Category Archives: Automation

Technology can aid rather then usurp public workers but for that to happen, public sector teams need solutions that give them autonomy and control

Public sector morale over job security is at an all-time low. More than a million jobs have been cut over the past six years in line with the governments austerity drive, with plans to axe still more from local authorities.

Added to this is concern that automation will see yet more public workers lose their jobs. Amelia, the AI employee deployed by Enfield Borough Council in the autumn of last year, is hailed as being 60% less expensive than her human counterpart, making AI an attractive option. But is the threat of robot replacements a real one?

According to recent research by Oxford University and Deloitte, 850,000 public sector jobs could be automated by 2030. It states that administrative roles are most at risk, while those interacting with the public are less so.

But theres a clear inference in the report that automation doesnt equate to unemployment. The authors suggest that automation has the potential to complement existing jobs by automating repetitive processes or even create new better-paid jobs.

>See also: Do you think a robot could replace your job?

Make no mistake, automation is already with us. The digitalisation of public sector services has already seen many of the processes previously carried out by human hand now scheduled by software.

Far from being met with resistance, this digitalisation has had an emancipating effect, freeing up staff from the daily grind to focus on other issues and the reduction in red tape has generated efficiency gains.

Alongside this, theres another story thats hitting the headlines when it comes to public sector employment: the woeful lack of digital skills. This drove the DWP to rollout digital academies in a bid to upskill staff, with 3,000 civil servants undergoing courses over the last two years.

As of September, those academies came under the remit of the GDS, which has pledged to double the number being trained annually. But the future of the academies now seems uncertain. Some sources even saying a lack of funding is the reason behind the current stonewalling over the Government Transformation Strategy.

So if we cant upskill public sector staff at the rate needed, could we outsource technical expertise? Finding (and keeping) skilled developers can be a challenge and the cost of employing the right people can be high. This is because digital skills are in short supply across the board.

According to the Digital Skills Crisis report published in June, the private sector is also struggling with 93% of tech companies reporting that the skills gap is affecting their business. Clearly theres a technical deficit as well as a fiscal one and to overcome that we will need automation.

Far from being made redundant by robots, technology could continue to empower staff, provided that solutions are built to cater for rather than replace human operators. Investing in this type of enhanced automation makes sense, not least because teams increasingly comprise a range of technical abilities. Technical competencies vary on digital design projects, for instance, and often include user experience designers, business analysts and developers.

Imagine, then, if that team could be united through the use of a technically agnostic solution. Even during the digital design process, theres no need, for instance, for staff to be proficient in code.

What they do need is the vision to design a service that fulfils user needs and thats easier to accomplish if you dont have to hand over your design to a third party, introducing delay, cost and inconvenience.

If solutions are intuitive to use they can empower these non-technical team members to be actively involved in digital service design and management.

Low-code services offer this level of control and flexibility with user-friendly dashboards and GUIs that feature drag-and-drop tools, the ability to reuse interfaces or integrate with third-party extensions and plug-in APIs.

The team doesnt need to be upskilled or supplanted by an expensive third-party contractor conversant in code. They simply need to have access to some initial support and self-help tutorials to quickly get up to speed to create, design and update digital interactive services independently.

The resulting digital services do themselves automate previously time-consuming laborious processes. For example, when it comes to case management, an automated digital solution can provide the applicant and case worker with access to documentation, monitor the progress of the application, and avoid problems such as duplication, incomplete or fraudulent claims.

>See also: Make way for the automated workforce

This type of case management is transforming how government departments work, from solicitors and plaintiffs associated with Legal Aid claims, to those seeking grants from public bodies such as Heritage Lottery Fund and the Creative and Cultural Skills agency, to charities seeking to file financial audit reports via the Charity Commission.

In the future, automation could free workers from other bureaucratic tasks. The police force, social workers and NHS staff all stand to benefit from a joined up system whereby records can be accessed across different government departments.

Automation can break down barriers by enabling staff to collaborate across different departments and across geographical areas. And it can level the playing field between highly technically skilled and the non-technical professionals.

Technology can, and should, aid rather then usurp public workers but for that to happen, public sector teams need solutions that give them autonomy and control.

