Category Archives: Automation

As machine learning and robotics improve in the coming decades, hundreds of millions of jobs are likely to disappear, disrupting the economies and trade networks of the entire world. The Industrial Revolution created the urban working class, and much of the social and political history of the 20th century revolved around its problems.

Similarly, the artificial intelligence revolution might create a new "unworking class," whose hopes and fears will shape the history of the 21st century.

Universal Basic Income

The social and economic models we have inherited from the previous century are inadequate for dealing with this new era. For example, socialism assumed that the working class was vital for the economy, and socialist thinkers tried to teach the proletariat how to translate its immense economic power into political clout. These teachings might become utterly irrelevant in coming decades, as the masses lose their economic value.

Indeed, some might argue that already, Brexit and Donald Trump's presidential victory demonstrate an opposite trajectory. In 2016, many Brits and Americans who had lost their economic usefulness but retained some political power used the ballot box to revolt before it is too late. They revolt not against an economic elite that exploits them, but against an economic elite that doesn't need them anymore. It is far more frightening to be useless than to be exploited.

In order to cope with such unprecedented technological and economic disruptions, we probably need completely new models. One that is gaining increasing attention and popularity is universal basic income. UBI suggests that some institution -- most likely a government -- will tax the billionaires and corporations controlling the algorithms and robots, and use the money to provide every person with a stipend covering basic needs. The hope is that this will cushion the poor against job loss and economic dislocation, while protecting the rich from populist rage.

Not everybody agrees that UBI will be necessary. Fears that automation will create massive unemployment go back to the 19th century, and so far they have never materialized. In the 20th century, for every job lost to a tractor or a computer at least one new job was created, and in the 21st century automation has so far caused only moderate job losses.

But there are good reasons to think that this time it is different, and that machine learning is a real game-changer. The experts who cry "job loss!" are a bit like the boy who cried wolf. In the end, the wolf really came.

Humans have basically two types of skills -- physical and cognitive. In the past, machines competed with humans mainly in raw physical abilities. Humans always had an immense cognitive edge over machines. Hence, as manual jobs in agriculture and industry were automated, new service jobs emerged that required the kind of brainpower only humans possessed.

Now AI is beginning to outperform humans in more and more cognitive skills, and we don't know of any third field of activity where humans retain a secure edge.

Of course, some new human jobs will develop in the 21st century, be it in engineering software or teaching yoga. Yet these will demand high levels of expertise and creativity, and will therefore not solve the problems of unemployed, unskilled laborers.

During previous waves of automation, people could usually switch from one low-skill job to another. In 1920, a farm worker laid off because of the mechanization of agriculture could find a new job in a factory producing tractors. In 1980, an unemployed factory worker could start working as a cashier in a supermarket. Such occupational changes were feasible, because the move from the farm to the factory and from the factory to the supermarket required only limited retraining.

But in 2040, a cashier or textile worker losing a job to an AI machine will hardly be able to start working as a software engineer or a yoga teacher. They will not have the necessary skills.

Proponents of UBI hope to solve that problem. Freed of economic worries, the unemployed could just forget about work, and devote themselves to their families, hobbies and community activities, and find meaning in sports, arts, religion or meditation.

Yet the formula of universal basic income suffers from several problems. In particular, it is unclear what "universal" and "basic" mean.

When people speak about universal basic income they usually mean national basic income. For example, both Elon Musk and former President Barack Obama have spoken about the need to consider some kinds of UBI schemes. But when Musk said that "There's a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income ... due to automation," and when Obama said that "whether a universal income is the right model ... that's a debate that we'll be having over the next 10 or 20 years," it is unclear who "we" are. The American people? The human race?

Hitherto, all UBI initiatives were strictly national or municipal. In January, Finland began a two-year experiment, providing 2,000 unemployed Finns with $630 a month, irrespective of whether they find work or not. Similar projects are underway in Ontario, Holland and Livorno, Italy. Last year, Switzerland held a referendum on instituting a national basic income scheme, but voters rejected the idea.

In the U.S., Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, proposes to greatly expand the Earned Income Tax Credit program, boosting the income of poor Americans by about $1 trillion. Though the plan does not promise any stipends to the unemployed, it is seen as a first step towards instituting national basic income.

