Category Archives: Automation

We are still in the tail of the third industrial or digital revolution where investment in digitalisation could drive significant productivity gains, noted analysts from investment bank Morgan Stanley in a September 2016 report entitled Disruptions and productivity growth in the next decade of the digital revolution.

The digital revolution represents the move towards data-driven business. The computerisation of business is continually generating vast quantities of data. That information is fuelling the use of automated decision-making systems withinfinance.

I am very optimistic about where we are going, says John Lowrey, global head of electronic markets in equities at Citi, the banking giant. Training artificial intelligence systems requires large datasets. Those who have the most data are the most able to adapt to the new environment and of course the banks and investment banks have reams of data. By 2020 we will really see radical change in the environment.

That change is very apparent in capital markets. While many people still think of traders as brightly jacketed men shouting in a trading pit, and a few think of men and women staring at screens while shouting into telephones, very few people picture a computer server clicking away, making millions of decisions.

This move towards automated trading, which began in the late-1990s and early-2000s, across the banking and asset management environment was driven by two factors. Firstly, traders cost a lot of money and are fallible, and so reducing their number reduced costs. Secondly, many of their simpler tasks were time consuming and ate into their ability to tackle complicated problems.

However, the first stages of automation were rule-based decision-making systems, algorithms that took an input and triggered an automated response. Any change in market circumstances required a platform to have its parameters altered.

Now smarter systems are being developed, capable of learning, which can be trained across datasets and then adapt to changes in circumstance. These can be applied to a considerable range of processes by innovative financial servicesfirms.

Joseph Pinto, global chief operating officer at AXA Investment Managers, says: We are looking at automation on three levels. Firstly, how can we use big data and eventually artificial intelligence to provide new signals for our portfolio managers? Secondly, we are using machine-learning processes or automation to process a lot of data on customers, for example movement of inflows, outflows and trying to anticipate customer behaviour. The third layer is more traditional, sitting down with our providers and ensuring they can automate their process to lowerfees.

These automated trading systems are not only getting smarter, but as wider datasets become available, machine-learning systems can be used to understand a wide variety of inputs. The inclusion of internet-enabled sensors within devices ranging from cars to shipping containers to toasters is creating the internet of things, a vision of the physical world represented indata.

At the same time, the increased surveillance of every aspect of life, and the capacity of machines to search images and text as well as tables of figures, just as search engines do across the internet, creates the potential for running searches just as powerful across financially sensitive information.

Bartt Charles Kellerman, chief executive of hedge fund consulting firm Global Capital Acquisition, says: In the past there was a guy with a counting device standing outside a concrete manufacturer, or outside a housing project, counting the number of trucks going in and out. Thats grown by leaps and bounds, so everything that moves is going to be monitored and fed into some centralised cloud, which is then going to be examined and cross-examined as a reflection of whether or not that data is going to impact a potential marketmove.

These technologies are already much in evidence outside of the financial services environment. From search engines to shopping assistants they are becoming increasingly prevalent. However, applying these to the management of money requires a considerable level of trust. Even smart automation requires oversight and risk management. Nor can there be a lack of transparency as regulators and investors both require insight into the decision-making process.

These are complex ideas when you use automation just for the investment process, or deep-learning or machine-learning, says Mr Pinto. And you need a simple way to explain it to your customers; you cannot sell it as a black box for sure. Thats the big challenge. So we are investing time and effort in creating transparency for users and clients, including creating tools like data visualisation. We find it really makes a big difference. The past is littered with opaque technologies that, when difficult to diagnose, were quickly abandoned byclients.

Nex Group, formerly ICAP, has been looking at automation to further the post-trade and back-office services it provides to clients via NEX Optimisation division.

A lot of automation we are providing is to make things more efficient for our clients, says Chuck Ocheret, chief innovation officer at NEX Optimisation. Thats been our mainpurpose.

Ironically, the most interesting automation can sometimes involve the more day-to-day tasks. The development of computer code, particularly the testing process, can be automated. When the firm takes on data from its customers, NEX Optimisation can automate the mapping out of defined fields, to assess where they belong in its own dataset. Although lots of data formats are standardised, firms still manage to create unique interpretations of these standards.

Mr Ocheret says: If you can automate those processes, learn from training sets how data is sent in and some of the weird variations that occur, then you can automate a lot of that stuff with relatively straightforward machine-learning.

Where clients are sending data for a single specific service, automation can allow that data to be reused for multiple purposes. A client may provide all their trade data to generate reports to the relevant regulators. Through the use of smart automation this could be used to run an evaluation or a reconciliation. The broader the datasets, the more insight you can offer to the clients, Mr Ocheretsays.

