Category Archives: Automation

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

QAD Inc. (QADA) (QADB), a leading provider of enterprise software and services for global manufacturing companies, announced today that it has completed one of the most comprehensive and stringent software validation processes in the automotive industry by achieving Honda Approved Software status for QAD Automation Solutions. QAD was already recognized as a Honda Approved Software Provider for other QAD and partner solution combinations.

Honda North America, Inc., a global leader in automotive manufacturing, requires its original equipment manufactured parts suppliers to use an authorized integrated electronic data interchange (EDI), barcode and demand management solution. Software vendors must complete a rigorous testing and validation process to ensure the suite of applications complies with Hondas requirements for electronic data validation and barcode label conformance. While Honda does not recommend or endorse specific vendors, this designation recognizes that QAD has successfully completed Honda's testing criteria required to meet EDI and barcode specifications for Honda.

"We are excited to add QAD Automation Solutions to our existing set of Honda Approved Solutions, said QAD Automation Solutions Director Astrid Rommens. We have provided world class solutions to the automotive industry for over 35 years. This approval builds on our continued commitment to support and collaborate with the automotive industry.

About QAD The Effective Enterprise

QAD Inc. (QADA) (QADB) is a leading provider of enterprise software and services designed for global manufacturing companies. For more than 35 years, QAD has provided global manufacturing companies with QAD Enterprise Applications, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that supports operational requirements, including financials, manufacturing, demand and supply chain planning, customer management, business intelligence and business process management. QAD Enterprise Applications is offered in flexible deployment models in the cloud, on-premise or in a blended environment. With QAD, customers and partners in the automotive, consumer products, food and beverage, high technology, industrial products and life sciences industries can better align daily operations with their strategic goals to meet their vision of becoming more Effective Enterprises.

For more information about QAD, call +1 805-566-6000, visit http://www.qad.com.

QAD is a registered trademark of QAD Inc. All other products or company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Note to Investors: This press release contains certain forward-looking statements made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, but not limited to, statements regarding projections of revenue, income and loss, capital expenditures, plans and objectives of management regarding the Companys business, future economic performance or any of the assumptions underlying or relating to any of the foregoing. Forward-looking statements are based on the companys current expectations. Words such as expects, believes, anticipates, could, will likely result, estimates, intends, may, projects, should, would, might, plan and variations of these words and similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. A number of risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These risks include, but are not limited to: risks associated with our cloud service offerings, such as defects and disruptions in our services, our ability to properly manage our cloud service offerings, our reliance on third-party hosting and other service providers, and our exposure to liability and loss from security breaches; demand for the company's products, including cloud service, licenses, services and maintenance; pressure to make concessions on our pricing and changes in our pricing models; protection of our intellectual property; dependence on third-party suppliers and other third-party relationships, such as sales, services and marketing channels; changes in our revenue, earnings, operating expenses and margins; the reliability of our financial forecasts and estimates of the costs and benefits of transactions; the ability to leverage changes in technology; defects in our software products and services; third-party opinions about the company; competition in our industry; the ability to recruit and retain key personnel; delays in sales; timely and effective integration of newly acquired businesses; economic conditions in our vertical markets and worldwide; exchange rate fluctuations; and the global political environment. For a more detailed description of the risk factors associated with the company and factors that may affect our forward-looking statements, please refer to the company's latest Annual Report on Form 10-K and, in particular, the section entitled Risk Factors therein, and in other periodic reports the company files with the Securities and Exchange Commission thereafter. Management does not undertake to update these forward-looking statements except as required by law.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170207005426/en/

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QAD Automation Solutions is Honda Approved - Yahoo Finance

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--DFLabs, the leader in Security Automation and Orchestration Technology, announced today the launch of a landmark release of its flagship platform, IncMan 4.0. Based upon an innovative machine learning and incident correlation engine DFLabs offers a force multiplier solution that helps security operations and incident response teams quickly orchestrate the triage, containment, reporting, and remediation of data breaches and other cyber incidents while gradually guiding them on the maturity path to full automation.

The pace of cyber attacks combined with data breach and privacy regulations are making security operations platforms mandatory for organizations of all sizes. DFLabs has conducted months of discussions with dozens of Fortune 1000 CISOs showing that taking the human completely out of security automation may be dangerous. Significant concerns with making a sudden switch to fully unattended automation include complex issues such as Trust on Input, e.g. If the input data is incorrect, the output could cause even more damage to the business than the incident itself and Proof of Evidence, e.g. An unattended full automation response computer can not be a case for a compliance violation and can leave CISOs exposed to avoidable and excessive legal liability.