The problem with such national and municipal schemes, however, is that the main victims of automation may not live in Finland, Amsterdam or the U.S. Globalization has made people in one country dependent on markets in other countries, but automatization might unravel large parts of this global trade network with disastrous consequences for the weakest links.

In the 20th century, developing countries made economic progress mainly by exporting raw materials or by selling the cheap labor of their workers and service personnel. Today, millions of Bangladeshis make a living by producing shirts that are sold to customers in the U.S., while people in Bangalore, India, earn their keep answering the complaints of American customers.

Yet with the rise of AI, robots and 3-D printers, cheap labor will become far less important, and demand for raw materials might also drop. Instead of manufacturing a shirt in Dhaka and shipping it all the way to New York, you could buy the shirt's code online from Amazon and print it in Manhattan. Zara and Prada stores could be replaced by 3-D printing centers, and some people might even have such printers at home.

Simultaneously, instead of calling customer services in Bangalore to complain about your printer, you could talk with an AI representative in the Google Cloud. The newly unemployed workers and call center operators in Dhaka and Bangalore don't have the education necessary to switch to designing fashionable shirts or writing computer code -- so how will they survive?

Under this scenario, the revenue that previously flowed to South Asia will now fill the coffers of a few tech giants in California, leading to huge strain on developing economies. American voters might conceivably agree that taxes paid by Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. be used to give stipends to unemployed coal miners in Pennsylvania and jobless taxi-drivers in New York.

However, does anyone think American voters would also agree that part of these taxes should be sent to Bangladesh to cover the basic needs of the unemployed masses there?

Another major difficulty is that there is no accepted definition for "basic" needs. From a purely biological perspective, the only thing a Homo sapiens needs for survival is about 2,500 calories of food per day. Over and above this biological poverty line, every culture in history defined additional basic needs, which change over time.

In Medieval Europe, access to church services was seen as even more important than food, because it took care of your eternal soul rather than of your ephemeral body. In today's Europe, decent education and health care services are considered basic human needs, and some argue that even access to the internet is now essential for every man, woman and child.

So if in 2050 the United World Government agrees to tax Google, Amazon, Baidu Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. in order to provide a basic income for every human being on earth, from Dhaka to Detroit, how will it define "basic"?

For example, will universal basic income cover education? And if so, what would these services include: just reading and writing, or also composing computer code? Just six years of elementary school, or everything up to Ph.D.?

And what about health care? If by 2050 medical advances make it possible to slow down aging processes and significantly extend human lifespans, will the new treatments be available to all 10 billion humans on the planet, or just to a few billionaires? If biotechnology enables parents to "upgrade" their children, would this be considered a basic human need, or would we see humankind splitting into different biological castes, with rich super-humans enjoying abilities that far surpass those of poor Homo sapiens?

Whichever way you choose to define basic human needs, once you provide them to everyone free of charge, they will be taken for granted, and then fierce social competitions and political struggles will focus on non-basic luxuries -- be they fancy self-driving cars, access to virtual-reality parks, or enhanced bioengineered bodies. Yet if the unemployed masses command no economic assets, it is hard to see how they could ever hope to obtain such luxuries. Consequently, the gap between the rich (Tencent managers and Google shareholders) and the poor (those dependent on universal basic income) might become bigger and more rigid than ever.

Hence, even if universal basic income means that poor people in 2050 will enjoy much better medical care and education than today, they might still feel that the system is rigged against them, that the government serves only the super-rich, and that the future will be even worse for them and their children.

People usually compare themselves to their more fortunate contemporaries rather than to their ill-fated ancestors. If in 2017 you tell a poor American in an impoverished Detroit neighborhood that she has access to much better health care than her great-grandparents did in the age before antibiotics, it is unlikely to cheer her up. Indeed, such talk will sound terribly smug and condescending. "Why should I compare myself to nineteenth-century peasants?" she might retort. "I want to live like the rich people on television, or at least like the folks in the affluent suburbs."

Similarly, if in 2050 you tell the useless class that they enjoy better health care than in 2017, it might be very cold comfort to them, because they would be comparing themselves to the upgraded super-humans who dominate the world.

