Category Archives: Automation

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Sales representatives at TigerStop feel like they are competing against the status quo. As makers of high-tech cutting equipment, they try to pry companies from the simple, beloved tape measure.

The tape measure is, what, $5 minimum? And our minimum is $5-frickin-grand? said one orange-shirted salesman at the companys headquarters in Orchards.

But sales are growing at the company. Manufacturers are looking more and more for ways to trim the most expensive and time-consuming parts of production: labor. That hunt has translated to double-digit growth for TigerStop for at least the last five years.

To be competitive in the U.S., you have to be efficient, you have to be flexible, said CEO Rakesh Sridharan. You have to be fast (and) productive, and the people that are running these machines can be utilized in a more valuable way.

With automation becoming increasingly more viable, companies like TigerStop are positioning themselves for the continuous growth.

Company lore says founder Spencer Dick had a eureka moment when he saw machine operators at his cabinet company stop often in order to recalibrate. He went to work making prototypes of programmable add-ons and lugging them to trade shows.

TigerStop, officially founded in 1994, has since sold around 30,000 variations of its products, according to spokesman Simon Spykerman. It weathered the Great Recession and the downturn in the housing market and the downturn in wood products.

Last year, the company posted $11.5 million in revenues. Revenues grew by 15 percent on average over the last four years. It grew 16 percent in 2016, and Sridharan projects it can grow by 18 percent in 2017.

Its products arent the robotic arms clapping cars together in a warehouse that we typically associate with automation. They are saws, or mounts for saws, that can be programmed to quickly and precisely cut raw materials.

One of its cheaper models will have a long, orange and steel-gray table mounted on a table saw. A technician can punch in measurements on a green keypad, sending the metal piece that the wood is placed against zipping into narrowest fractions of space lining up a precise cut.

The high-end models do more. They can analyze a block of wood or metal and lay out a virtual map of cuts that minimize waste. Spykerman compares it to delivery truck drivers fitting as many possible boxes of various shapes into a trailer.

Portland-based window maker Indow said two TigerStops was all the company needed for a dramatic raise in output. The company has 18 people on its production side who can churn out 160 units per day.

Our labor costs would have been significantly higher, because we would have to use tape measures and some other manual material to get close. But we need better than close, said Rich Radford, vice president of operations.

Leanness has been a theme when people talk about automation. Businesses such as Indow can add newer technology that may be expensive, but can rapidly make good on the investment. The company will look to expand aggressively, Radford said.

Were not doubling year-over-year (production), but were not too far from that, he said.

TigerStops own situation is similar. The company has 40 employees and just two warehouses where it makes the saws: one in Orchards and another in The Netherlands. Its 10-year growth plan, which executives call ambitious, envisions expanding sales all over Europe.

With manufacturing rising all over the world, they are watching for opportunities in every corner.

Its not necessarily an American-only mission, said Spykerman. The idea is to help manufacturers compete globally and keep jobs locally. That applies to any country. We want European jobs to be able to succeed and keep those jobs locally.

Sridharan was announced as CEO less than a month ago to oversee this phase. He was a former executive at another global company, Portland-based Leatherman Tool Group, and has degrees in mechanical engineering, manufacturing management and business administration.

Companies such as TigerStop are going with the technological grain, not against.

A new study from the research group McKinsey Global Institute suggests that 49 percent of worker activities not just jobs, but parts of jobs can be done better by a robot or machine.

The Trump administration has also stated it a top priority to coax companies to bring manufacturing plants stateside. If they are convinced to pay the higher American wages, they may try to lower their costs with automation.

TigerStop has already sold many products to marquee manufacturers such as door and window maker Jeld-Wen and aerospace giant Boeing, Spykerman said.

Automated sawing may only scratch the surface, according to the McKinsey report. Researchers there said almost every occupation has potential for some automation. And thanks to advances in software engineering, jobs we consider highly skilled could be as vulnerable as manufacturing and food service jobs.

I kind of look at it differently from my perspective: Were creating jobs where there were none before, said Aaron Holm, CEO of Blokable, a Seattle-based maker of modular homes with a manufacturing plant in Vancouver. The company plans to grow heavily this year with big investments in automated manufacturing.