This is reducing the need to throw people at a task, but is also creating situations in which people would not be able to perform due to the sheer volume ofdata.

David Thompson, chief operating officer at NEX Optimisation, says: A fear around this kind of automation is that its going to get rid of jobs or positions, but actually there is a huge amount of additional opportunity, which is going to be provided by ensuring resources are focused where they add the mostvalue.

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Algorithmic trading ushers in new era of market automation - Raconteur

A new report from Paysa suggests automation jobs will put 10,000 people to work, and big companies will spend $650 million on annual salaries to make it happen. Sean Dowling (@seandowlingtv) has more. Buzz60

Chiquola Manufacturing Co. employees work with Whitin roving frames in Honea Path, S.C.(Photo: Gannett)

A 15-hour work week. That's what influential economist John Maynard Keynes prophesied in hisfamous 1930 essay"Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,"forecasting that in the next century technology would make us so productive we wouldn't know what to do with all our free time.

This is not the future Keynes imagined.

Many higher income workers put in 50 or more hoursper week, according to an NPR/Harvard/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation poll. Meanwhile, lower-income workers are fighting to get enough hours to pay the bills, as shown in a University of Washington report on Seattle's $15 minimum wage publicized this week.

Yet some of today's best minds are making Keynes-like predictions. This month, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said robots will one day replace us but we needn'tworry for a fewhundred years.

In May, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Harvard's 2017 class that increased automation would strip us not only of our jobs but also of our sense of purpose.

Mark Zuckerberg told graduating students at Harvard, the university he dropped out of to create Facebook, to create a purpose for today's world. (May 25) AP

Automation. Artificial intelligence. Machine learning. Many experts disagree on what these new technologies will mean for the workforce, the economy and our quality of life. But where they do agree is that technology will change (or completely take over) tasks that humans do now. The most pressing question, many economists and labor historians say,is whether people will have the skills to perform the jobs that are left.

"We are moving into an era of extensive automation and a period in which capitalism is just simply not going to needas many workers,"said Jennifer Klein,a Yale University professor who focuses on labor history. "It's not just automating in manufacturing but anything with a service counter:grocery stores, movie theaters, car rentals ... and this is now going to move into food service, too.

"What are we going to do in an era that doesn't need as many people? It's not a social question we've seriously addressed."

Instead of worrying about the mass unemployment a robot Armageddon could bring, we should instead shift our attention to making sure workers particularly low-wage workers have the skills they need to compete in an automated era, saysJames Bessen, an economist, Boston University law lecturer, and author of the book Learning by Doing: The Real Connection Between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth.

"The problem is people are losing jobs and we're not doing a good job of getting them the skills and knowledge they need to work for the new jobs," Bessen said.

Addressing this skills gap will require a paradigm shift both in the way we approach job training and in the way we approach education, he said.

"Technology is very disruptive. It is destroying jobs. And while it iscreating others, because wedont have an easy way to transition people from one occupation to another, were going to face increased social disruption," he said.

In this new age, Bessen said, we can't treat learning as finite.

"We need to move to a world where there is lifelong learning," he said. "You have to get rid of this idea that we go to school once when were young and that covers us for our career. ... Schools need to teach people how to learn, how to teach themselves if necessary."

A universal basic income (UBI) has been proposed as one possible solution to the loss of jobs caused by automation. A UBIwould give everyone a fixed amount of money, regularly, no matter what. Proponents say not only would it help eradicate poverty, butit would be especially useful forpeople whose jobs are eliminated by automation, giving them the flexibility to learn new skills required in a new job or industry, without having to worry about howthey'd eat or pay rent.

Some also suggest it would breed innovation. In his Harvard speech, Zuckerberg told the audience:"We should have a society that measures progress not just by economic metrics like GDP, but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas likeuniversal basic incometo give everyone a cushion to try new things."

Several countries are exploring or experimenting with a UBI, including Kenya, Finland, the Netherlands and Canada.

Americans have been worrying about automation wiping out jobs for centuries, and in some occupations, automation has drasticallyreduced the need for human labor.

But the relationship between automation and employment is complex. When automation replaces human labor, it can also reduce cost and improve quality, which, in turn,increases demand.

Marlin Steel in Baltimore was able to stay in business by automating its processes to stay competitive when many other manufacturing jobs went overseas. Video by Jasper Colt, USA TODAY

Such was the case in textiles. In the early 19th century, 98% of the work of a weaver became automated, but the number of textile workers actually grew.

"At the beginning of the 19th century, it was so expensive that ... atypical person had one set of clothing," Bessen said. "As the price started dropping because of automation, people started buying more and more, so that by the 1920s the average person wasconsuming 10 times as much cloth per capitaper year."