Modern communication systems make such comparisons almost inevitable. A man living in a small village 5,000 years ago measured himself against the other 50 men in the settlement. Compared to them, he probably looked pretty hot. Today, a man living in a small village compares himself to the 50 most gorgeous hunks on the planet, whom he sees everyday on TV screens and giant billboards. Our modern villager is likely to be far less happy with the way he looks. Will universal basic income include plastic surgery for everyone?

Homo sapiens is just not built for satisfaction. Human happiness depends less on objective conditions and more on our own expectations. Expectations, however, tend to adapt to conditions, including to the condition of other people. When things improve, expectations balloon, and consequently, even dramatic improvements in conditions might leave us as dissatisfied as before.

If universal basic income is aimed to improve the objective conditions of the average person in 2050, it has a fair chance of succeeding. But if it is aimed to make people subjectively more satisfied with their lot in order to prevent social discontent, it is likely to fail.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Originally posted here:

View: Why universal basic income isn't universal or basic - Economic Times

Meet a dead man walking.

Im a long-haul trucker, and Im going to be replaced by a computer. It will happen soon. Im figuring five years or less for trucks. Cars will take a little longer. This big push for driverless vehicles is more about getting rid of truck drivers than Uber drivers. The only humans left in the modern supply chain are truckers. Trucks are loaded and unloaded into and out of warehouses by barcode machines. Eliminating drivers completes the loop.

Driverless trucks wont need health insurance, vacations or pay. They also wont need dispatchers, compliance departments or human-resource managers.

Im resistant to automation because its not what Im used to, its not what I want and the future looks blurry.

Some of the press Ive read about automating trucks has to do with moral choice, like what does the machine do when faced with damaging property versus a person? There are still technological issues what happens when the machine gets hacked? but those will be solved.

I have to admit, the machine will probably be safer when put against the 35,000 annual traffic fatalities weve grown so accustomed to with human drivers. But also, thats 2 million low-skill jobs lost.

Im resistant to automation because its not what Im used to, its not what I want and the future looks blurry.

Driving our own vehicle is lodged in American cultural bedrock. To paraphrase author Cotton Seiler from the book Republic of Drivers: The belief in self-directed motion as an agent of liberation is powerful and venerable in American culture. That says it all. Besides, Im not really ready for another reshaping of our entire cultural fabric. Computers and smartphones were enough upheaval for one lifetime.

Im trying to work through this intellectually, not emotionally, so Im taking a step back to calmly think about other cultural norms that were typical in the past but unthinkable today.

Here are two examples. The first is from the 19th century. From our current perch, we find it inconceivable that an educated Southern planter endorsed slavery. If we conjured up one of these people, hed likely say that it was what he grew up with and it was supported by church, family and the entire social fabric. It would have taken a person of very advanced imagination to break free of the status quo and visualize a different future back then.

My second point is from my own direct experience. In my high school in the 1970s, seniors who had a certain grade point average were allowed to smoke cigarettes on school premises. This was considered a privilege. When I tell millennials that smoking in school was a reward, they are incredulous. In both cases, contemporary folks simply cannot believe that society viewed these practices as civilized.

I believe that it wont be long before people will look at human drivers in the same way. Your generation was completely comfortable with 35,000 road deaths each year? It was a bloodbath out there and you let it happen. You folks were barbarians! Now we have only 300 deaths a year because of automated vehicles. What were you all thinking?

Independent driving will be viewed as errant irresponsibility, like a pregnant woman smoking. There will be fewer deaths and no truck drivers. How are the supplanted truckers going to make a living?

America has fallen short in providing alternatives for displaced workers.

Im no Luddite. I dont think we should slow down technology to keep jobs. On the other hand, there are millions of working people caught in this spiral of job elimination leading to ever lower paying work. We cant all work at Walmart.

I live in Colorado, and the hills are strewn with abandoned mines that spew toxic chemicals into the rivers and streams. I used to live in Bridgeport, Conn., where the rotting carcasses of abandoned factories lie everywhere. When truckers go the way of these ghosts, once again, downsized workers will be tossed to the government to deal with (and while transportation companies reap enormous benefits). Have the companies embracing technological change no responsibility for the human and physical mess they leave behind? Apparently not.

Even The Economist, no foe of innovation, admits that America has fallen short in providing alternatives for displaced workers. Ive been a trucker since 1980. What am I supposed to do? Get retrained in computer programming? Im almost 60 years old. Not likely.

