Category Archives: Automation

Remember the voice-data convergence? I hope you're prepared, because a similar transition is ready to take roo...

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This time, it is the transition to automation, and then to forms of automation deployment and advanced control and management.

When we transitioned from wired PBX systems to voice over IP, the team that handled the voice system had to make a big change. In the old system, circuits and wires were the basic components. Sure, there was some multiplexing -- T1s and the like -- but nothing like IP packets. Training voice technicians was an interesting process. Some made the transition, while others retired, along with the equipment they supported.

A similar situation is unfolding today. I've had more than one network engineer tell me they hope the latest transition takes long enough to allow them to retire before they have to learn new things. I was shocked.

Change is coming, and it is necessary. Compute and storage are dynamic, having made their transition over the last 10 years. The network is the final obstacle to dynamic IT systems that can more easily adapt to changing business requirements. Change is needed to increase networking efficiency, just as it has for server automation. The only thing we need to determine is the path this journey will take.

This transformation of IT and networking is gathering speed. The growth in the DevNet section of Cisco Live is one indication. When I search the web, I find a lot more activity around the use of APIs for automation deployment. I even took a class on using Ansible for network configuration control.

It's pretty incredible how simple a configuration can be when it is constructed in a YAML definition. Configuration elements that are repeated in a normal configuration get entered once in YAML, such as loopback interface addresses or Border Gateway Protocol addresses. A BGP peering relationship can be reduced to just a few lines of configuration and ported between hardware vendors with simple changes. A complete data center pod can be configured with a similar reduction in complexity.

The tie-in to culture is due to the change in how network configuration is handled. Processes and procedures that have been developed -- over the past 10 to 20 years -- need to change when automation is used. These past procedures will often have the network staff propose a set of changes, a test plan and a back-out plan to be executed if a change fails.

A change control board reviews the change and frequently approves it. Because changes sometimes create brief network outages -- for example, a spanning tree root bridge change -- they are typically implemented during a preapproved change window. Part of the reason for this step-by-step process is to force the network engineers to think more carefully about changes before rolling them out to the network.

Many organizations use network change and configuration management (NCCM) tools to push changes to devices. That's a step toward automation, but they still rely on command-line interface (CLI) configuration commands. Manual methods are then frequently used for the validation test, limiting the extent of things that can be checked. This is where automation can be applied. Construct good test plans and a set of automated checks to be performed on the network -- not just the device being changed. Likewise, the back-out plan should be automated through the NCCM platform so it is easy and fast to back out.

Automation is just the next step in the journey. It isn't the final step.

Automation is just the next step in the journey. It isn't the final step. The problem I have with basic automation tools is they don't create new abstractions. The Ansible libraries for Cisco NX-OS use the same parameters in the API as are used in the CLI. There's nothing new there, just a new communications mechanism that's uninteresting. There are no new abstractions that allow us to hide the details of a complex configuration.

Some companies, like Amazon, are already in this next phase. Create an Amazon Web Services (AWS) compute instance with X CPU power, Y storage capacity and a public IP address. How long does it take for AWS to create the instance, modify the network to support it and have a public IP address assigned? It's just a few minutes. You specified what you wanted, and the system delivered it. You didn't have to specify "how to do it" details like VLAN ID, firewall rules or any Layer 4 VPN to keep your traffic separate from everyone else's. AWS created an abstract compute and storage entity.

We need new abstractions in networking that allow us to hide as much complexity as possible. It remains to be seen whether new abstractions will come from the intent-based networking systems that companies like Apstra have pioneered and Cisco has now embraced. These systems are worth investigating, but probably only after you've undertaken the effort to learn about basic automation. Think of it as a "walk before you run" approach.

Clearly, some people are concerned that automation and whatever follows will replace their jobs. As with the convergence of voice and data, some people make the transition and others don't. That transition, just like this one, was more about changing jobs than eliminating them. There will always be a need for people who understand how complex technology works, how to use it in good designs and how to diagnose problems when it doesn't work the way you intended.