Well be creating entirely new jobs in the region and the country that probably just werent jobs that existed before, he said. With the folks that were hiring, were taking people who have experience in other domains and asking them to use that experience in a new area.

Radford conveyed a similar thought. Rather than using TigerStops to make their employees redundant, they have assigned new tasks for them to do during their newfound downtime.

I think its always a challenging discussion: what is your motivation (as a company)? Is it about the company culture or is it about the bottom line? he said.

Opponents argue that even if the push for automation and leanness makes new jobs, they will require more education.

Ultimately, the sales team at TigerStop say they see their products as logical steps forward for the manufacturing industry that they hope to capitalize on. Salesman Mathias Forsman compared it to lumberjacks.

That one employee is kicking out as much as four employees, with the TigerStop, he said. Its like saying we should have guys with axes out there instead of chain saws.

See the rest here:

TigerStop hopes to ride automation to new heights - The Columbian

In the face of growing workplace automation, a number of commentators have painted a grim future for American workers. But most human capital leaders see a much brighter future one where automation helps revitalize U.S. manufacturing and increases the demand for skilled workers.

According to global talent management firm Randstad Sourcerights survey of over 400 corporate HR leaders, automation and robotics are likely to have a positive impact on U.S. business growth in 2017, and will be one of the driving forces behind new hiring trends over the next several years.

Regardless of how you feel about robots, the move toward automation and artificial intelligence cannot be stopped. About 15 percent of global HR leaders say that robotics completely transformed their businesses in 2016, and more than double (31%) expect automation to have an even greater influence in 2017.

Rather than feeling threatened by this new technology, nearly two-thirds (65%) of the HR leaders we spoke with said they see artificial intelligence and robotics having a positive impact on their businesses over the next three to five years. Across all the major industry sectors surveyed, respondents were optimistic about technologys ability to reduce costs, improve quality and increase output.

It is easy to assume that these productivity gains are made at the expense of workers. In reality, this technology actually has increased demand for flexible, mobile workers with skills and agility that machines are not even close to matching. While 26 percent of those surveyed said their businesses increased the use of automation and robotics in 2016, over 34 percent said they hired extensively over the same period just to keep up with company growth.

In fact, the HR leaders we surveyed indicated that a scarcity of skilled workers was driving employment demands in certain areaslike marketing, sales and IT/technicalwhere robotics will likely never displace the advantage of human intelligence. Indeed, well over one-third of respondents anticipate hiring more workers in these areas over the next year.

But workers with the right combination of skills and experience are hard to come by. Many workers are structuring their work hours in ways that allow them to work many different jobs, across several geographical locations. As a result, more companies are rethinking their talent management to account for more short-term, offsite workers. Of the HR leaders we surveyed, more than two-thirds (66%) said they are considering moving toward a talent management model that would more easily integrate contingent workers. They see the shift toward flexible talent as a sound strategy that can help companies access a larger pool of talent, such as parents with young children and retirees who may not want a traditional 9-to-5 job.

For some commentators, the investment in automation and contingent employees signals an upheaval in the economy that will not benefit American workers. But that perspective may be short-sited. In fact, automation and robotics can make U.S. manufacturing more cost-competitive, while increasing the number of high-paying, skilled jobs available for humans. Instead of 50 foreign workers being paid rock bottom wages to complete a job by hand, the same job will be accomplished by one skilled U.S. worker running a robot and earning a middle-class salary. This combination of increased automation and a more mobile, contingent workforce can reduce manufacturing costs and make it easier for companies to build their factories in the U.S. The end result is a better educated, higher paid American workforce.

Change can be difficult. We are witnessing a major shift in the way business does business. But most HR leaders see technology as providing workers with new opportunities (and also with new priorities). These recent changes in workforce management need not be seen as the catastrophe some suggest. If Randstad Sourcerights 2017 Talent Trends Report is any indication, robots are far more likely to benefit American workers than replace them.

Rebecca Henderson is the CEO of Randstad Sourceright, one of the worlds leading human resources providers.

