaustive, the list provides a starting point of action for state and federal government, hiring employers and black employees who seek more stability.

Moving Forward

McKinseys detailed look at the projected disparity in economic wealth and job stability provides us with a runway of time to begin addressing the underlying challenges and enact solutions to fix them. Like with any looming crisis, clear and collective action is needed to give everyone an equal shot at success in America.

Regardless of what role you play in society, you have an opportunity to help us get one step closer to a level playing field. Employers, hiring managers, investors, teachers, admissions officers, and local, state or federal workers can all contribute to a brighter tomorrow. What small step will you take to solve this problem?

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New Study Warns That Automation Threatens The Future Of Black Workers In America - Forbes