Something needs to change. Im a solid American, and I believe in work. I also believe in cleaning up after myself. That makes me a responsible citizen. Its long past time for the private sector to become one, too.

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This trucker is torn on automationeven if it costs him his job - New York Post

SINGAPORE - Nearly one in five employees in Singapore fears that automation will take away their jobs, a survey by recruitment firm Randstad found.

The poll also showed that workers in Singapore (19 per cent) and Hong Kong (20 per cent) held the highest fears of losing their jobs to automation. Malaysian employees, on the other hand, were more relaxed with only 13 per cent fearing automation will hurt their job security.

About three in four, or 72 per cent, of Singapore employees were open to retraining for a new role - provided that their salaries would remain the same or higher than before. The remaining 8 per cent would rather move to another company than retrain.

Only 52 per cent of Hong Kongers were open to retraining in contrast to Singapore and Malaysian workers (70 per cent).

Despite fears of automation taking jobs away, a large group of employees feel that automation will in fact make their jobs better.

Nearly half, or 45 per cent, of employees in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia felt this way,with Malaysian employees being the most optimistic (51 per cent) and Hong Kong employees the most pessimistic (39 per cent).

One third of all employees in each market felt indifference towards automation and stated that they felt it would have no effect on their jobs.

A further one in five stated that they could not imagine technology taking away their jobs.

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Nearly 1 in 5 Singapore employees fears losing jobs to automation - The Straits Times

Lets not mince words the loss of jobs to automation is a very real problem, increasingly affecting much of the Western world. While President Trump might be out there bellowing about creating manufacturing jobs in Americas rust belt, the fact of the matter is these jobs are long gone, and not coming back. Not when profit-making businesses have figured out a more cost-effective way to produce goods one that does not involve human labour.

A new report by the job search site Indeed.com has curated job availability across all sectors in Canada in an attempt to identify what industries are most and least prone to automation.

The results are interesting, though not altogether surprising.

Jobs that are not susceptible to automation tend to be focused in the science and tech field data scientists, healthcare professionals and cyber-security experts. For those of you in jobs that are repetitive and methodical by nature (think administrative roles), the machines are coming for you.

Jobs that had a very large non-routine component to them tended to be least susceptible to automation, Indeed.com economist Daniel Culbertson told VICE Money. The most promising careers for the future will be those that complement the work of machines, or which rely heavily on human qualities that cannot be replicated by a computer.

Data scientists, healthcare professionals, and cyber-security experts

The report found that from 2016 to 2017, the number of data scientist job postings in Canada increased by 75 percent. Thats a massive bump, but one that can be explained. The catchment of data sheerly from most people being online at least 12 hours a day has increased dramatically in the last 10 years. That data requires processing the know-how to analyze patterns and trends in different pieces of data cannot be replicated by a robot.

Job postings for cybersecurity experts also increased drastically (73 percent) between 2016 and 2017. As cyber-attacks increase in scale and sophistication, employers in Canada are racing to recruit the right staff to protect their business, fueling demand for cybersecurity professionals, said Culbertson.

The third category of people who should not ever worry about getting replaced by robots are healthcare professionals. Doctors, dentists and nurses deal with different patients everyday. Individual treatment requires some degree of discretion and creativity both are qualities that are impossible for machines to replicate. Moreover, Canada has an aging population, meaning that demand for healthcare workers will continue to rise over the coming decades.

What if youre an arts grad?

Theres good news for arts graduates too. If youre in the field of marketing, communications, design and human resources, you probably wont have to worry about losing out to robots any time soon.

Creative professions which focus on the complex interplay of ideas, words and images with shared cultural and social values are highly likely to survive the threat of automation. Social intelligence and new media literacy are key skills to be cultivated, advises Culbertson.

One interesting statistic that Culbertson discovered the share of chef postings on Indeed.com climbed by 11 percent between 2016 and 2017. Turns out, at least in Canada, people seem to be losing interest in generic, processed food, opting instead for creatively cooked meals outside.

The gig economy

Worth pointing out as well is the number of jobs that have been created in the so-called gig economy, as a result of automation. A 2016 report from the human resources consulting firm Randstad indicated that independent contractors, remote workers and on-demand workers make up between 20-30 percent of the Canadian workplace.