This is a journey. You don't get to skip steps. The entire organization has to learn new technology, how to best apply that technology, and to develop processes to implement and maintain it. Several things must happen to make a successful journey, among them:

You get to decide if you're going to participate in this journey to automation deployment as a leader and control your destiny, or if you're going to participate after someone else has blazed the trail. Just note that first movers frequently have a competitive advantage over their slower-moving peers.

What will the future hold for enterprise networking?

SDN now includes virtualization and automation

DevOps and automation in software-defined networks

Read more:

Is your organization ready for automation deployment? - TechTarget

Fear not, journalists: Roboreporters are not coming for your jobs, at least not yet.

Thats the takeaway from a new report from Alexander Fanta at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, who took a look at how 15 news agencies in Europe have implemented automation in their organizations. While the news agencies have been drawn to the the efficiencies of the technology, organizations still have a lot of work to do with realizing that promise. Fantasconclusion: So far, automation is limited in its scope and complexity, as he writes in the report.

Here are a few of his standout findings:

Automations role is growing, but still limited. Big news agencies like AP, Reuters, and AFP are producing thousands of algorithm-aided stories month, particularly in finance and sports. But adoption is still uneven. Organizations such as Spains Efe and Ansa in Italy are still reluctant to make the necessary investments in the tech, citing the uncertain payoff in investment in the tech.

Data availability is still a challenge. When it comes to automation, news agencies have been drawn to sports and finance because there is readily available, structured data in those fields. Thats less the case in many other sectors, which limits news agencies ability to produced automated stories and many areas. Many agencies are also reluctant to build their own data repositories, which introduces new costs and complexity and requires expertise that they lack.

News agencies say they arent turning to automation to cut jobs. This, of course, is one of the big concerns among reporters about the industrys interest in automation. But none of the news agencies Fanta spoke to said that automation is helping to cut costs. On the contrary, automation has introduced new costs to news agencies, such as expenses related to developing the automation technology (or licensing it from outside companies) and maintaining the data sets that the automation tools rely on.

People think automation is cheap, but automation is in fact not that cheap. If you automate, it costs you money. You have to maintain it, you have to track it, you have to manage it. Its actually not [there] to save a lot of money, said Reuters innovation manager Reg Chua.

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A new report examines the state of automated journalism in Europe and what's holding it back - Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard

While artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are poised to shake up the workforce by becoming skilled at performing human tasks, it has not been clear exactly how manyand whichhuman workers will be affected by the changes. And although AI is expected to master a variety of human tasks351 scientists just offered a timeline for when human tasks will be completed by machinesthe vast majority of US workers still do not fear that their entire job will be replaced by robots, according to the 2017 Randstad Employer Brand Research.

A new report, however, sheds light on which human workers will be most impacted by advances in automation and AI, by geographic region. Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, recently released a report from its Center for Business and Economic Research making a bold prediction: Half of low-skilled US jobs are at risk of being replaced by automation.

The report examined how AI and automation will impact the workforce in America by mapping out two variables: Risk of automation, and offshore job losses. It found a "very strong regional concentration of potential automation and trade job losses facing American communities."

According to the report, job losses will not be spread evenly across income lower-wage, low-skilled workers are most at risk of losing work due to automation. In both caseslosses due to offshoring as well as losses due to AI and automationrural communities are more at risk, with the report stating that "urban places tend to offer more resilience due to existing forces of agglomeration."

It's clear that AI and automation will force both employers and employees to change the way we think about work. TechRepublic's Alison DeNisco has also reported on the effects of automation, from a geographical standpoint, looking at how US cities will be most impacted. "Low-wage cities such as Las Vegas, Orlando, and El Paso will be hit the hardest by job automation, according to a recent report from the Institute for Spatial Economic Analysis (ISEA)," DeNisco wrote. She went on to add that job losses are likely to be more drastic than previously predicted, and that the jobs that may take the greatest hitsdue to advances in machine learningare in truck driving, healthcare diagnostics, and education.

Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Excerpt from:

50% of low-skilled jobs will be replaced by AI and automation, report claims - TechRepublic

Popular media has painted a picture of the publics fear of automation taking away jobsespecially in the manufacturing industry. However, Randstad US has released a report today indicating the opposite.