Sourced from Jane Roberts, strategy director, Toplevel

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Automation and austerity: will robots make you redundant? - Information Age

While opinions vary on the number of jobs that can be automated away, its clear a large number of positions now handled by people, including accounting jobs, will be supplemented or replaced in some way by intelligent machines.

The utterance of the word automation conjures up gloomy images of job losses and people left behind by rapid technological change. While some job losses are inevitable, there is hope for optimism. Whats the reason? Simply put, the analytics at the root of those intelligent machines can provide expanded career paths for accountants and finance professionals.

Were already seeing a displacement of jobs in the accounting industry through outsourcing and robotic process automation, among other trends, yet the role of traditional accountants is expanding well beyond simple reporting measures.

Todays finance professionals must take into account a multitude of forces shaping financial performance: talent acquisition strategies, geopolitical forces, fluctuations in capital, emerging markets and intellectual property challenges, just to name a few. To suggest that smart and insightful accountants cannot acclimate to automation is to miss a fundamental truth about our nature: We are innovative, adaptable creatures who have been evolving and adapting to change for millions of years.

Beyond the Zero-Sum Game

Most enterprises and recruiters have struggled to redeploy jobs. A common mistake in thinking is: Once an accountant, always an accountant. So, what are some of the options?

At the end of 2016, Genpact Research Institute attempted to reframe the job loss mindset away from for every winner there must be a loser to how can we make the transition less painful for those affected? How can we better identify opportunities within the accounting profession to capitalize on the evolving role of the finance function?

Using data from 1,120 randomly selected people with accountant roles in their LinkedIn profiles and employed at large U.S.-based companies, we created a way to explore options for workers whose job has become obsolete or who require additional training.

The data analyzed career histories, education and skills to identify factors that enable people to move into roles traditionally unrelated to finance and accounting (F&A). The data showed that approximately one-third of accountants have held a role unrelated to F&A during their careers. The roles were in a much wider range than expected, and certainly broader than conventional recruiting firms would encourage candidates to consider (see chart below).

Diving deeper into specifics, it is clear that numerous career paths may exist for accountants. Customer service, operations, and sales and marketing were all well-represented in this research. In addition, possible positions in research, program management, consulting and business analysis stood out. Our research findings are clear: the skills and competencies that accountants possess are applicable to many fields, both in and out of finance. Risk-focused professions, where precision capabilities are central to supporting statistical and compliance methods, are just one example. We also found that the ability of accountants to work across the organization and understand other disciplines such as sales, marketing, supply chain and human resources may enable them to channel their skills into those areas.

The role of the finance function is expanding dramatically. Taking into account such factors as supply chains and market fluctuations, as well as how intellectual property and human capital shape business performance, further expands the boundaries of traditional accounting activities and broadens career opportunities.

Whats Next?

While the deployment of automated technologies will inevitably lead to some job losses, the evolving role of the finance function and skill sets accountants possess can lead to new, expanded and rewarding careers. The American Institute of CPAs and its management accounting designation, CGMA, reinforce the value that accountants bring to the table, with skill sets that can help address a wide array of business challenges.

Big Data can also help those at risk of losing their jobs identify new roles. With deeper study, corporate management and human resources professionals will be able to draw deeper conclusions on career progression, more effectively develop reskilling programs, and create new alternative jobs paths. Such learning and development initiatives may identify jobs for many positions in risk of being eliminated through automation.

For accountants, whose professional lives will be impacted by the rapid emergence of automation, it is certainly a time of increased anxiety. But for organizations that think creatively about the skills finance professionals bring to the table and how they can apply more broadly across the enterprise, this may be an opportunity to map a more hopeful and promising path to the future.

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Voices Does automation mean job losses for accountants? - Accounting Today

Atera, which makes a joint RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management) and PSA (Professional Services Automation) platform with a single code base, has announced a new release with a broad range of enhancements. Chief among them are the addition of auto-healing scripts, and enhanced out-of-the-box monitoring, both of which reduce the amount of work an MSP has to do.

One significant addition is the addition of Auto Healing Scripts, which trigger a script to run when a threshold level is exceeded.