Culbertson argues that this isnt necessarily a bad thing, claiming that global interest in flexible work arrangements increased by 36 percent between 2013 and 2015. So its not just that were losing full-time jobs to automation were apparently choosing to opt for part-time work for the sake of flexibility.

A Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives study contradicts Culbertsons claim. Their data reveals that 55 percent of Canadian workers participate in the gig economy because its the only way to make a living right now. 71 percent of gig economy workers are under the age of 40.

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These jobs are least susceptible to automation - VICE News

When we think about how automation is changing our lives, images of a Jetson-esque world come to mind where everything just happens. Our lifestyles are curated and detailed down by the push of a button, making many of the practical activities we once took part of now obsolete. And for people in the sales and marketing world, this scares the pants off of some.

However, that fear is based more on conspiracy than it is facts. Innovations, like AI and automation, are geared towards replacing a lot of our everyday tasks, which will make our jobs not only easier, but smarter and more productive as well. Yes, it appears the automation revolution is here to stay, which is going to change the lives of sales and marketing for the greater good. Heres how:

Automation in the marketing and sales industry has been exploding as of recent, becoming one of the hottest trends in the industry. According to a report by Markets and Markets, marketing automation software is expected to become a $5.5 billion dollar industry by 2019. The growth of these types of programs has become tremendous money saving techniques, saving on both the time and labor over whats otherwise considered pretty mundane tasks.

Given how much easier automation is making the marketing and sales process, its no wonder why firms have been making such a drastic leap to adopt these technologies. Everything from lead generations to follow-ups can be conducted with much more efficiency and accuracy than ever before, which in an industry that relies heavily on volume and metrics, is a dream come true.

Perhaps one of the biggest fears I hear from people is that the entire sales process is going to be replaced by machines one day. However, this could be the furthest thing from the truth. Anyone who works in AI or Automation will tell you off the bat that the goal of these services isnt to replace the human but make them smarter and stronger at their position.

An excellent example of this is chatbots. While some believe that implementing an automated chatbot system for leads means that we can begin replacing pieces of our sales team, there are certain things that bot will never be able to understand such as emotional intelligence, tone, etc. In yet, what we can do is train bots to be smart enough to gauge responses to an end goal, such as qualifying a lead, scheduling an appointment, or even educating a potential customer on basic details. Thats the type of technology that can turn a good salesperson into a great one.

Its true that in some cases people and firms will fall by the wayside or have to grow and adapt to the latest and greatest changes. However, the world of sales and marketing are also cut-throat businesses, where sometimes only the strongest survive. That, and the smartest.

One of the most exciting innovations coming about in the automated revolution is the amount of information were about to be able to sink our teeth into. Never before have we seen such an extraordinary system of insights and data than we do now, which is making sales and marketing teams salivate.

When it comes to automating the sales process, companies like Cirrus Insights are offering platforms like Flight Plans, a system that lists out the goals of closing a deal. Not only does the software outline the proper procedure to landing a deal, but uses smart data to pinpoint the exact times and dates someone should follow up and what they should say. This software is revamping the sales process big time, with the industry taking note.

Read next: Why Live Streaming is Changing The Future of Social Content

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How Automation is Making The Sales Process Easier - TNW

One of the essential questions of our time is what work will look like in a decade once the powerful windstorms of artificial intelligence, automation, advanced manufacturing, decentralized workplaces, and online commerce have more fully swept the global economy.

This questionwhat is the future of work?has been driving the efforts of many of our journalists around the world, and today that coverage formally graduates to what we at Quartz call an obsession. Our obsessions are issues we identify as macro topics of essential importance to business professionals, which we cover on an ongoing, focused basis. Most are multi-disciplinary efforts involving several writers, as is the case with this newest one.

To get a sense of how well approach the future of work, you can look to some of our distinctive coverage on the issue to date. Theres the impact of AI and automation: Quartz reporter Dave Gershgorn covered investor Kai-Fu Lees prediction that machines will in 10 years replace 50% of the jobs done by humans today, and I spoke with Bill Gates about his related proposal for a robot tax. Sarah Kessler wrote an optimists take on what the doomsayers call the automation apocalypse. She profiled engravers, who have the most automated job in America according to government statistics, but wouldnt have it any other way.