More demand for cloth meant a greater needfor textile workers. But that demand, eventually, was satisfied.

When ATMs were introduced in the 1970s, people thought they would be a death knell for bank tellers. The number of tellers per bank did fall, but because ATMs reduced the cost of operating a bank branch, more branches opened, which in turn hired more tellers.U.S. bank teller employment rose by 50,000 between 1980 and 2010.But the tasks of those tellers evolved from simply dispensing cash to selling other things the banks provided, like credit cards and loans. And the skills those tellers had that the ATMs didn't like problem solving became more valuable.

Whencomputers take over some human tasks within an occupation, Bessen's research showsthose occupations grow faster, not slower.

"AI is coming in and its going to make accountants that much better, its going to make financial advisers that much better, its going to make health care providers that much more effective, so were going to be using more of their services at least for the next 10 or 20 years," Bessen said.

These examples, though, are of occupations where automation replaces some part of human labor. What about when automation completely replaces the humans in an entire occupation? So far, that's been pretty rare.Ina 2016 paper, Bessen looked at271 detailed occupations used in the 1950 Census and found that while many occupations no longer exist, in only one case was the demise of an occupation attributed mostly to automation: the elevator operator.

A 2017 report from the McKinsey Global Institute found that less than 5% of occupations can be completely automated.

History has taught us a lot about how automation disrupts industries, though economists admit they can't account for the infinite ways technology may unsettle work in the future.

When a new era ofautomation does usher in major economic and social disruption which Bessen doesn't predict will happen for at least another 30 to 50 years it's humans that will ultimately decide the ways in which robots get to change the world.

"It's not a threat as much as an opportunity," he said. "Its how we take advantage of it as individuals and a society that will determine the outcome."

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Robots stealing human jobs isn't the problem. This is. - USA TODAY

Are robots going to take our jobs? Will artificial intelligence make it even easier? How will automation really affect the global workforce and economy?

As these technologies have developed with increasing speed, it's not unnaturalno pun intendedto wonder about their impact on the lives of regular people (not to mention the companies they work for). Will automation free our time for leisurely pursuits? Or will we get even busier? And if we're so good at creating technology that does the work for us, will society create new support mechanisms to address that reality?

To learn more, Fortune asked six humansthree executives, a researcher, an economist, and a futuristhow automation will impact society. Here's what they said.

This is a sophisticated problem, and it demands a call to intellectual arms to not assume that its a binary situation. Its not just that jobs will be lost and that robots are taking over. Its much more sophisticated than that. Amy Webb, founder, Future Today Institute

How do we create a mentality of agility and continuous learning? Thats the challenge I see with a lot of this. Its very easy when youre 22 to make a career change. Its much harder in the middle of your career. The cost of transitioning is very high. Bret Taylor , CEO, Quip, a Salesforce-owned company

We need to keep relationship skills. I went to an automated, self-serve restaurant the other day, and I felt so empty when I left. Contrast that with my coffee shop. We are hard-wired for relationshipsyou want the smile, the connection. Leighanne Levensaler, SVP of corporate strategy, Workday

Most of us dont have the reflective time that allows us to be innovative and creative. So weve actually destroyed our capacity to go beyond computers. But computers are always going to be more efficient than us. For us to be better than technology, we have to find our inner human. Lynda Gratton, professor, London Business School

Theres a huge need to increase productivity around the world, the U.S. included, simply because of aging. Half of our economic growth has come from more people working: women in the workforce, growing population. That source is about to disappear. So we badly need to increase the economic output. One way to do that is to have the robots, the A.I., do the work. It has the potential to increase our productivity. And not only do we need robots working, but people too. So we need to make sure theres enough work for them to do. Michael Chui, partner, McKinsey Global Institute

Theres this assumption that its going to be people or robots, all or nothing. My experience is that it doesnt operate that way. Its automating part of the job, but not the full job. Repetitive, manual workno one whos doing it is really enjoying it. Technology replaces and creates. It replaces manual work and creates new opportunitiesnew tasks, if you will. And productivity creates growth, which creates new kinds of work. It is a virtuous cycle. Its so easy to talk about it in binary terms. I just dont think thats the reality. John Donahoe, CEO, ServiceNow

A version of this article appears in the July 1, 2017 issue of Fortune with the headline "Ready for the Robots?".

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Automation: How Humans Can Coexist With Robots at Work ... - Fortune

BENGALURU: Genpact does not believe in balancing out the im pact of au tomation on its top line as the bene fits far outweigh the losses, the CEO of the business pro cess management (BPM) company told ET.