The 2017 Randstad Employer Brand Research found only 14 percent of US employees worry that automation will take their jobs away and that 30 percent believe automation will make their jobs better. The report contains input from over 5,300 individuals, aged 18-65 and across various industries, through online interviews.

The report indicated that 51 percent of respondents would be willing to retrain if paid the same or higher salary.

It is evident from our research that not only are workers not afraid of losing their jobs to automation, they are more than willing to retrain to leverage efficiencies and benefits of artificial intelligence and robotics in the workplace, said Linda Galipeau, CEO of Randstad North America.

She added, It has become necessary for todays employees and job seekers to continually cultivate, develop and update their skills to work successfully alongside AI and automation. In conjunction with retraining and upskilling efforts, workers should focus on growing unique human skills that AI and robots are unable to replicate, such as strategic and abstract thinking, complex communications, creativity and leadership competencies.

Randstads latest Talent Trends survey finds that only 6 percent of US C-suite and human capital leader respondents believe increasing automation will have a significant impact on workforce planning and shifting the talent needed.

AI and robotics will have a positive impact on the workplace within the next 5 years, according to 84 percent of U.S. respondents, while 48 percent believe automation and machine learning has already had a positive impact within the past 12 months. Forty-five percent say the same for robotics.

Nearly a third (31 percent) of employers said they have increased usage of automation/robotics in their business in the past 12 months.

The inescapable reality is automation and AI are here to stay and will continue to grow substantially, said Galipeau. As business leaders invest in digitization, automation, AI and other emerging technologies in the workplace, they must continue to evolve their workforce alongside these advancements The need for skilled humans to operate, utilize and advance technologies is equally unmistakable.

Its important to note however, that analysts from institutions including Oxford University, the World Economic Forum and others have painted a glum future in comprehensive pieces like those by Business Insiders Oscar Williams-Grut last year.

I find it impossible to disagree that some jobs are undeniably going to be lost, despite a relaxed or optimistic perspective on automation in the workforce. Although, these lost jobs will be menial, repetitive and dangerous ones, as we illustrate in a series of articles on industrial robots:

A History of Collaborative Robots: From Intelligent Lift Assists to Cobots

Randstads research, conducted since 2000, was done by Randstads International research partner, Kantar TNS. Respondents for the 2017 research were polled from Nov. 25 to Dec. 15, 2016.

For more information, visit the Randstad website or read on about their recommended four ways to update soft skills in an automated workplace.

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New Report Claims Majority of US Workers Not Afraid of Automation ... - ENGINEERING.com

July 19, 2017 Dr. Santanu Bag, a project scientist at the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, is exploring cost-efficient manufacturing of solar cells using additive technology. Credit: Air Force Office of Scientific Research

Inspired by newspaper printing, and taking cues from additive manufacturing technology, researchers at the Air Force Research Laboratory are exploring new ways to make solar cells more cost efficientincreasing application potential in the process.

"Sun is abundant, and it's free," said Dr. Santanu Bag, a project scientist at the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, AFRL. "Solar cells can generate electricity in an environmentally friendly way, but current, complex fabrication costs make the technology expensive. We're looking at new ways to use materials and manufacturing technologies to make these less expensively."

Though research into solar cells began in the 1950s, the technology for making them is complex and labor intensive. At a basic level, to fabricate solar cells, engineers rely on extremely pure, single-crystalline silicon. The pure silicon is extracted from an original material such as quartz or sand and is transformed into thin wafers. The silicon wafers are chemically treated to form an electric field, with a positive and negative polarity. These silicon semiconductors, or solar cells, are encapsulated in a support to form a photovoltaic module, where they are then able to collect and transform sunlight into an electric current.

This multistep, labor intensive process is time-consuming and uses highly sophisticated equipment, requiring a number of technicians and engineers to create the end product. Quality control is key, as a discrepancy during any stage of the manufacturing process could have an effect on the performance of the cells.

This high cost of manufacturing has prohibited widespread use of solar power, despite its cost saving potential.