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Automation can revitalize the US workforce - Fox News

Surprise! The moose population is booming on Isle Royale now that Mother Nature has selected the wolves in that particular environ for extermination (The thick and thin of it, Feb. 5). With the proposal to pluck healthy wolves from a stable environment and reintroduce them to an apparently non-wolf-friendly island, the never-ending, (taxpayer funded?) wolf study/camping trip continues. Dare we fathom a guess as to what fate looms for the moose? Lets just say theyd better sleep with one eye open. Nature will deal with the moose if the island cant sustain them. Some random winter, the lake will experience another total freeze, the wolves will cross to the island and the eternal moose/wolf dynamic will play out, as it has for thousands of years.

Let it happen.

Tim Anderson, Walker, Minn.

Ron Schara shares his opinion in his Feb. 5 commentary The thick and thin of it by comparing the relationship between wolves and moose in Minnesota and Isle Royale. He wants the reader to accept the premise that wolves appear to be a major cause in the decline of the moose population in Minnesota. He states: While Minnesotas case is more complex, the states moose are prey to a historically high wolf population. In one Minnesota wolf study area, the number of wolves roaming the north is the highest its been in 40 years.

I would ask Mr. Schara to dig a bit deeper into the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) statistics on the historic wolf and moose populations. These reports are readily available and easily found.

The DNR wolf population survey clearly indicates the Minnesota wolf population peaked in 2003-04 at 3,020 wolves. Yet in 2006, the moose population peaked at 8,840. This would not support his point.

In addition, DNR statistics show, the wolf population has dropped nearly 27 percent since the peak. This fact places in doubt Scharas statement saying that the number of wolves roaming the north is the highest its been in 40 years.

Schara asks: So is that part of the answer to Minnesotas moose mystery? Thin out a few wolf packs?

The answer to that question is that, no, the wolf population is already down 27 percent from its peak, and the moose continues to be at risk. Thinning out or killing a few more wolves will not bring back the moose. Stop wasting time blaming the wolf and concentrate your efforts on a real solution.

Duaine Morphew, Maple Grove

HEALTH CARE

Privatization, it increasingly seems, is problem, not solution

The Feb. 5 commentary A reasonable path for GOP toward universal coverage ignored some key points. Our common goal is high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans. Thats quite a bit different from insurance coverage or access to insurance coverage. Remember that insurance companies operate in the free market. They seek a large number of subscribers, betting that most subscribers will make few or inexpensive claims for medical services. That provides enough money to pay for the large claims coming from a hopefully small number of subscribers for chronic illness or end-of-life care.

If the number of subscribers gets smaller, if the number of expensive claims increases and/or if the costs of medical services increase, the insurance companies dont have enough income to cover the claims. Companies can and do respond in several ways. Being in a free market, they may stop offering health insurance altogether. They can raise premiums. They can reduce coverage and increase copays and deductibles. All of these responses are happening today in Minnesota.

The Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) attempted to address these problems by making insurance mandatory (or be penalized) but still relying on private insurance companies to provide health care. (Mandatory insurance is not new; everyone in Minnesota who owns a car must have auto insurance.) Premiums went up anyway, forcing people to pay the penalty for insurance they couldnt afford.

It is ironic that much of the rest of the world has universal health care for all citizens, including places like Thailand, Rwanda and Bangladesh, that is affordable or free and of high-quality.

I can only conclude that privatization is the problem, not the solution, as is becoming more apparent in many things that are public goods that benefit all.

David Ruch, Stillwater

JOBS

Issues with employer size, automation are obstacles

The Feb. 5 story Start-up accelerator scene heating up claimed the number of start-ups in the Twin Cities has been exploding amid the ubiquity of the tech economy. However, this popular myth masks for readers a much more discouraging reality that threatens economic dynamism, innovation and jobs.

Since 1977, start-up companies in the Twin Cities metro have created a net majority of new jobs, but the rate of new businesses during that time has declined nearly 60 percent. This decline has coincided with a slow consolidation of the Twin Cities economy. The share of jobs in the metro at companies with 10,000 or more workers has increased over 11 percent; creating a dynamic where the firms most responsible for job loss over the long term control an increased share of our local economy.

More accelerators in the Twin Cities is a positive sign for the regions start-up ecosystem, but it should not distract readers or policymakers from the challenges faced by entrepreneurs in an economy where the playing field has been tilted to large corporate incumbents.