BPM companies are typically considered to be the first in line to be hit by automation, as a more people-intensive business is replaced by software robots and platforms. "You shouldn't try to balance it out. Clients are looking to us to help them transform themselves and if in that process revenue reduces, then it is all right. We are such an under-penetrated company that the opportunity is very large," NV 'Tiger' Tyagarajan, told ET.

"In some global clients, we are actually growing at about 19% but when we give back the gains from automation, we grow at about 13%." Genpact has launched a new plat form that combines analytics, automation and artificial intelligence.

The platform, called Genpact Cora, is built using the company's original process and industry domain knowledge with new digital capabilities from its acquisitions of Rage Frameworks, PNMsoft, and others.

"We believe this is a unique industry platform that combines automation, analytic engines and artificial intelligence. It is modular and includes governance around the implementation," Tyagarajan said.

The platform can be sold with a number of ways of pricing, including transaction-based and outcome-based pricing. There will also be a component of licensing fees as part of the contracts, Tyagarajan said.

Genpact has acquired artificial intelligence services provider Rage Frameworks and insurance service company Brightclaim in the last six months. Genpact has raised its guidance for 2017, helped by its acquisitions. It expects revenue of $2.63-2.70 billion in 2016.

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Genpact: Automation benefits outweigh losses, says Genpact CEO ... - Economic Times

Distribution utilities of all types globally are facing a wide range of new challenges and opportunities brought on by greater customer expectations and enhanced reliability needs. As distributed energy resources (DER) proliferate, new approaches and technologies for managing these new generation resources will add to the complexity of automation approaches at the substation and feeder levels, as well as on low-voltage (LV) transformers at the edge of the grid. Thus, there is a growing need for more intelligence, control, and agility in the distribution grid, particularly at the edge, where many new DER systems are located.

To date, utility automation efforts at the distribution level have been largely focused on issues caused by reliability mandates, outage penalties, customer expectations, electric vehicle (EV) charging, renewables intermittency, shifting loads, capacity constraints, and bi-directional power flows. In the longer term, automation further down in the medium-voltage (MV) and LV network will enable the proactive development of markets for aggregated clean resources and services, service-oriented business models, and end-to-end integrated grid management strategies.

Distribution level automation applications

Distribution automation (DA) and substation automation (SA) technologies and strategies are being adopted to increase the level of monitoring, intelligence, and automation across the distribution grid. These automation solutions can be divided into three major segments:

Substation automation at the distribution level is accelerating, particularly in North America, with many utilities deploying fiber communications to accommodate advanced technologies and software systems. Nonetheless, Navigant estimates that distribution level substation connectivity and automation penetration remains well below 50%, and in the 10% to 20% range or less in developing regions.

To date, feeder monitoring and automation is limited at best, though forward-looking utilities such as Eversource, Florida Power & Light (FPL), Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Oncor, and others have been deploying sophisticated outage restoration and automation systems.

For example, Eversources (formerly NSTAR) 20092014 Grid Self-Healing and Efficiency Expansion project involved the deployment of two-way communications infrastructure and DA equipment on 400 circuits in its Massachusetts territory. New switches, sectionalizers, reclosers, and condition monitors were installed to enable automatic detection and isolation of power outages, followed by rapid restoration. The project included LV feeder monitoring in Boston, high-speed fiber optic rings for reliability, monitoring, and control, web-based outage reporting, and a new outage management system.

Market Outlook

Distribution utilities of all types are now implementing distribution substation, feeder, and transformer automation technologies and solutions. Navigant Research expects Europe to be the largest regional opportunity over the next several years due to feeder system design characteristics. Currently, the region represents more than half of global DA and SA market revenue.

However, the opportunity is relatively short term and tails off after 2021, when major feeder and transformer automation projects are expected to be completed. In all other regions, distribution substation, feeder, and transformer automation revenue is expected to increase steadily through 2025.

Navigant Research expects global cumulative DA and SA revenue for all technologies to reach $109.1 billion between 2016 and 2025. The annual revenue opportunity is projected to grow from $7.6 billion in 2016 to a peak of $12.5 billion in 2021, and then drop to $12.2 billion in 2025. The overall 20162025 compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is expected to be 5.5%. Chart 1.1 shows the growth in annual revenue for the 10-year forecast period by global region.

Regional Trends

The key market drivers in North America for increased automation at the distribution level are concentrated around improving reliability, addressing aging infrastructure, changing cost recovery mechanisms, increased visibility into feeder operating parameters, AMI installations, and (to a certain extent) new distribution feeder system and substation construction.

At present, 4050% of MV substations have some level of automation, and upgrades to more sophisticated control and automation capabilities are being planned.