This is a very key thing, because it allows the MSP to build a set of automated actions and reactions, said Gil Pekelman, Ateras CEO. And its all automated, so they dont have to do it again in the future. Anything that is automated in autohealing is work the MSP wont have to do.

It extends the monitoring path once a threshold is reached so you can react automatically with a script, said Oshri Moyal, VP of Research and Development at Atera. If you are close to running out of disk space, for example, you will automatically clean the disk.

Enhanced out-of-the-box monitoring has also been added, which include allowing MSPs to select multiple events in one threshold item.

In feedback, this was high on the list of missing features, Moyal said.

Users have said we want a lot more monitored out of the box, Pekelman said, But how much do you monitor, thats the issue. If you monitor too much, you get lots of false positives and you run around chasing them, and if you monitor too little, you dont get alerts when you need them. A few things are absolutely essential, but beyond that, its tough to determine what gives you the biggest bang for your buck. We have effectively engaged in Crowdsourcing to get feedback, and have given what the crowd has told us they wanted. We added new capabilities out of the box so there is less work to do. Combined with autohealing, where things will be automatically fixed for you, you become more efficient.

The Splashtop remote app has now been fully integrated into the Atera system.

We started with a tool for remote management that we developed ourselves, but we decided to focus on our core competency and we released the integration with Splashtop in September, Pekelman said. Then, you still had to go through Splashtop and get a Splashtop account. Now, when you sign up with Atera you are fully connected. You dont have to set up another account or deal with a third party.

The agent installation process has been streamlined through newly integrated troubleshooting diagnostics, improving the speed and ease of installing agents.

Oshri Moyal, Ateras VP of Research and Development

What we have done here is taken how we handled support cases, and turned it into a piece of software, Moyal said. Our diagnostic tool checks connectivity and in one click finds potential issues when an MSP installs an agent that can the MSP how to fix the problem.

Atera doesnt charge per agent, and so this troubleshooting capability is especially valuable here. Pekelman stated. We dont believe in support, not in this day and age. You dont call Google and Facebook for support. We have a very dedicated support team, but we dont want you to have to call them.

Other improvements beyond the automation ones include the addition of Integrated Wake-on-LAN (WoL) capabilities, which Moyal said was among their most requested enhancements, and which lets a computer to be turned on or awakened directly from the Atera console.

This is a very cool feature, Pekelman said. If a server is down and off and you need to access it, you dont have to drive over to do that. You just click a button, and it wakes up.

User activity status updates now allow MSPs to see if an account is active, disconnected, idle, or locked before they remotely connect to the workstation.

MSPs say when they connect remotely to a machine, they want to know if user is on the machine or not, so that they will only connect if its idle or disconnected, Moyal stated.

Atera stresses its uniqueness in having the same code for its RMM and PSA capabilities, and Pekelman indicated improvements have been made on the PSA side as well.

We now have automatic email alerts on contracts that are about to expire, and more detailed invoices based on contract type, ticket, and time entry, he said.

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Atera adds multi-faceted automation capabilities in new release of joint RMM-PSA platform - ChannelBuzz.ca

The future of automated industries may be playing out in a New York toy fair. As adults worry about whether people will need a basic income to supplement lost earnings from robots taking over jobs, kids are putting together new machines and learning how to make them do their bidding. A new generation will grow up knowing how to make robots their masters.

The 114th North American International Toy Fair, a convention running from February 18th through to the 21st at New York Citys Javits Center, is a center point for new trends in toy technology. This year, 24 exhibitors mention robots in their description. It might sound like childs play, but the products on display show that manufacturers are considering how the robo-revolution will change the demands of future industries.

Its no secret that an economy shifting towards automation will require different sets of skills. The Obama administration produced a report in December looking at robot automation. The report concluded that the best way forward was to invest in artificial intelligence, rethinking the social safety net and, yes, educating Americans so they can take on the jobs needed in the future.

At the Toy Fair, several products are teaching kids how to build their own robots using simplified parts. One example of this is Tinkerbots, which uses simple rearrangeable building blocks, paired with a smartphone app, to create imaginative new designs:

Another product is Tami, a block building system created by Robotron. The blocks are interesting in that they come in both non-robotic and robotic forms. Kids can make simple designs using the basic Tami blocks, before moving onto simple and advanced Robotami kits, some of which use touch and infrared sensors to teach the basics of hardware creation and software programming.