Justin Stofferahn, St. Paul

Lee Schafers Feb. 5 column (Jobs are plentiful, at least for machines) is a reminder that automation is gradually eliminating the blue-collar middle class. Automation in the form of computers is likewise eliminating the white-collar middle class. The pace is accelerating, with the result that there will be a huge number of permanently unemployed workers.

The U.S. is moving toward the greatest glut of unemployed middle-class workers since the Great Depression. Perhaps FDR has shown us how to cope with it. He looked at the infrastructure needs of the nation and set up special federal agencies to address them: WPA, PWA, CCC, etc. Yes, they were clumsy and inefficient, and they ran up the deficit. But today we have Hoover Dam, the Minneapolis post office, the St. Paul/Ramsey government center and countless other worthy infrastructure improvements across the country.

Everybody who wants to work should have the opportunity. Some of the profits from automation should be taxed to offset the cost of paying a living wage to displaced white- and blue-collar workers. Everybody will benefit from the repairs and additions to the nations infrastructure.

William Soules, Minnetonka

THE FUNNY PAGES

Diversity and letting go

A Feb. 5 letter writer was upset that were no minority comics in the Star Tribune. I would like to point out that the paper has published comics by minorities in the past.

They included The Boondocks, The Knight Life and La Cucaracha. (Another comic called Prickly City also featured a minority character, but this was a political strip written by a white conservative commentator, so I feel the character was a political statement more than anything else.)

However, these comics either retired or were not very popular and were dropped. The Star Tribune still publishes Jump Start on the weekdays.

There are other minority strips like Baldo and Curtis, but room would have to be made by cutting another strip.

Still, the bigger problem is to get fickle readers who enjoy reading comic reruns or comics who have been in print for more than 60 years to support new and diverse comics. (I actually do not mind the older comics as long as new comics are made every day.) Except that might be easier said than done.

William Cory Labovitch, South St. Paul

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Readers Write (Feb. 12): The moose population; jobs, start-ups and automation; diversity in the funny pages - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Recently, a conference on artificial intelligence, tantalizingly titled Superintelligence: Science or Fiction?, was hosted by the Future of Life Institute, which works to promote optimistic visions of the future.

The conference offered a range of opinions on the subject from a variety of experts, including Elon Musk of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, futurist Ray Kurzweil, Demis Hassabis of MITs DeepMind, neuroscientist and author Sam Harris, philosopher Nick Bostrom, philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, as well as computer scientists Stuart Russell and Bart Selman. The discussion was led by MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark.

The conversation's topics centered on the future benefits and risks of artificial superintelligence, with everyone generally agreeing that its only a matter of time before AI becomes paramount in our lives. Eventually, AI will surpass human intelligence, with the ensuing risks and transformations. And Elon Musk, for one, thinks its rather pointless to be concerned as we are already cyborgs, considering all the technological extensions of ourselves that we depend on a daily basis.

A worry for Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers is creating a world devoid of consciousness. He sees the discussion of future superintelligences often presume that eventually AIs will become conscious. But what if that kind of sci-fi possibility that we will create completely artificial humans is not going to come to fruition? Instead, we could be creating a world endowed with artificial intelligence but not actual consciousness.

David Chalmers speaking. Credit: Future of Life Institute.

Heres how Chalmers describes this vision (starting at 22:27 in Youtube video below):

For me, that raising the possibility of a massive failure mode in the future, the possibility that we create human or super human level AGI and we've got a whole world populated by super human level AGIs, none of whom is conscious. And that would be a world, could potentially be a world of great intelligence, no consciousness no subjective experience at all. Now, I think many many people, with a wide variety of views, take the view that basically subjective experience or consciousness is required in order to have any meaning or value in your life at all. So therefore, a world without consciousness could not possibly a positive outcome. maybe it wouldn't be a terribly negative outcome, it would just be a 0 outcome, and among the worst possible outcomes.

Chalmers is known for his work on the philosophy of mind and has delved particularly into the nature of consciousness. He famously formulated the idea of a hard problem of consciousness which he describes in his 1995 paper Facing up to the problem of consciousness as the question of why does the feeling which accompanies awareness of sensory information exist at all?"