Feeder automation remains nascent generally, but at FPL in Florida, it became a high priority, as the region is subject to the most lightning strikes in the United States; these storms were a primary cause of faults in FPLs distribution network. Particularly in remote rural locations and swamps, restoration was time-consuming and costly. In response, FPL elected to complete a system-wide feeder automation improvement project and selected S&C Electric to provide equipment and installation services. The company deployed S&Cs TripSaver II cutout mounted reclosers, which deliver decentralised, intelligent, and autonomous restoration capabilities, across more than 80,000 feeders in its service territory. The project was notable because it covered FPLs entire network; most feeder automation projects to date are feeder-specific and focus on particularly troublesome segments of the network.

In Europe, the MV substation situation is much different from that in North America. Across many of the countries in Western Europe, the MV substation fleet is 95100% automated already, though much of the automation may be first generation systems with limited capabilities. Upgrades from early SCADA to more powerful DMSs can be expected to occur.

That said, much T&D system expansion is occurring as Europes regional operators reconfigure their networks for large-scale penetrations of DER and large investments in LV transformer substation monitoring and control, as well as feeder monitoring, can be expected. lectricit de France (EDF), for example, is planning LV transformer monitoring and automation across 700,000 or more transformers the majority of its fleet by as early as 2020. And Spanish DSO Iberdrola Distribucin is implementing its multiyear Network Remote Management and Automation Systems (STAR) project, which has been focused on network remote control and automation in MV substations, as well as on LV transformers and distribution feeders. Once completed in 2018, this $2.2 billion project will monitor and automate approximately 80,000 transformer substations and deploy over 10.3 million smart meters.

Key DA and SA drivers in Asia Pacific include the epic expansion of the T&D system and substations to address both rural electrification and large-scale urban expansion, as well as to replace ageing infrastructure. With a large number of new projects driven by electrification, most if not all new installations will be monitored and (to some extent) automated systems.

The Asia Pacific DA and SA market can be divided into three major territories, each representing approximately one-third of the regions total market size: China, India, and everywhere else. The DA market in China is led by the countrys Strong and Smart Grid initiatives. Although this market continues to grow, China is notoriously difficult for outside commercial vendors to access, due to price pressure from in-country vendors.

Examples of success in China often include partnerships with Chinese companies. For instance, General Electric (GE) has established a partnership/joint venture with the XD Group, providing local content and presence.

India is experiencing similar price pressures as China, thus giving lower-cost local products and integrators like Tata, Infosys, and Wipro a significant advantage; here too, local partnerships are essential. However, India has fewer centralised protectionist politics compared to China, which has made it easier for international vendors to compete.

The third Asia Pacific segment, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, is still widely accessible. Australia and New Zealand were early adopters in terms of smart grid technology deployments. However, local economies have been weak in recent years, dampening demand. That said, Australia has become a major market for distributed solar; rapidly increasing penetration of variable renewables supplies in Australia will force distribution network upgrades.

Conclusions

The days of a largely electro-mechanical distribution system maintained by crews in trucks are giving way to a highly connected, automated, smart grid. Connectivity options are increasingly attractive and necessary to support sophisticated software and analytics solutions which improve grid reliability, operational efficiency and flexibility. Especially as the traditional ratepayer, cost-plus business model is replaced by a system more focused on efficiency and services, distribution utilities will find themselves increasingly dependent upon automation solutions to meet the needs and demands of customers and regulators. As such, investment in these technologies is expected to grow throughout the coming decade. MI

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richelle Elberg is a principal research analyst contributing to Navigant Researchs Utility Transformations program and heading up the Smart Grid research services, including Connected Grid, Digital Grid, and Dynamic Grid. Her primary focus is on communications networks for utility applications, including AMI and substation and distribution automation applications.

Elberg has more than 20 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, including an extensive background analysing and writing on the wired and wireless communications industries from operational, financial, strategic, technical, and regulatory perspectives.

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Shifting demands driving automation in the distribution grid - Metering International (subscription)

The next wave of job automation has landed in Las Vegas.

A bar staffed by robots, called The Tipsy Robot, will open Friday on the Strip and the trend is likely here to stay. (Ed. Note:The bar is also staffed by people. The robots are are an entertainment attraction, but robot bartenders could become more common in the future.)

Of all American cities, Las Vegas is most susceptible to automation due to its high number of service industry job, and a new study from the University of Redlands says that women, minorities, and teenagers hold jobs that are most likely to be automated.

Johannes Moenius is a professor at the University of Redlands who helped conduct the survey. He was quick to point to the reason for that.

If you look at the jobs that are most susceptible to automation ... there'sa lot more women working in those jobs than men," he said.

Moenius pointed to the grocery store clerk as an example of a job that is slowly being taken over by self-serve kiosks and bank teller positions are almost entirely taken by ATMs.