With IncMan 4.0, DFLabs delivers on its vision for Supervised Active Intelligence (SAI) driven by the industrys first Dual Mode Playbooks (Machine-to-Human and/or Machine-to-Machine). IncMan includes hundreds of playbooks - based on U.S. and UE international industry regulations (including GDPR), standards and best practices. These playbooks are automatically assigned and dynamically applied to an incident to provide the Security Operations Center (SOC) and Incident Response (IR) teams full control of the situation until they are ready for the next step, at which point the machine learning algorithm takes over the process and brings the organization to the next level of automation.

"Progress of enterprise security organizations towards orchestration spanning multiple functional teams is advanced in part by deep, console-based platforms, said Dan Cummins, Senior Analyst Security, 451 Research.SOC product buyers should focus not only on acquiring programmable, process-centric expertise of current practitioners, but also on establishing an agile foundation to meet future cyber security risks as well.

IncMan 4.0 is also the only solution available with an innovative Knowledge Base that reduces the amount of time spent on the lifecycle of an incident. The Knowledge Base is managed and updated by the DFlabs dedicated research team and includes threat catalogs, frameworks, standards, regulations and more. Incident response orchestration can be enhanced with actionable intelligence to provide effective direction in assisting the SOC and IR teams in creating and executing a response plan as well as for conducting risk analysis and demonstrating compliance with state, federal and international breach regulations.

A complete and thorough orchestrated incident response plan utilizing IncMan 4.0 has shown to save many organizations significant time in mitigating security issues, resulting in up to 80% reduction in reaction time.

CISOs are under heavy scrutiny and pressure to adopt the latest innovation in security automation, yet they are not ready to suddenly and irreversibly replace humans with technology. They must have the ability for their security teams to supervise the intelligent role of the machine - at least at the beginning of their journey, said Dario Forte, Founder and CEO, DFLabs and internationally recognized ISO standards expert. This is the basis behind the design and development of our Supervised Active Intelligence paradigm that we believe is the only effective path to full automation.

IncMan 4.0 offers a single, transparent pane of glass through which organizations can automate and orchestrate their entire security operations. It is an out-of-the-box platform featuring an intuitive interface and workflow combined with flexible use cases and reporting to meet the needs of any industry. Triage, Containment and Remediation operations can be navigated through the configurable, role-based dashboard. In addition to the Dual Mode Playbooks and Knowledge Base, other innovative features include:

"Automation and machine learning are in strong demand in InfoSec. On the other hand, we should not forget that Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are still relatively new to get applied in businesses. Model design is crucial to consider social factors, human judgment on values, and sensitivity for possible bias. That's why a guided path to full automation could be advisable, especially for critical applications such as security operations," said Dr. Anastassia Lauterbach, Advisory Board Member, DFLabs.

Demo and trial of IncMan 4.0 are available immediately. DFLabs Professional Services Team is also available for Breach Readiness and IR Plans to help organizations achieve the appropriate plan, whether its guiding security teams through the process or augmenting their internal team.

About DFLabs

DFLabs is a recognized global leader in cyber incident response automation and orchestration. The company is led by a management team recognized for its experience in and contributions to the information security field including co-edited many industry standards such as ISO 27043 and ISO 30121. IncMan Cyber Incidents Under Control is the flagship product, adopted by Fortune 500 and Global 2000 organizations worldwide. DFLabs has operations in North America, Europe, Middle East, and Asia with US headquarters in Boston, MA and World headquarters in Milano, Italy. For more information visit: http://www.dflabs.com or connect with us on Twitter @DFLabs.

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DFLabs Launches the First Security Automation and Orchestration Platform based Upon Supervised Active Intelligence - Business Wire (press release)

According to a recent report from Xero, it was found that accountants of today take technology very seriously. In fact, 83% of the accountants in a survey said that it was as important for them to understand technology as it was to understand accountancy.

This is a big change from how accountants were in the past. Accounting has always been a very traditional profession. Nothing much changed in accounting for over 50 years, but the advent of accounting technologies such as QuickBooks started making things happen in this highly traditional profession.

QuickBooks from Intuit was the earliest accounting software. It simplified a lot of things for accountants, allowing them to get more done in less time. But QuickBooks is so 1990s. There have already been new developments in accounting technology, such as cloud accounting.