Other toys focus more on the software side than on hardware. WowWee is the creator of Coji, a robot that teaches kids how to code using a smartphone app. The bot responds to input via the app, and its up to kids to work out how various emojis will string together to create commands. Similarly, Wonder Workshop are the makers of the Dash and Dot pair of robots, which interact with smartphone games that teach basic programming logic in an easy-to-understand interface.

The automation of kids toys cant come soon enough. Tesla CEO Elon Musk claims that automation is going to transform the workforce, and a universal basic income will be necessary within 20 years of the first autonomous car hitting the road, which could be as soon as this year. Familiarizing kids with the shifting robot landscape will be crucial to helping the next generation understand this new world of technology.

Photos via Tinkerbots

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Robots Visit NY Toy Fair While Adults Worry About Automation ... - Inverse

It is difficult not to view Donald Trumps administration, regardless of its politics, as combative towards at least some portion of the American public. Unlike previous presidents who ultimately relied on messages that conveyed some attempt real or theatrical at national unity, Trumps team has decided to draw very clear lines between his supporters and everyone else. Whether it is the press, radical Islam, or the politically correct, Trumps style of leadership appears to rely on scapegoats. This bitter political ideology will likely be ineffective in guiding the country through the next decade of developments in the economy.

As artificial intelligence, robotics, and new forms of automation continue to flourish, the forms of work that millions of Americans rely on are at risk. The political solutions to navigating these changes are going to require broad public initiatives that havent been accomplished in decades, and everyone is going to have to be on board.

Before leaving the White House, President Obama commissioned a report titled Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and The Economy, that provides an in-depth look at the changes that will occur as automation becomes more sophisticated. Far from the doom and gloom projections of a workplace without humans, the report charts the subtle ways that, at scale, AI will have a tremendous impact on how our economy, and labor force, functions. Citing the current wave of AI, which the report describes as having begun around 2010, the study describes how the the types of jobs available in the economy are rapidly changing, and these changes are primarily impacting low income and less educated Americans.

According to the MIT Technology Review, 83 percent of jobs that pay less than $20 an hour are under threat from automation. Simply put, as technology makes things like ordering a cheeseburger, buying groceries, and shipping goods, require fewer human beings involved, the number of jobs available for poor Americans will shrink dramatically.

Ford, a company whose name is synonymous with the dream of American manufacturing jobs, recently announced goals to provide fully autonomous ridesharing by 2021, and earlier this month, allocated $1 billion for the autonomous vehicle startup Argo. Trumps former candidate for Labor Secretary, Andrew Puzder, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that, in areas like retail and foodservice, increases in minimum wage were to blame for the increase in automation. Of course, he also cites consumer preference as The major reason.

Lots of high-minded technological thinkers, particularly Elon Musk, have proposed a universal basic income, a form of wealth distribution that ensures every citizen receives a baseline income whether or not they are employed, as a likely solution to the problem of workforce automation. But the White House report takes a more somber approach, describing a basic income as giving up on the possibility of workers remaining employed. Instead, the report suggests a number of policy proposals (like Obamas national free community college initiative, and expanded unemployment benefits) as ways of actively facilitating the transition into a more AI driven economy.

In an interview with the MIT Technology Review, Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution calls for what he calls a universal basic adjustment benefit. Unlike a universal basic income, it would involve targeted benefits for those left out of the workforce, providing tools like wage insurance, job counseling, relocation subsidies, and other financial and career help.

The Future

A McKinsey report estimates that 59 percent of manufacturing jobs can be automated.

Uber has already made significant strides automating cars and delivery vehicles.

Manufacturing in the US has actually increased just not with the help of human workers.

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LA Times

The White House report points out that the U.S. government spends roughly 0.1 percent of its GDP on programs to help people deal with changes in the workplace much less than similar developed nations. This funding has also declined over the past three decades.

This is where Trumps style of leadership appears, at worst, disastrously cynical, and at best, ignorantly short sighted. By invoking a bygone era of American manufacturing, Trump undoubtedly tapped into a significant form of anxiety present in a large portion of the country. But his solutions, a dramatic reduction in immigration and tax breaks for corporations who move sparse manufacturing jobs to the U.S., dont even take into account changes in technology.