"If you want to make solar competitive, you need to make solar cells more efficient and cost effective," said Bag.

Inspired by the concept of newsprint where rolls of paper are printed with ink to create newspapers, Bag and his team looked for alternatives to inorganic, hard silicon in search of a material able to transform solar into energyand be printed in the process.

"Silicon cells use purely inorganic materials, which by nature are very hard," said Bag. "We needed a material that was easy to print and at the same time able to capture sunlight. We determined an inorganic-organic hybrid material would be easy to print and could still harvest solar energy."

Bag's material of choice, thin-film perovskites, have an excellent light absorbing capability and power conversion efficiencies that have improved tremendously compared to the more than 30 years it took for silicon solar cells to improve to today's levels. Only recently has this material been explored for its solar power ability, with Bag among the researchers expanding the field.

"The material has been around since the 1990s and was used to make test-level, light-emitting diodes. Researchers knew it had solar ability, but this was not the focus at the time," said Bag.

In Bag's study, perovskite precursor material was atomized using ultrasonic waves to form extremely fine, aerosol droplets able to be transferred into the print nozzle of an aerosol-jet spray printer. Using computer-aided design tool paths, a surface was then coated with the material using the direct-write printer, forming a solar cell with a 15.4 percent efficiency on a flat surface.

Bag and his team also demonstrated the ability to print these solar cells on a 3-D surface with a 5.4 percent efficiencymarking the first time this has been shown in the field of printed photovoltaics.

"We have not optimized conditions for 3-D printing of these yet, but we know it can be done. Once you know how to print it, it has huge potential for other applications," said Bag.

For the Air Force, the applications for this material and the new printing process are enormous. The method can be used to print flexible solar cells on clothing, to create self-powered robotics and light-emitting devices and even to make flexible, self-powered sensors, to name a few.

Bag, along with fellow researchers Dr. Michael Durstock, Soft Matter Materials Branch Chief at the AFRL Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, and James Deneault, a research engineer at Universal Technology Corporation, have filed a patent application for the technology. Though this research is still in its early stages, the impact of the new manufacturing processes has great potential for the future.

"Understanding ways to make and print this material more efficiently at the most basic level can lead to future cost savings," Bag concluded.

Explore further: Semi-transparent perovskite solar cells for solar windows

More information: Santanu Bag et al. Aerosol-Jet-Assisted Thin-Film Growth of CH3 NH3 PbI3 Perovskites-A Means to Achieve High Quality, Defect-Free Films for Efficient Solar Cells, Advanced Energy Materials (2017). DOI: 10.1002/aenm.201701151

Journal reference: Advanced Energy Materials

Provided by: Air Force Office of Scientific Research

Scientists are exploring ways to develop transparent or semi-transparent solar cells as a substitute for glass walls in modern buildings with the aim of harnessing solar energy. But this has proven challenging, because transparency ...

Researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) have achieved a new record efficiency for low-cost semi-transparent perovskite solar cells in a breakthrough that could bring down the cost of generating solar electricity.

An organic-inorganic hybrid material may be the future for more efficient technologies that can generate electricity from either light or heat or devices that emit light from electricity.

A recent study, affiliated with UNIST has presented a new cost-efficient way to produce inorganic-organic hybrid perovskite solar cells (PSCs) which sets a new world-record efficiency performance, in particular photostability. ...

Five years ago, the world started to talk about third-generation solar cells that challenged the traditional silicon cells with a cheaper and simpler manufacturing process that used less energy.

Researchers at ANU have found a new way to fabricate high efficiency semi-transparent perovskite solar cells in a breakthrough that could lead to more efficient and cheaper solar electricity.

An underwater robot entered a badly damaged reactor at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant Wednesday, capturing images of the harsh impact of its meltdown, including key structures that were torn and knocked out of place.

Microsoft's cloud computing platform will be used outside China for collaboration by members of a self-driving car alliance formed by Chinese internet search giant Baidu, the companies announced on Tuesday.

Laboratory equipment is one of the largest cost factors in neuroscience. However, many experiments can be performed with good results using self-assembled setups involving 3-D printed components and self-programmed electronics. ...