In a different look at how work is changing, Sarah was also the first to write about how IBM is calling some remote workers back to the office. Then theres the rise of part-time work and the redefinition, by ride-sharing startups and other companies, of what it means to be an employee. Our colleague Alison Griswold has been exploring what their arrangements with workers say about the future of jobs, and societys support for those employed in the gig economy.

Looking ahead, youll see more coverage from Quartz as we try, along with our readers, to answer the question: What is the future of work for humans when machines are taking on more of it and companies and workers are rethinking their relationships to each other? You can look for it on qz.com each day and follow the Future of Work obsession here.

As always, we welcome your suggestions for coverage in this area and other potential Obsessions. You can reach me at kevind@qz.com

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We're launching Future of Work, a new Quartz obsession - Quartz

The threat of automation taking away jobs is real. It can entirely finish certain jobs or force companies to rationalise workforce.

The Jobs Disruption Survey of nearly 11,000 employees by ET Online has found that a large number of employees see automation taking away their jobs even though the trend is more visible in the information technology sector (IT) at this stage.

When asked if you see new technologies replacing workers in your company in future, 65 per cent of respondents answered in affirmative. Only 25 per cent said 'no' while 10 per cent chose 'can't say'. More than half of employees sensing a threat to their jobs from automation and related technologies indicates the seriousness of the threat 'robots' hold for jobs across various sectors.

The report said increasing use of digitisation, automation and artificial intelligence in businesses and organisations would hit Indian employees the hardest in the world in the short term by cutting jobs. For the questionWhere will digitization increase or decrease headcount?India had the most employers saying digitization would decrease headcount. Over a quarter of employers in India expect to reduce headcount due to automation.

While, at present, automation can impact jobs by changing work profiles, employers killing jobs altogether due to automation does not seem to be a near-term phenomenon across sectors , suggests ET Online's Jobs Disruption Survey.

When employees were asked if they think their job was going to vanish in future due to emerging technology, 44 per cent said 'yes' while 38 per cent said 'no'.

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Threat of automation taking away your job is real - Economic Times

woodworkingnetwork.com

Automation key to U.S. jobs: Reshoring Initiative woodworkingnetwork.com Will U.S. manufacturing be able to create jobs, particularly in view of increased automation displacing workers. The Reshoring Initiative has recognized the automation trend and that returning jobs will be, on average, higher skilled and fewer than ...

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Automation key to U.S. jobs: Reshoring Initiative - woodworkingnetwork.com

Edwin Yuen, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. in Milford, Mass., has a lot of good things to say about Chef, particularly as a network automation tool for Linux and container systems.

The Chef automation tool, Yuen wrote, gives IT operators the chance to make a bigger impact on their companies. Yuen said the programming language is a standard through which teams can communicate and eliminate roadblocks across platforms and applications.

Companies can then focus on "outcome-oriented IT," where outcomes drive both the applications and the infrastructure required to support them. That shift in strategy doesn't devalue infrastructure, Yuen said. Instead, it's about letting IT administrators -- through a network automation tool like Chef -- shift their focus from the infrastructure to apps and outcomes. "Chef has begun the shift away from simply showing the value of automationwithChefto the value of automationbecauseof Chef," Yuen said.

See what else Yuen had to say about the value of a network automation tool.

Lee Badman, writing in WiredNot, shared his experience with a simple upgrade of the Cisco controller underpinning his wireless LAN network. And the experience wasn't a pleasant one. As Badman put it, "It matters not that I've done this procedure about a hundred times through the years."

"This time, the controller had its own idea about how this code upgrade would go down."

The culprits will forever be unknown, but after a few bruises from repeatedly hitting his head against the wall in frustration, the controller -- and the associated access points -- got the required upgrade.

However, how he was able to get everything operating again makes for an interesting read.

Read about the obstacles Badman faced.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is now the cool kid on the block. At least, that's what Gartner analyst Jim Hare said in a recent blog post examining the evolution of the technology.

AI, in Gartner's estimation, has three important traits: the ability to learn, predict and, most important, to surprise. "Many people associate AI with a single technology -- chatbots, cloud APIs, computer vision, natural-language processing (NLP) or robotics," Hare said. "In reality, AI is diverse -- it is all of the above, and much more."