It is not just about the job, Moenius said, it is really about how much education a person has.

People who have no high school degree, no high school diploma, have an almost a 75 percent chance of being automated away, he said.

Moenius said the higher the degree a person obtains the lower the chances that his or her jobwill be replaced by automation. In the survey, Asians fared much better at having a job that wasn't going to be replaced by a robot, he said. He credited that to the fact that Asians are more likely to have at least a bachelor degree.

The more education you have the higher insurance you have, he said.

Many people have decried the high cost of a college degree, which is why a technical degree is often suggested as an alternative to a bachelor degree. Moenius agrees that a technical degree has its merits he believes it only goes so far.

It is definitely true that if you get a technical degree and you continue to get an education on the side then you will get work less and less repetitive type tasks that make you less likely, less susceptible to getting a job automated away," he said."However, its the creative, problem-solving part that allows people to avoid the risk of automation.

One of the trickiest parts of the equation is young people. The study found that teenagers are also more likely to have their jobs automated away. However, many don't have the job experience to get a highly skilled job. Moenius also said young people who haven't gone to college should look to go to college. His concern is the people who didn't make that choice.

If youre dropping out of high school at age 16, you start working, you get some expertise, you become even a schooled artisan in your job, the probability that you wont have a job 10 years or 20 years down the road is very, very, very high, he said.

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Women, Minorities Are More Likely To Lose Jobs To Automation - KNPR

Hawaii is asking a federal judge to rule that President Trump's move to re-introduce parts of his travel ban is at odds with a Supreme Court ruling earlier this week. From the court filing:

"The Government does not have discretion to ignore the Court's injunction as it sees fit. The State of Hawaii is entitled to the enforcement of the injunction that it has successfully defended."

The issue: The ruling stated that citizens of the countries subject to the ban who have "bonafide" relationships with people in the U.S. could not be barred. The Trump administration's interpretation of that ruling excludes grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, in-laws, and other extended family members.

The travel ban protocol went into effect at 8pm ET. More on who Trump's protocols would affect, here.

Update: The State Department website says fiancs now counts as close relationships, per Reuters.

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White House considers effects of automation "a policy challenge" - Axios

Every second office worker in the UK (48 percent) is optimistic about what automation technologies will do to their workplace in the future. The only problems are thatits expensive and infrastructure is lacking.

This is according to a new report byCapgemini, based on a poll of more than 1,000 UK office workers.

Four in ten (40 percent) believe machine learning will have a positive impact, while 32 percent said the same for robotics. Only 10 percent said automation might have a negative impact.

Almost half (47 percent) have seriously thought about how automation can support their departments on a daily basis. When it comes to finances, the percentage jumps to 85. Business owners and directors think as much as 40 percent of business tasks could be automated before 2020. That includes invoicing, managing expense claims and admin tasks.

Office workers, however, arent afraid of losing their jobs. They see automation as a way to free up time, so that they could do tasks of higher value.

"Its really heartening to see the optimism for automation technologies among the UKs office workers --particularly when nearly half have given serious thought to implementation in their own workplace," said Lee Beardmore, vice president and chief technology officer of Capgeminis Business Services Unit.

"At present our survey estimates that around 13percent of businesses in the UK are benefiting from automation, but theres still a lot that havent seen anything yet. We certainly expect this figure to rise in the near future as more and more businesses realize the transformational power of technologies such as AI, robotics and automation. All of these technologies represent an opportunity for growth for businesses in every industry sector."

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Future plc Publication. All rights reserved.

Photo Credit: Wright Studio/Shutterstock

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UK workers optimistic about automation - BetaNews

Zume Pizza, a food delivery startup in the San Francisco Bay Area, is expanding to a new location in the heart of Silicon Valley with the help of robotic companions. The company, which starting today will deliver fresh pizzas to Palo Alto and the Stanford area in addition to its hometown of nearby Mountain View, says it has pioneered a robot-assisted technique for pressing pizza dough in a perfect circle in just nine seconds.

That allows the operation to improve efficiency and let its human employees spend time on less tedious work, according to CEO and co-founder Julia Collins. We wanted to identify places where humans were overtaxed physically, bored, or whether the job they were doing was not safe, like sticking their hand into a 600 degree oven for six hours a day, Collins said in an interview with The Verge. Thats why we focused next on this practice of opening the dough.

The new robot, aptly named Doughbot, is now being deployed on Zumes robot-enabled pizza assembly line, where it does the job of pressing dough up to five times faster than even the most seasoned pizza spinning pros.