Access to clean, safe water is one of the world's pressing needs, yet today's water distribution systems lose an average of 20 percent of their supply because of leaks. These leaks not only make shortages worse but also can ...

A virtual reality "space ride" in which viewers feel as if they are flying through the air inside a giant glass ball has been developed in Japan.

Supercapacitors are an aptly named type of device that can store and deliver energy faster than conventional batteries. They are in high demand for applications including electric cars, wireless telecommunications and high-powered ...

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AFRL researchers explore automation, additive technologies for cost ... - Phys.Org

Its a big day for Workatoas the startup announced a $10 million Series A, and the latest release of its workflow automation platform dubbed Turing.

The round was led by Storm Ventures with participation from strategic investors Salesforce Ventures and Workday Ventures. The four year old company has now raised a total of $16 million.

Workato helps companies simplify workflow integrations by automating when possible the connections between various SaaS applications and APIs. You can see why Salesforce and Workday saw fit to invest in them in that context.

One of the attractions of SaaS applications is the ability to self serve, but when it comes to building connections or workflows between applications, things get a bit more complicated. Typically that requires a trip to IT to create even simple connections across tools, says Workato CEO Vijay Tella.

He says its not just a case of end users looking for independence though. Its also IT wanting to provide knowledge workers in marketing, sales, finance and other departments with a tool to build integrations on their own that doesnt require developer skills.

The company created Workato to enable these types of end users to build workflows more easily by automating as much as possible and suggesting logical flows across tools. The solution relies on underlying machine learning algorithms to drive these suggestions in an interactive manner. As users adjust these recipes to suit their needs, the system learns and offers more complete ones over time, Tella said.

During the Beta of Turing, Tella said 55 percent of recipes were being auto-authored and presented to users in the form of suggestions, which they can accept or adjust by making a series of choices.

Since no process is completely fool-proof, the company is using machine learning to also self correct (or at least offer possible solutions) when a recipe breaks for some reason while making connections across systems. That involves showing the user the recipe flow in plain language instead of code, which should enable them to fix and rerun.

Workato claims that 78 percent of customers go live with their product in the first week. It helps that Workato has many recipes prepackaged out of the box using typical kinds of integrations for companies like Salesforce and Workday (surprise, surprise), but also Zendesk, Slack and many others.

The company reports that its product is being used at over 21,000 organizations including Box, IBM, Cisco, Ideo and Credo.

More here:

Workflow automation startup Workato announces $10m Series A ... - TechCrunch

When asked about their top priorities over the coming year, enterprise managers put customer engagement via mobile and social at the top of their lists. These are technology initiatives that have been around and occupying the minds of IT and business managers for the past several years.

There's a new contender for IT and business mindshare on the rise, however. Coming in at number two this year is robotic process automation (RPA), a survey of 454 enterprises conducted by HfS Research and KPMG finds. (Analytics is #3, and Software as a Service is #4.)

The Institute for Robotic Process Automation and Artificial Intelligence (whew, they cover a lot of ground) defines RPA as "the application of technology that allows employees in a company to configure computer software or a 'robot' to capture and interpret existing applications for processing a transaction, manipulating data, triggering responses and communicating with other digital systems."

The IT department itself is seeing RPA first. Thirty-six percent of enterprises are implementing or piloting RPA against their IT and network infrastructure support functions, making this the leading area seeing such investments. Another 35% are deploying or piloting RPA against IT administrative functions.

Other areas of investment include the following: (Includes implementing and piloting.)

RPA seems to be catching the imaginations of higher-level business executives, a group usually not cognizant of technology flavors. Forty-three percent of senior VPs in the survey base say they intend to make "significant" investments in RPA.

Among industry groups, the high-tech and financial services industries leading the way with, respectively, 53% and 44% making significant investments in RPA over the next couple of years, HfS reports. "Only retail falls below 30%, which may be a result of highly distributed organizations finding it if challenging to find high-throughput, high-intensity process where there is real tangible ROI for the investment."

RPA puts businesses on the path to digitization, HfS explains. "Quite simply, you can't be an effective digital organization if you don't have your manual processes digitized and automated. That's what RPA does."