The people left behind by the advances in automation have faced the steady creep of obsolescence, in the form of a shrinking number of available jobs, for the past decade, and Trump promised to rewind time, to a period before artificial intelligence. A post-election analysis from FiveThirtyEight found that one of the best predictors of whether or not a county voted for Trump wasnt unemployment or income, but its proportion of jobs that are considered routine, an economic term for jobs that are easily automated. Areas with a high percentage of routine jobs voted in significant numbers for Donald Trumps vision of an America stopped in time.

Republicans in the House and Senate, similarly, have no discernible plan for how to address technologys impact on the workforce. Theyve instead spent the past decade working single-mindedly on taking control of the government in order to enact an economic and moralistic vision frozen in the 1980s.

Im very worried that the next wave [of AI and automation] will hit and we wont have the supports in place, Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard told the MIT Technology Review. Katzs research is focused on how public spending on education in the 1900s helped America make the economic shift from agriculture to manufacturing. Theres plenty of reason to believe that, as Wireds Clive Thompson points out, the next blue collar job in America could be computer programming. An initiative to teach coding to the millions of Americans whose jobs will slowly phase out in the face of AI would take years to develop and enact, and it doesnt even appear to be on anyones mind.

The report from the final days of Obamas White House makes sure to point out that:

The next few years will find our government squabbling over a health care law that for the most part works, and passing dramatic forms of austerity that have never proven effective in the long term. The cost of attending college, a critical tool for finding a job in the new economy, will likely continue to rise unabated. All the while technology will continue to alter the way millions of Americans work, for better and for worse.

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AI and automation are about to - The Outline

Bill Gates wants the federal government to impose robot taxes in the future on companies that opt for technological labor over human hands.

The Microsoft co-founder made the statement to Quartz last week while discussing his advocacy of taxing companies profits as a means of funding job-training in other fields.

There will be taxes that relate to automation, Mr. Gatessaid Friday. Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, Social Security tax, all those things. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, youd think that wed tax the robot at a similar level.

And what the world wants is to take this opportunity to make all the goods and services we have today, and free up labor, let us do a better job of reaching out to the elderly, having smaller class sizes, helping kids with special needs, he said. You know, all of those are things where human empathy and understanding are still very, very unique. And we still deal with an immense shortage of people to help out there.

He made the public policy prescription for companies that use artificial intelligence, though he himself was not taxed for job displacement as his products catapulted him to over $79 billion in net worth.

Mr. Gates said that taxing companies that use A.I. is a better alternative than banning them from using such technologies.

I dont think the robot companies are going to be outraged that there might be a tax. Its OK, he said.

The businessman rejected the idea that free-market solutions were sufficient for addressing societal changes created by A.I.

Well, business cant [adequately handle such problems]. If you want to do [something about] inequity, a lot of the excess labor is going to need to go help the people who have lower incomes, he said. And so it means that you can amp up social services for old people and handicapped people and you can take the education sector and put more labor in there. Yes, some of it will go to, Hey, well be richer and people will buy more things. But the inequity-solving part, absolutely governments got a big role to play there. The nice thing about taxation though, is that it really separates the issue: OK, so that gives you the resources, now how do you want to deploy it?

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Bill Gates turns on technology, calls for 'robot tax' to slow automation - Washington Times

According to our recent survey, more than 2/3 of landscaping business owners are primarily responsible for their marketing.

This challenge has a solution, and its marketing automation.

Routine activities can be automated to free you from working in your business so that you can invest more time working on it.

While there is a learning curve with the technology, the true challenge is taking the time to design what can be automated.

In other words, if your business does not have a written process in place for activities like following up on leads or upselling current customers, then clearly, thats where it needs to start.

Start thinking in terms of triggers and actions.

The phone rings (trigger) and your team answers (action). The buyer asks for a quote (trigger) and your team dispatches a representative to learn more (action).

Automation Formulas: Trigger > Action > Trigger > Action

Webcast, February 21st: Supercharge Your 2017 Recurring Revenue with Channel Partners

Organize everything and automate what you can.