If this all sounds like an alien and absurd idea robots making pizza does look like overkill, at first glance its helpful to understand the full context of Zume Pizza and its food-delivery ambitions. The company, which first began delivering pizzas last year, was founded on two core concepts: robotic automation and on-route cooking. Robotic automation is easy enough to understand. Zume, which sources machines from industrial robot maker ABB, employs these devices for tasks like dispensing the perfect amount of sauce, spreading that sauce, removing pizzas from ovens, and, now, spreading the dough with just the right thinness and crust-to-pie ratio. The various robots work in unison with humans in an assembly line-style work space attached to the companys Mountain View facility.

Zume is one of a number of automated startups popping up in the Bay Area trying to fuse cooking with technology. For instance, Eatsa which now has a number of locations in California has made headlines in the past for letting you order healthy and low-cost quinoa-based bowls without interacting with a single human. These types of companies combine the on-demand ambitions of startups like DoorDash, Munchery, and Postmates with a kitchen technology twist, all with the aim of avoiding the typically heavy costs associated with food production and logistics. To that end, Zume has hired Susan Alban, who led the launch Ubers food delivery arm UberEats, as its new vice president of operations, Collins announced today.

Zume relies on both robots and on-route cooking to cut costs and speed up deliveries

For Zume, robots are just one aspect of the business. Its really the on-route cooking concept that got Collins and her co-founders excited years ago, when they first began applying for patents and churning through hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to protect their inventions. Folks often go to the robots first, because robots are sexy, Collins says. But the founding idea of Zume was really cooking on route.

You see, Zume Pizza uses up to six specially designed delivery vehicles the size of FedEx trucks. Each one is outfitted with dozens of pizza ovens that can simultaneously reheat hundreds of pizzas, so that each one can be placed fresh and hot into the companys custom pizza box. That way, when someone orders pizza, it arrives in under 20 minutes.

We use predictive technology to make really high-fidelity bets on what pizzas people are going to order, Collins says. Early in the morning we produce a daily inventory of pizzas. We predict the total volume of pizzas and the types of pizzas that we need to satisfy that days demand. That way, Zume doesnt have to cook every pizza from scratch, while still managing to avoid the fast food pitfalls of serving precooked meals.

Zume predicts how many and what kind of pizzas it needs to make each day

The predictive factors at play range from simple stuff like time of day and day of the week to more complex ones like what sporting event or television premiere happens to be airing at the time. When demand gets too high, Zume stops going door to door for deliveries and parks its trucks. It then deploys a fleet of small Fiat vehicles and scooters to ferry the pizzas out in a more efficient manner.

Zumes ultimate goal is to make fresh, locally sourced food at reasonable prices by aggressively rethinking the costs of running a food operation dependent on delivery. Zume pizzas are priced between $10 and $20 for a single pie, and the company uses up to 60 ingredients to offer gluten-free and vegetarian options, as well as artisan-style pizzas with ingredients like arugula pesto, asparagus, and ricotta.

All ordering is done through the companys mobile or website. There is no storefront. So rather than paying 10 percent of sales in rent, we pay 2 percent of sales in rent, Collins says, while robots increase our production volume.

This is what allows Zume to keep costs down without relying on contractors, like so many of the Bay Area-based food delivery startups (and ride-hailing apps). Collins says Zume has around 115 full-time employees, all of which receive benefits like health insurance. As for whether these employees will all be automated away by robots, Collins stresses that the goal is never to fully automate the process of making and delivering food.

Our goal was never to have end-to-end automation. It was never, How can we have a pizza production operation that would have no humans? Collins says. Automation allows Zume employees to shift focus from laborious tasks to more creative ways, she adds. Our best pizza spinner is really happy to work on our menu and ingredient selection.

Our goal was never to have end-to-end automation.

This all sounds like the quintessential utopian dream of automation: a world where robots takeover only the most boring and physically taxing jobs and humans are free to perform creative and fulfilling work. Of course, theres no telling how well Zume will scale when it attempts to tackle a market as dense and complex as, say, San Francisco, which is undeniably the biggest target on the companys radar.

Theres also no telling how sophisticated artificial intelligence and robotics will be in just five years time. Whos to say ingredient selection wont be perfected by an algorithm? Driving Zumes trucks most certainly will be automated by self-driving cars at some point in the future, even if that practice is still decades away on a regulatory timeline.

But Collins is confident that Zume can lay the groundwork for the future of high-quality, tech-infused food delivery that doesnt treat human labor as an enemy. That her company employs only full-time workers, and its leadership so dedicated to keeping those employees from doing tedious tasks, seems like a promising step toward that dream.

We want to make sure everyone has access to high-quality, affordable food, she says of Zumes goal, and to use technology to solve Americans food problem. If that mission involves a robot that can press dough or spread sauce faster and better than a human being, can you really blame Zume for being the first to get out there and use it?