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Money flows to robotic process automation | ZDNet - ZDNet

Google Glass is back, now simply named Glass, and aiming to revolutionize the way people work.

Glass, a wearable computer mounted on eyeglasses, was first made available to the general public in May 2014. It proved to be one of Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL)'s rare failures though, after widespread criticism and legislative action over privacy concern, and production stopped in January 2015.

On Tuesday morning, Jay Kothari, the Glass project lead, wrote a blog post announcing why and how Glass was returning.

For the past two years Glass has been in testing with over 50 businesses, ranging from heavy manufacturers like General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) to health care providers like Dignity Health.

The goal was to use Glass to aid workers in their day-to-day roles. Playing an instructions video during airplane maintenance, mapping a warehouse for inventory movement and taking notes during a talk with patients are some of its uses.

Following the success of the past two years, Glass is now available to businesses in the Glass Enterprise Edition, named in the style of the original Glass Explorer Edition.

Other high-profile businesses using Glass include AGCO Corporation (NYSE: AGCO), Boeing Co (NYSE: BA), Samsung and Volkswagen AG (ADR) (OTC: VLKAY).

Throughout the post, Kothari sprinkled in examples of how Glass improved work flows.

At GE, airplane mechanics are estimated to be 8-12 percent more efficient because they no longer have to check binders or computers for instructions.

Glass cut machinery time at AGCO by 25 percent and inspection times 30 percent. DHL estimated that supply chain efficiency increased 15 percent since it started using Glass.

In the health care space, Dignitys Chief Medical Information Officer, Davin Lundquist, said the amount of time each day spent typing notes and doing other administrative tasks was cut down from 33 percent to under 10 percent. In addition, time spent interacting with patients doubled.

As robots slowly displace human workers, Glass seems like it could be one method for humans to fight back against the machines.

Automation is strictly a cost-saving measure, driven by efficiency gains and saved wages. Humans equipped with Glass could potentially address that first point, as Kotharis data indicates.

Loup Ventures co-founder Gene Munster agrees, for now at least.

I think this is a perfect example of how humans can remain competitive to robot automation in the near future, Munster told Benzinga. However, I am still a big believer that robots will become too cheap and productive for companies not to adopt this technology.

Munster noted that Glass is able to drive efficiency because it allows workers faster access to data. Robots, however, programmed to perform standard tasks never need to check instructions.

Additionally, advances in artificial intelligence will allow machines to process data from variable situations faster than humans, according to Munster.

Loup Ventures research focuses on developments in artificial intelligence, robotics and other technologies. Analyst Andrew Murphy recently concluded a series of notes on the growth of robotics in the economy.

Get the latest in financial news and analyst coverage in real-time with Benzinga Pro.

Related Links:

Munster Compares Tesla's Model 3 To Apple's iPhone: 'It Could Change The World'

Munster Says Amazon Is 'Building The Future Of Retail By Rebuilding The Past'

image: By Loc Le Meur (Flickr: Loc Le Meur on Google Glass) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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Can Google Glass Fight Off Job Automation? Gene Munster Says ... - Benzinga

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(Tech Xplore)Remember when there such a thing as the job ladderdo great work and catch the rewards in the form of promotion, or job assurance, or higher salary, or all three in one great moving-up package?

Well, you might want to question your faith on this kind of rainbow and pay attention to what a new Sutton Trust report has to say, as it explores forces governing those who live and work in the UK.

The title is "The State of Social Mobility in the UK," by Boston Consulting and Sutton Trust, dated July 2017. The Trust wanted to know how social mobility in the UK has evolved through the group's 20-year history, and where it is likely to go in the future."

The report takes a look at the impact of automation on workas many of the employed know work to be. They refer to a recent Bank of England study estimating that up to 15 million jobs in the UK could be at risk of automation.

That is a sobering number, and who are most at risk? Unsurprisingly, routine-based jobs in predictable environments that can easily be described by rules are most at risk. Sure, one immediately thinks of all those robot advances in picking, sorting, lifting and even executing building construction duty.