His solution to this issue of an AI-run world without consciousness? Create a world of AIs with human-like consciousness:

I mean, one thing we ought to at least consider doing there is making, given that we don't understand consciousness, we don't have a complete theory of consciousness, maybe we can be most confident about consciousness when it's similar to the case that we know about the best, namely human human consciousness... So, therefore maybe there is an imperative to create human-like AGI in order that we can be maximally confident that there is going to be consciousness, says Chalmers (starting at 23:51).

By making it our clear goal to fully recreate ourselves in all of our human characteristics, we may be able to avoid a soulless world of machines becoming our destiny. A warning and an objective worth considering while we can. Yet it sounds from Chalmerss words that as we dont understand consciousness, perhaps this is a goal doomed to failure.

Please check out the excellent conference in full here:

Cover photo:

Robots ready to produce the new Mini Cooper are pictured during a tour of the BMW's plant at Cowley in Oxford, central England, on November 18, 2013. (Photo credit: ANDREW COWIE/AFP/Getty Images)

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Automation Nightmare: Philosopher Warns We Are Creating a World Without Consciousness - Big Think

posted at 8:31 pm on February 11, 2017 by John Sexton

Thursday, Bloomberg published an article titled Machines Can Replace Millions of Bureaucrats which offers some amusing insights into what the future of bureaucracy might look like. The story is largely based on the work of two Oxford academics,Carl Frey and Michael Osborne, who have been studying the likelihood of various jobs being automated. What they found is that some of the jobs which are ideal for automation are government jobs:

Government clerks who do predictable, rule-based, often mechanical work also arein danger of displacement by machines. In a recentcollaborationwith Deloitte U.K., Profs. Osborne and Frey estimated that about a quarter of public-sector workers are employed in administrative and operative roles which have a high probability of automation. In the U.K., they estimated some 861,000 such jobs could be eliminated by 2030, creating 17 billion pounds ($21.4 billion) in savings for the taxpayer. These would include people like underground train operators but mainly local government paper pushers.

This week,Reform, the London-based think tank dedicated to improving public service efficiency, published a paper on automating the public sector. It applied methodology developed by Osborne and Frey to the U.K.s central government departments and calculated that almost 132,000 workers could be replaced by machines in the next 10 to 15 years, using currently known automation methods. Only 20 percent of government employeesdo strategic, cognitive work that requires human thinking at least for now, while artificial intelligence is as imperfect as it is.

The article goes on to say that in the UK there are 10 levels of government service, similar to the 14 GS levels here in the U.S. In the UK many of the people in those middle levels are doing routine, rule-based tasks that could potentially be turned over to machines. Bloomberg notes, Only 38 percent of middle-level bureaucrats say they feel good about what they do. If 132,000 bureaucrats could be eliminated in the UK, the number that could be done away with in the U.S., where the population is five times larger, couldapproach half a million. Plus, the robots wont unionize and send campaign cash to one political party.

In addition to replacing mid-level bureaucrats, there is also the possibility of using automation for jobs where bureaucrats interact directly with people. This wouldnt necessarily look like a scene from a dystopian science fiction movie. It might look more like the automated kiosks in airports that print your boarding passes. Banks in the U.S. are also expanding the use of automation to replace tellers. At my Bank of America branch there are now specialized kiosks inside the building which look like ATMs but with phones attached. These machines allow you to do almost anything you can do with a human teller but the human in this case is speaking to you by phone from a remote location. Presumably having a central location which can respond to requests from multiple banks is more efficient than staffing each branch with enough people to handle a rush of customers.

When you think about it, airports, banks, grocery stores and even some fast food places are offering automation to replace basic tasks but government offices often seem stuck in the 1950s. That needs to change. Automation can save taxpayers money and, very likely, make the experience of interacting with bureaucrats less tiresome than it is now. It wouldnt have to look like this scene from Neil Blomkamps Elysium:

Link:

Automation can replace bureaucrats and save taxpayers money - Hot Air

John Breeden II is an award-winning journalist and reviewer with over 20 years of experience covering technology and government. He is currently the CEO of theTech Writers Bureau,a group that creates technological thought leadership content for organizations of all sizes. Twitter: @LabGuys

Over the past few months, I was fortunate enough to be asked to evaluate several cutting-edge technologies designed to make government networks more secure. Some of these were more advanced than others, and a few were hindered by newer technologies like cloud computing. But they all showed a great deal of promise for the federal government if deployed correctly.