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Zume's robot pizzeria could be the future of workplace automation ... - The Verge

All the signs now point to a strengthening and broadening recovery in the euro area, Mr. Draghi said. His comments pushed the euro to almost its highest level in a year, though it later gave up some of the gains.

But along with the optimism is a fear that the economic expansion might bypass large swaths of the population, in part because a growing number of jobs could be replaced by computers capable of learning artificial intelligence.

Policy makers and economists conceded that they have not paid enough attention to how much technology has hurt the earning power of some segments of society, or planned to address the concerns of those who have lost out. That has, in part, nourished the political populism that contributed to Britains vote a year ago to leave the European Union, and the election of President Trump.

Generally speaking, economic growth is a good thing, Ben S. Bernanke, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said at the forum. But, as recent political developments have brought home, growth is not always enough.

In the past, technical advances caused temporary disruptions but ultimately improved living standards, creating new categories of employment along the way. Farm machinery displaced farmworkers but eventually they found better paying jobs, and today their great-grandchildren may design video games.

But artificial intelligence threatens broad categories of jobs previously seen as safe from automation, such as legal assistants, corporate auditors and investment managers. Large groups of people could become obsolete, suffering the same fate as plow horses after the invention of the tractor.

More and more, we are seeing economists saying, This time could be different, said Mr. Autor, who presented a paper on the subject that he wrote with Anna Salomons, an associate professor at the Utrecht University School of Economics in the Netherlands.

Central bankers have begun examining the effect of technology on employment because it might help solve several economic quandaries.

Why is workers share of total earnings declining, even though unemployment is at record lows and corporate profits at record highs? Why is productivity the amount that a given worker produces stuck in neutral?

The mere fact that we are organizing this conference here in Sintra testifies to our interest in that discussion, Benot Cur, a member of the European Central Banks executive board, said in an interview, referring to the Robocalypse debate.

Of particular interest to the European Central Bank is why faster economic growth has not caused wages and prices to rise. The central bank has pulled out all the stops to stimulate the eurozone economy, cutting interest rates to zero and even below, while printing money. Four years of growth have led to the creation of 6.4 million jobs. Yet inflation remains well below the banks official target of below, but close to, 2 percent.

One explanation is that more work is being done by advanced computers, with the rewards flowing to the narrow elite that owns them.

Still, among the economists in Sintra there was plenty of skepticism about whether the Robocalypse is nigh.

Since the beginning of the industrial age, almost every major technological innovation has led to dire predictions that humans were being permanently replaced by machines.

While some kinds of jobs were lost forever, greater efficiency led to more affordable goods and other industries soaked up the excess workers. Few people alive today would want to return to the late 1800s, when 40 percent of Americans worked on farms.

Robocalypse advocates underestimate the power of scientific advances to beget more scientific advances, said Joel Mokyr, a professor at Northwestern University who studies the history of economics.

Think about what computers are doing to our ability to discover science, Professor Mokyr said during a panel discussion, citing computers that can solve equations that have baffled mathematicians for decades. There may be breakthroughs that we cant even begin to imagine.

There are other explanations for stagnant wages besides technology.

Companies in Japan, the United States and Europe are sitting on hoards of cash, doling out the money to shareholders rather than investing in new buildings, equipment or innovative products. Just why is another topic of debate.

Hal Varian, the chief economist at Google whose self-driving technology may someday make taxi drivers unnecessary said that the plunging cost of information technology has virtually eliminated the fixed cost of entering a business. Companies can rent software and computing power over the internet.

And flat wages reflect the large number of women who have entered the work force in recent decades as well as the post World War II baby boom, Mr. Varian said, adding that those trends have run their course. We are going to see a higher share going to labor, he said.

Yet already, disruptions caused by technology help account for rampant pessimism among working-class and middle-class people across the developed world.

Mr. Bernanke referred to polls showing that about twice as many Americans say the United States is on the wrong track than say the country is moving in the right direction.

As a result, last November Americans elected as president a candidate with a dystopian view of the economy, Mr. Bernanke said.

Mr. Autor, co-author of the Robocalypse paper, concluded that it was too early to say that robots are coming for peoples jobs. But it could still happen in the future.

I say not Robocalypse now, Mr. Autor said, perhaps Robocalypse later.

Follow Jack Ewing on Twitter @JackEwingNYT.

A version of this article appears in print on June 29, 2017, on Page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Robocalypse Now? Bankers Ask, Will Automation Kill Jobs?.

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Robocalypse Now? Central Bankers Argue Whether Automation Will Kill Jobs - New York Times