The report looks at a gamut of automation, and goes through the numbers likely to feel the impact in a number of categories. Here are just a few examples:

"Around 280,000 book-keepers, payroll managers and wages clerks in the UK could see their jobs disappear following the transition towards cloud based accounting," said the report, "increased use of robots and improved level of automation."

A further 75,000 UK-based paralegals could see their jobs affected by automation through technology.

The wave of technological innovation in the financial sector was not ignored. That wave involves the introduction of robo-advisory, robotic process automation, and artificial intelligence. "These could reduce the need for middle and back office jobs by up to 50 - 70%."

Obviously, retail assistants, cashiers, salespersons, and telephone sales will feel the impact.

"Automatic cashiers are already supplanting human cashiers. Further rolling out of existing technologies, as well as new technologies such as voice and image recognition and natural language processing (ability to interpret human language, tone, and pitch and take appropriate actions) will put these jobs at risk."

The "mobility" ladder looks as if it will be broken but in an unsettling way where the rich will most likely prosper nonetheless.

Remember the conventional view that technology sooner or later is job-creating, not just in ways that were earlier categorized? The report suggests it might be different this time around. In other words, not everyone will lose the race against machines and technology disruption. High skill workers (typically drawn from higher socioeconomic backgrounds) could disproportionately benefit. Upward mobility will take a hit.

May Bulman in the Independent said, "Soft skills" such as confidence and communication, are set to be of higher value, an easier fit for those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.)

Among the Key Findings, as stated by the Trust:

We may see greater demand for technical skills, and an increased value of essential life skills (such as confidence, motivation and communication). "This will advantage those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, who typically have greater opportunities to develop these skills."

The Sutton Trust was founded by Sir Peter Lampl in 1997. According to the about-us statement, they said, "We are a foundation which improves social mobility in the UK through evidence-based programmes, research and policy advocacy."

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Report examines automation waves that threaten upward mobility - Tech Xplore

Bill Gates is famous for saying, I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

However shocking that sounds, putting more work and hours into something doesnt always yield better results. And todays fast-paced online world can be especially tough on businesses that dont manage to keep up.

As a busy blogger, youre probably juggling a multitude of different tasks, many of which are repetitive and frankly, quite boring. For your blog to take off and scale into something greater than a company of one employee, you must use your time efficiently and learn to automate and delegate.

Read on to learn about the practical tools of automation and how to use them to grow your business.

On average 49 percent of companies are currently using marketing automation and the adoption is growing rapidly, as there are 11 times more B2B organizations using marketing automation now than in 2011.

Why is everyone jumping on this new trend? According to various research findings, marketers whove adopted marketing automation count multiple benefits:

Besides helping to improve customer experience, email marketing and, lead management as well as helping to reduce human error in marketing campaigns, the biggest and most important benefit of automation for busy bloggers is that it can save hours and hours of time, which could be spent creating new content and growing the business.

Creating excellent content for your blog is only half the story. You might be a skilled writer and an expert in your field, but churning out high-quality content every day is hardly possible if youre a one-man show. And yet, it doesnt mean you should let your social media presence suffer.

What you need to keep your communication flowing is a rich selection of well-written content that your target audience would find interesting and valuable. By sharing blog posts, videos or infographics created by other bloggers or businesses you will continue to create value for your followers and boost your credibility. Content curation can be an opportunity for bloggers to build their following and figure out the interests and motivations of their audience.

Credit: Pocket

Explore the most popular content curation tools, such as Pocket, Scoop.it, Feedly, and Storify that will help you to discover, save, and distribute the best content from around the web.

The best way to manage the time you spend on social media is by blocking off a few hours in your calendar for content scheduling and getting it all done in one go. Buffer and Hootsuite are the leading content scheduling tools available online that can take the pain out of this boring task. Instead of copy-pasting the same message across different platforms, fiddling with different settings and re-uploading visuals, get all your social media content planned out and scheduled by using a dedicated automation tool.