One of the most interesting possibilities is creating an event-driven architecture to add automation to the federal defensive arsenal. Given a single router can generate over 100,000 data points every few seconds, any network of any size quickly grows beyond the ability for even teams of humans to protect 100 percent effectively. There is just too much dataand not enough analysts.

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Attackers know this, and use all that data as cover to remain undetected once they breach a network. That is why the latest Mandiant M-Trends 2016 Report found most organizations were breached for 146 days before the successful attack was discovered. The government is no exception to this rule.

Automation could be the answer, reducing the time from detection to remediation from months to seconds. The basic concept is simple enough. It uses the power of the network itself to counter threats, making it a machine versus machine affair. Thats not unlike the classic "WarGames" movie, where a young Matthew Broderick gets the WOPR computer to play itself in a game to teach it futility.

The concept of automation in cybersecurity can be broken down into three basic levels. At the first and most-basic level is human-driven automation. A human operator needs to do something, like check a series of network devices for compliance issues, so they activate a script to do the heavy lifting. This can cut down on operator workload and help with odorous chores like patch management, but doesnt improve breach response times.

At the second level, which makes the most sense for federal agencies, there is event-driven automation. At level two, humans teach computers their various processes. If a computer goes down, they open a trouble ticket, or if a virus is detected, they wipe the system and restore the core operating system.

Humans set those event triggers and program what responses to automatically take. Then, they can remove themselves from the loop, though they can also keep a hand in things, such as having a computer notify a supervisor about a particularly dangerous trigger.

Computers are never actually doing anything beyond what they are taught, but can respond to security events at machine speed, automating the remediation of many threats, especially low-level ones, and freeing up analysts to work on larger projects or trickier situations.

The final level is almost science fiction at this point, though there have been glimpses of what could one day be possible in things like IBMs Watson and Googles AlphaGo software. At that level, computers still respond to events, but also program their own triggers and responses, possibility making processes even more efficient than the original human-driven plan.

So why dont we see more automation in federal networks, even at level two?

The answer is to get there requires both hardware and software. The software is available, but you also really need to have event-driven hardware in your network to take advantage of all of automations benefits. That is ready too, but installing it piece by piece could be a slow process. In an event-driven network, devices should be built so they can interface with one another to open the doorway to true automation. Specifically, they should all have:

Once the hardware is in place, and several companies do offer automation-ready gear, the triggers and responses can be programmed to help fight cybersecurity threats at machine speed. The computers can do everything an analyst does without getting tired,hungry or bored.

Beyond just cybersecurity, having an event-driven architecture in place also opens new efficiencies. Automation can, for example, be used in data centers for the automatic provisioning of software-defined networks based on customer needs, establishing micro-segments or automating the application of services by applying service-chaining.

There are some impressive capabilities in this field, but the first benefits of automation for most agencies will most certainly be in cybersecurity. Especially now with a critical shortage of analysts and the government not hiring anyone new, technologies like automation need to be quickly deployed before agencies start to get steamrolled under the next wave of advanced attacks.

Read more here:

Why Don't We See More Automation in Federal Networks? - Nextgov

Technobabble is our look at the weird, wonderful and wildly creative aspects of technology and the tech industry. If you have any babble, feel free to emaildirectly or reach out on Twitter.

For decades, pundits have discussed the plight of the American worker. Without fail, as technology has advanced and become more automated, some workers have been displaced.

Take the assembly line, for example. Workers en masse were employed to ensure every part of the manufacturing process kept up with industry standards. But as machines entered into the assembly line, work became automated and fewer employees were required, leading to layoffs and worker displacement.

Today, grim forecasts about the rise of automation and workforce losses abound. Forrester recently predicted the net loss of 6% of U.S. jobs by 2021, which could impact more than 7.5 million workers. But beyond transportation and logistics areas that were previously predicted to become more automated with self-driving cars automation is also expected to impact customer and consumer services areas.

In Japan, IBM Watson's artificial intelligence-based systems is helping a life insurance company replace human insurance claim workers. And another recent study from Oxford University anticipates that insurance underwriters, real estate brokers and loan officers could be replaced by automation within 10 years.