#1. List the actions

What are the actions you want your buyers to take from their first contact with your business? List them, step- by-step.

#2. Test the sequence

How many of your recent customers have followed those steps? Patterns outside of your ideal flow may suggest disallowing these actions in the future.

The other option is to create multiple pathways to success.

Its important to be clear about the process steps that are inflexible. Often this involves legal issues or payment terms, but it can include anything in the buyers journey.

#3. Automate what you can

Lets face it, nowadays a website visit is replacing the telephone call.

Clicks to your website are triggers. You can use marketing automation to take action on them to send relevant information. And you can tag that interest to segment prospective buyers into categories. As they move through your funnel they will trigger new actions.

Every successful action should trigger another.

Take the time to automate what you can, even if thats only one step in your process. After you nail that give yourself a pat on the back and celebrate.

Youve saved some time! Now look for more ways to automate.

Marketing automation gets a bad reputation when its used to interrupt people to sell to them. But theres nothing wrong with selling when its done right.

The key is finding ways to use marketing automation to personalize.

For example, a sales transaction could trigger an email that offers an automated booking calendar such as ScheduleOnce that the buyer can use to independently book a time to meet with your company representative to address whatever issues there may be.

And that personalization just may trigger new business!

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Marketing Automation: What Your Business Needs to Know - Business 2 Community

One of Michigans largest technology and manufacturing business associations has released its 2017 Technology Industry Report.

Automation Alley, based in Troy, recently conducted a nationwide survey of nearly 400 senior technology and manufacturing executives to determine their knowledge of Industry 4.0, and whether they are ready for the digitization of manufacturing within their company.

Industry 4.0, also known as the fourth industrial revolution, refers to the convergence of digital and physical technologies currently disrupting the manufacturing industry,

We believe that there is a huge opportunity for the technology industry to grow, both in Oakland County and across Southeast Michigan, said Automation Alley Executive Director Tom Kelly. (This can be done) by providing their products and services to the manufacturing industry, because the manufacturing industry is planning to spend a lot of money on new technological advancements.

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According to the 2017 report, the top three technologies in which companies currently invest are the cloud, cybersecurity and big data/analytics.

Kelly said when it comes to Southeast Michigan and Oakland County, the majority of tech businesses plan to invest in one particular area.

Regionally, we found that manufacturers plan to invest in autonomous robots, said Kelly.

RELATED: Uber opening driverless vehicle research and tech center in Wixom

RELATED: County Executive L. Brooks Patterson says county premier location for advanced vehicle technology

The report highlights where communication gaps exist between technology and manufacturing executives, the lack of company resources dedicated to technological advancements and how Southeast Michigan is ahead of the curve when it comes to the development and adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies.

Kelly said, based on the report, that national manufacturers are not prepared for Industry 4.0,

They see the benefits of technological advancement, but they face many obstacles to adopting new technology, said Kelly. What did surprise us about the report was that the local manufacturing industry is more prepared for Industry 4.0 than their national counterparts.

Locally, within Southeast Michigan and Oakland County, the Industrial Internet of Things and simulation (42 percent of those surveyed), followed by autonomous robots, horizontal and vertical system integration, and the cloud (all at 33 percent of those surveyed) are a top priority for Automation Alley manufacturers

85 percent expect an increase in their companys budget for technological advancement in 2017 (nearly a third of them plan to increase their budgets by 10 percent to 15 percent)

88 percent believe technological advancements can be beneficial to their companys competitiveness

62 percent believe that technologies in the cloud will improve their companys competitiveness in 2017

54 percent said the biggest barrier in making technological advancement in their company is cost

76.7 percent said Industry 4.0 is currently not an initiative within their company

65 percent said Industry 4.0 will have very much, quite a bit or some impact on their company in 2017

Automation Alley publishes the Technology Industry Report to provide the technology business community with valuable insights into the future of the tech industry, both locally and nationally.

The organization helps to connect businesses with talent, resources and funding to accelerate innovation and fuel Southeast Michigans economy.

The non-profit includes nearly 1,000 tech-focused members in businesses in Southeast Michigan.