To that end, Gartner identified five vendors it believes have AI software that goes beyond the tools currently available. They are Chronocam, for its image processing software; Cortical.io, for its NLP software; Deepgram, for its search and classification engine; Descartes Labs; and SigOpt.

See what Hare had to say about these companies and the evolution of AI.

AI comes of age

Troubleshooting wireless connection issues

What you need to know about Chef

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Chef gets compliments for network automation tool features - TechTarget

At tech festivalBrain Barin Budapest,Pter rvai, CEO and co-founder of Prezi, gave a talk titled Embrace automation? where he argued that being replaced by machines doesnt have to be a bad thing if we choose the right sci-fi movie future.

Arvai argues that we need to rethink our definition of work first and move society towards finding ways to make automation of jobs work in our favor.

To illustrate how weve done this in the past, rvai talked about when his grandmother got her first washing machine. Instead of having to hand wash soiled baby clothing for hours on end (babies poop a lot), she could simply put it in her washer and could instead useher time to do paid work.

This could continue in the future, but well need to createnew purposes for humans in a technologically driven future. rvai believes science fiction has a lot to offer when it comes to shaping that future vision.

Up until now, machines have mostly taken over our unpaid jobs, making our lives much easier. What people are afraid of now is that machines are gunning for our paid jobs, not only the menial ones.

No matter how frightening this might seem, rvai is positive we wont miss the jobs robots and AI will take away from us:

We need to start thinking differently about work. As we saw from my grandmothers example, it isnt necessarily what you get paid for. In fact, we might have to open our minds up to this idea again.

No matter how frightening this might seem, rvai is positive we wont miss the jobs robots and AI will take away from us.

Many people have focused on the financial issues of automation with suggestions like robot-tax or universal income, but this doesnt answer the fundamental question of work according to rvai, which is can we fix the future of work so it doesnt come at the expense of our happiness?.

Only 13 percent of people worldwide say that theyre engaged with their work, US being the highest with merely 29 percent, according to a study rvai quoted. Without uninspiring jobs to fill our time, humans will have to find new and fulfilling ways to live life just like in Star Trek.

The good news, according to rvai, is that we know more now what actually makes people happy than we did in the past. The bad news is that the science isnt precise yet, but that shouldnt stop us from trying to improve our work experience.

rvai says, however, that the direction is pretty clear and hes found three main goals that should help people live more fulfilling lives. Both the Prezi team, who work on solutions for workplaces, and rvai as an employer wantto try to help people reach these goals:

Achieving the first goal helps us reach the other two. We need to sleep well, eat well, and be able to grow as a person to have a fulfilling life. Possessing optimal energy then allows you to nurture the personal relationships in your life, combating loneliness which pretty much equals unhappiness.

The final goal might be more difficult to achieve, trying to cut through the noise and connect the dots that matter to you. Anybody whos tried to achieve happiness with these goals knows this is hard work, even though you dont get paid for it (yet?). But if we dont incorporatethese aspects into the future of work, well keep wasting human potential, because 13 percent engagement is a waste of mental energy.

Thats where Star Trek comes in. For rvai, these goals act as guidelines, but to complete the picture we need a vision for the future. The Star Trek and Star Wars universes offer perfect examples of hugely different visions in a technologically automated world.

These universes have what we can actually achieve in our lifetime. They have extremely good AI and the people dont need to go hungry because technology can provide for them. But what do they use their freedom from labor for?

rvai sums Star Wars up as a struggle for power (Wars might have given it away), while the people of the Star Trek universe are motivated and guided by the expansion of human knowledge. Of course there are some power struggles in Star Trek, and Star Wars has the enlightened jedi, but theyre not the ones guiding the entire story.

Star Trek has therefore more in common with the three goals above than Star Wars, as theyve managed to include them in their vision of how humans should live. The shows best-known catchphrase is even Live long and prosper!

So the question well need to ask ourselves about the future of work could be: Do we want to prioritize our lives and education in favor of a Star Trek technological future, or a Star Wars one?

It seems like the Trekkies are favored to win.

Read next: 3 common factors of robust mobile apps

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Automation of jobs should be like Star Trek, not Star Wars - TNW