Through it all, man has an unparalleled ability to survive and thrive. Some thought tractors would kill the workforce, yet here we are. With the rise of machines, it is still necessary to program, build and fix them. As it turns out, humans are pretty good resources for that.

The forecasts do seem a bit dismal, but the rise of automation is leading to a new kind of worker. Technology is supposed to make tasks easier, so companies are rolling out innovative solutions and approaches to filling both the tech talent gap as well as solutions to make life easier for the average worker.

In a recent article, Wired declared coders the next blue-collar worker. These are the workers who will not become fantastically rich from their app-making prowess. Rather than plugging away at manufacturing work, these blue-collar workers can add code into the product assembly line at any company, whether that's a bank or an insurance company.

As Wired notes, "these sorts of coders won't have the deep knowledge to craft wild new algorithms for flash trading or neural networks. Why would they need to? That level of expertise is rarely necessary at a job."

Not only does the work pay well, but it also offers outlets for creativity and a steady, in-demand employment.

Sure, the average coding job does not seem glamorous. But for an employee looking for a well-paying job and a work-life balance, coding jobs may be the perfect fit.

Technology related jobs don't always require a four-year degree. Students can pick up programming skills from tinkering with the home computer or attending bootcamps.

To learn technology skills, emphasis has been placed on starting students early, rather than waiting for higher education. And with a glaring tech talent gap, with technology workers in high demand across sectors, this is more important than ever before.

Some nonprofits are working to introduce coding into high schools. The nonprofit ScriptEd is working with 31 high schools in New York City to teach students how to code, Fortune reports. With the help of professional software developers, students learn real-world engineering skills and receive assistance finding summer internships.

Nonprofits like ScriptEd also produces future technology talent for the workforce at any level, from assembly-line style coders to the innovative experts creating the companies of tomorrow.

Fear of worker displacement aside, technology can be pretty dang cool and help make our daily lives just a tad simpler.

Now, Microsoft's Cortana is making sure our scattered brains aren't forgetful. It sure beats tying a string around your finger, hoping you remember.

Cortana will now remind you of things you have promised to do in your emails by highlighting portions of an email and saying "don't forget you mentioned this," The Verge reports.

Whether that's a reminder to include an attachment or providing information to your boss, Cortana won't let you forget, thanks to machine learning. We can all celebrate the end of forgetfulness.

Link:

Technobabble: Automation and the modern worker - CIO Dive

Chennai: Over a year back, Kris Canekeratne struck a deal with Arun Jain, founder, Polaris to take over his company with a view to synergise his company Virtusa's tech strength with Polaris' banking expertise. As the integration efforts come to a close, Canekeratne talks to TOI about the progress the joint entity has made, the changes that the IT industry is going through and automation. Excerpts:

Citibank has been one of your largest accounts. How has the relationship progressed since the integration announcement.

When we did the Polaris integration, we had guided to a spend reduction for Citibank. Since then, we have seen good momentum with Citibank. While addressing spend reduction goals, we have also built a much stronger relationship. Citigroup has also seen the benefits of the combined entity, VirtusaPolaris.

The IT industry is facing headwind, not just from macro-economic factors. Can you give some perspective?

There is an evolution taking place in IT services, primarily because of the changes clients are going through as a result of 4th industrial revolution. There are multiple forces at work. Advanced technologies like cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and blockchain may have been around but have now reached a point where startups or companies are using them to disrupt the industry. We are also dealing with a much larger percentage of millennials within and outside of our organisations. Digital natives are driving a behavioural shift and everybody else is only a digital immigrant. We can live with and without digital technologies but natives need an advanced user experience. Over the last three years, over $50 billion has been invested towards fin-tech. Significant investment has been pumped into areas like fin-tech, insure-tech, health tech and media tech. What is interesting to note is that none of these factors are based on pure cost arbitrage. For an industry that has largely been built around this cost arbitrage, change is inevitable. Hence, while we are happy, there is significant work to be done

See original here:

'We employ insane levels of automation' Kris Canekeratne - Times of India

When we learn of, or experience a school bus accident with passenger injuries, we all sit back and ask what caused it, how can we prevent it from happening again, and what now?