Credit: Buffer

To get the most of social media automation, be sure to craft your own social media content plan. A robust social media content calendar will not only help you stick to a consistent schedule, but will also make the planning of time-sensitive content easier and help you enforce a healthy sharing ratio. One of the most popular ways for figuring out the ideal ratio for the content youll share on different channels is to use the 411 rule. This rule refers to a practice of sharing four user-centric educational or entertaining posts for every one slightly promotional and one hard sale post.

Credit: Buffer

When it comes to choosing the optimal time to post on social media, youll need to do a bit of heavy-lifting yourself and analyze your audiences behavior and preferences. When are your followers online? When do you see the level of engagement spike throughout the day? Look into the built-in analytics on Twitter or Facebook to determine the best times to push your messages out. Alternatively, you can rely on the clever algorithms that Buffer and Hootsuite both use to automatically schedule your post to go out when theyre most likely to be noticed. CoSchedule have rounded up a number of studies to figure out the perfect times to post and found that:

Although not a WordPress plugin, IFTTT is one of the most versatile automation tools on the market. It can send you a daily email with the GIFs that are trending on Giphy or notify you when a new subscriber is added to your MailChimp list. The possibilities are wide-ranging and exciting.

To maximize the ROI of your email marketing, ensure your workflow is set up properly. Use a WordPress form builder to have a smart-looking subscription form that integrates with your email provider on your site. Then set up an automated workflow on your email platform to trigger a welcome campaign once a new email is added to your mailing list. If you want to quickly capture new leads on your blog and add them to the right mailing list, CaptainForm, a user-friendly WordPress form builder that integrates with MailChimp and GetResponse, is a good place to start.

Credit: CaptainForm

Another cool WordPress plugin that can take some work off your hands is Revive Old Post, which promises to help you keep the old posts alive and drive more traffic by reposting them on social media. To keep your content calendar neatly organized, you can also explore the CoSchedule plugin, which will help you take control of your blogging calendar.

Many bloggers will attest to the idea that hiring a VA right from the start is the best thing you can do for your business. The most common objection here is that it seems counterintuitive to pay someone before you start making money yourself, but it is the only way for you to focus on the most important, revenue-producing tasks and leave the rest in someone elses capable hands.

So where do you find a talented VA that will help you bring order to chaos? Many entrepreneurs scour freelancer marketplaces like Upwork and PeoplePerHour or leverage their personal and professional networks on social media (Facebook and LinkedIn groups, Twitter hashtags).

When hiring a VA, make sure you know exactly what type of tasks youll be outsourcing so that you can look out for the right set of skills. Do they need a good written English? Does it matter what time zone they live in? Do they need any specific knowledge? If youre struggling to wrap your head around this, use Foundrs Hiring a VA checklist to cover your bases.

Credit: Trello

If your VA lives on the other side of the world, you can use tools like Screenmailer to explain projects and tasks in a quick and reliable way. Trello is also an excellent tool to keep track of the progress and make sure youre all on the same page.

Dont be afraid of making a few mistakes here and there theyre not going to kill your business. But there are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to marketing automation:

1) Set goals for each automated effort

You will need a way to measure the success of your marketing automation, so make sure you set goals for each automated effort, such as social media, email workflows, and so on. This will help you to track the performance of automated campaigns and ensure theyre optimized for the best results.

2) Optimize your email automation

Automating your email marketing will be an exhilarating experience. However, its key to remember that adding your leads to onboarding or welcome automation workflows only works if the lists are segmented and you personalize the content that you send. Dont make the mistake of blasting generic emails to the entire mailing list because it will turn people away.

3) Dont get lazy

Marketing automation will save you tons of time, but dont make the mistake of letting things take their own course. Take time every week to re-test and review your automated messages to make sure theyre still relevant. If your engagement rates start to drop, its time to refresh the content and do some A/B testing.

Once you turn your blog into a source of income, your efforts must be focused on growing the business. So you cant spend your days plowing through a to-do list that has no direct (or very little) impact on your revenue. Automating the most time-consuming tasks will free up a lot of time and allow you to scale your business without much investment. And if you decide to hire a VA, there is only one thing to remember never outsource core tasks and youll be just fine!

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Practical automation guide and tools for busy bloggers - TNW