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Huge growth opportunity for tech industry in Oakland County, says Automation Alley director - The Daily Tribune

NEW DELHI: Contrary to popular belief, 89 per cent of people are positive about the role robots can play in helping them in the workplace, rather than taking away jobs, says an Adobe study.

According to the Adobe Digital Insights Future of Work Report, people are open to man and machine collaboration for work benefits.

"The Future of Work looks promising, as robotics and automation gear up to enable employees to be more productive and creative in their roles," said Abdul Jaleel, Vice President, People Resources India, Adobe.

Despite some concern around the impact of automation in the workplace, people are demonstrating positive commentary around how automation can undertake mundane tasks, and allow them to focus on creative and strategic responsibilities that matter most to them and their careers.

Robotics holds promise especially when it comes to the automation of traditionally mundane tasks.

Jaleel noted that automating document and signature processes, for example, could open up new possibilities for people as the tech revolution advances. Faster transportation and self-driving cars could revolutionise local travel.

"Moreover, the virtual office has big potential in the Future of Work. Work environments should continue to improve as employees demand more from their space, especially with automation ruling the minds of people," he said.

The findings are based on over three million Future of Work -- a phrase covering broad group of topics around what work would look like in the future -- related social mentions across several digital platforms including Twitter, news, blogs and forums, between January 2016 to January 2017.

The study's social analysis features regions including the US, UK, India and Australia.

The research is based on the analysis of select, anonymous and aggregated data from more than 5,000 companies worldwide that use the Adobe Digital Marketing Cloud to obtain real-time data and analysis of activity on websites, social media and advertising.

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89% people want automation at workplace: Adobe - ETCIO.com

The prospect of automation taking away human jobs is both alarming and an opportunity to reorient our civilization to new objectives. The worrying part is that a sizable number of jobs, both blue and white collar, might be gone soon - a number that some estimates put as high as 47% during the next 25 years.

How will we adjust to this transformation? How will the people without jobs survive? Some ideas, floated by people like Elon Musk, see the necessity of instituting a universal basic income. Another approach was just proposed by Bill Gates, one of the original tech superstars and prognosticators, who also happens to be the worlds richest man. In an interview with Quartz, Bill Gates explained his view that as robots will be taking human jobs, a robot tax will be necessary on the companies that employ them.

Gates sees this as a positive development, because the tax would fund jobs that do not receive enough focus and talent currently, including elderly care and working with kids. These types of jobs that require empathy are better left to the humans. The government would run such programs. Gates thinks business cannot be left to manage this because growing inequity due to automation can only be addressed via the government.

Heres how Gates says that as a working human is taxed, so should the robot replacing the human -

Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, youd think that wed tax the robot at a similar level, explains Gates.

He thinks it an overall positive that automation will replace much of human labor, as it will free those people to do something else. What is necessary is training and education.

So if you can take the labor that used to do the thing automation replaces, and financially and training-wise and fulfillment-wise have that person go off and do these other things, then youre net ahead. But you cant just give up that income tax, because thats part of how youve been funding that level of human workers, points out Gates.

Gates proposes that the time has come to start talking about these questions. Many jobs in retail, warehouse work, driving, service industry and others should be gone in the next 20 years. And, according to Gates, maybe we should also think about slowing down the pace of automation until we have a good plan going forward.

How would taxing automation work exactly? Gates sees it as a tax on profits from increased efficiency or a tax on robot companies.

Some of it can come on the profits that are generated by the labor-saving efficiency there. Some of it can come directly in some type of robot tax. I dont think the robot companies are going to be outraged that there might be a tax. Its OK, says Gates.

Overall, Gates stays enthusiastic about the future. But automation is a topic that demands immediate and continual attention. Not because we should be afraid of innovation, but because its a challenge we worked to create and need to meet.

People should be figuring it out. It is really bad if people overall have more fear about what innovation is going to do than they have enthusiasm. That means they wont shape it for the positive things it can do, continues Gates.

To him, taxation is a better approach to innovation that stifling it.

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Cover photo:Bill Gates, founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, takes part in a discussion organised by British magazine The Economist about expected breakthroughs in the next 15 years in health, education, farming and banking on January, 22, 2015 in Brussels. (Photo credit: EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images)

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Bill Gates: the Robot Taking Your Job Should Pay Taxes - Big Think