The resulting outcome of the accident investigation shows us that most all crashes are often the result of operational or behavioral failure. As regulators converge on the details of the accident, we eventually learn what contributed to the failure in behavior and the severity of the accident. It may have resulted from an equipment related issue, or a lack of defined and implemented safety management practices, or maintenance practice, or driver training, or lack of refresher training, or driver road supervision monitoring, or driver error. The list goes on.

From the investigative final report, we learn what we can do to help prevent such an accident from happening again.

We would all agree that the most critical element of a safely operated school bus is driver behavior. Most operators focus on safety and behavior management by developing a rigorous driver refresher training program with up-to-date training material that compliments the initial classroom and behind-the-wheel training a new driver receives. Also, having all training supported by a record monitoring system to ensure 100-percent driver compliance. However, we still have accidents.

We are in a new period of technological aides that could form the basis for fully automated, not autonomous, driver assist in school buses. Modern automotive driver assistance systems help drivers reach their destination in a safer, more relaxed manner. They keep the vehicle in the lane, maintain stability within the laws of physics, regulate speed and distance from other vehicles, warn of traffic jams, detect objects within a 360-degree area around the vehicle. They can even, if required, automatically initiate full braking to help prevent severe rear collisions.

The technical basis for fully automated driving assist has already been formed by the introduction of the following driver assist technologies: Antilock braking systems (ABS 1978); Traction Control System (TSC 1986); Parking Aid (1993); Electronic stability control (ESP 1996); Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC 2000); Parking Assist (2008); predictive emergency braking system (2010); Lane keeping support (2012); Traffic jam assist (2015), and; Remote park assist (2015); Some but not all are available to the school bus industry.

As the automotive industry continues to develop these automated technologies and include them in the passenger vehicles we buy, I wonder how long will it take the school bus industry to begin to introduce the additional proven driver aides that no doubt would contribute to behavior modification and safety. Granted, much of the automated technology is new, so new that the regulators have had to agree on how to classify it.

A classification system based on six different levels (ranging from driver assistance to fully automated systems) was published in 2014 by SAE International, formerly known as the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). This classification system is based on the amount of driver intervention and attentiveness required, rather than the vehicle capabilities, although these are veryclosely related. In the United States, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released in 2013 a formal classification system. NHTSA abandoned this system when it adopted the SAE standard last September.

As we begin the New Year, our school bus supplier industry is most likely planning to solicit ideas for the next generation of school buses. By collectively gathering their customers and dealers as advisory groups, ideas will be debated that begin with the customers input as well as the dealers, these ideas then end at the equipment manufacturers engineering department. It is they who ultimately study the viability of an idea.

Just think if we could help driver behavior through the Level 2 automation of control over severe rear end collisions, roll overs, and danger zone incidents, just to name a few!

Pudlewski is STNs technical editor with more than 40 years of experience in the school bus industry. He is the retired vice president of fleet operations, procurement and maintenance for Laidlaw and is a member of the National School Transportation Association Hall of Fame.

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Improving Behavior Through Automation of Vehicle Systems - School Transportation News (blog)

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There's lots of prognosticating about what impact robotics and automation will have on the future of work -- with mostly dystopian depictions predicting displaced workers and increasing unemployment. But new social data from Adobe Digital Insights suggests that the average worker is far less cynical when it comes to welcoming robots into the workplace.

According to Adobe, most people are talking (on social media) about how robots are helping their work, not taking it away. Workers are also upbeat about being able to hand over mundane tasks to robots so human workers can do more meaningful jobs. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and robots were the most discussed FOW topics.

Adobe's report is based on roughly 3 million social mentions captured from Twitter, news, blogs and forums between January 2016 and January 2017. Interestingly, the FOW hashtag was mentioned twice as many times on Twitter than on workplace-focused LinkedIn.

Across social media, Future of Work (FOW) mentions are up 40 percent year-over-year, automation mentions have doubled year-over-year and average daily mentions of robots and jobs have increased 70 percent year-over-year.

"Overall, people seem to believe the FOW is promising, particularly when it comes to the automation of traditionally mundane tasks," Joe Martin, head of social insights for Adobe, wrote in a blog post. "Automating document and signature processes, for example, could open up new possibilities for people as the tech revolution advances. Work environments should continue to improve as employees demand more from their space."

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Most people are optimistic about workplace automation, social data suggests - ZDNet