The cloud-based technologies of today, such as Drake Tax Hosting, QuickBooks Hosting, Sage 50 Hosting, ProSeries Tax software Hosting, Lacerte Tax Software Hosting, Quicken Hosting, ATX Tax Software Hosting, etc. are more sophisticated than ever before.

They allow accountants to diversify their services and spend their time more productively, on things that are more important, such as strategizing on growing their business and reaching out to more clients.

Cloud accounting is the technology of the future, and it has automated a lot of things for accountants. In the survey that we spoke about at the start, 71 percent of accountants said that they considered knowledge of automation to be critical to their success.

That is true. By 2020, automation will be very common in accounting. A number of accounting and finance professionals will be dependent on a number of different analytical tools that would help them take their business to the next level.

Seeing how quickly things have been changing in accounting, it is so very important that accountants undertake relevant training on cloud accounting and automation. A number of accountants already are. In fact, a survey found that 48 percent of accountants were taking at least some course in different types of accounting technologies. Many were taking external courses in new technologies such as Business Intelligence (BI) tools.

BI is expected to be the next big thing in accounting. It helps accountants to harness data more effectively, especially in the financial context. BI can change how a business operates completely. It is one of the most revolutionary changes in accounting and finance saw recently.

In the UK, a number of accounting firms have been using BI to conduct skills risk analysis and management consulting. BI and other forms of automation are likely to be an integral part of accounting for years to come.

Over the next few years, accountants will look to expand their service offerings to include business intelligence and other forms of big data analytics. They are expected to grow their data warehousing capabilities. We expect cloud accounting to play a big role in that. The cloud is critical to accounting. The question is, are you on the cloud yet?

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How Accountants Can Use Automation Their Advantage - Accountingweb.com (blog)

Digital disruption is making way for new entrants and new models in the banking and financial services arena, a.k.a. fintech. While fintech is revolutionizing banking and finance for the business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer markets, enterprise finance departments can get the fintech bug too to innovate and streamline their workflows and supply chains for better, faster outcomes and to empower both customers and suppliers.

One area ripe for enterprise fintech innovation is accounts payable. Considering that the current market approach to invoice automation and the associated digitization and OCR technologies have been around for over 30 years, its no wonder that AP operations are in dire need of a major overhaul to meet todays modern-day requirements.

Aberdeen Groups survey report, Reap the Benefits of Invoice Excellence with AP Automation, highlights this need. Forty percent of respondents said the need for real-time availability of data is a key AP challenge, and 29 percent said difficulty locating/managing paper-based documents was a struggle. Given this state of the AP nation, its not surprising that most organizations, even after investing significantly in legacy AP Automation solutions, are only realizing 20 percent automation in their invoice processing.

The quest for improved automation is only half the journey for finance however. As initiatives such as dynamic discounting continue to grow in adoption, the nature of the accounts payable function has fundamentally changed from mere overhead to profit center at least for progressive, forward-thinking organizations that are adopting a strategic approach to AP and finance operations.

The struggle is real In the current technology age, how is it possible that AP is still experiencing such poor results?

Part of the answer revolves around the fact that when it comes to invoice automation, the devil is in the details. Industry statistics show that 82 percent of all invoices will have at least one exception. Exceptions are the bane of invoice automation solutions which were originally conceptualized to eliminate paper and manual data entry. When an exception rears its ugly head, no amount of digital imaging or optical character recognition technology will save the day.

To this end, the ideal AP automation solution isnt simply focused on straight-through processing because the path to payment isnt always straight-through. Its over/under, in and around various check points and decision trees. Moreover, it isnt exclusively focused on optimizing exception processing in the classic business process improvement sense, but rather the goal is to make invoice processing as exception-free as possible.

Therein lies the ultimate question: How do we make invoice processing exception-free?

Invoice exceptions are the governor of AP automation you should be cruising over 65 miles per hour in the HOV lane, but instead youre crawling along in rush-hour traffic. Exceptions are caused by legacy invoice automation systems inherent lack of deep and real-time integration with the Enterprise Resource Processing (ERP) system. The prevailing approach is to simply pass the buck over to the ERP system to identify and later resolve exceptions. Many vendors call this integration, which is where data is simply thrown over the fence to the ERP system, forcing manual exception processing work streams in the ERP system that are costly, time-consuming and error-prone. Some vendors go as far as requiring the periodic replication of AP master file information within their system in an attempt to get around the ERP integration gaponly to still encounter exceptions due to batch processing delays and worse, introduce new data synchronization challenges. Net-net, these loose integrations fail to deliver the degree of automation necessary to deliver optimal results.

In pursuit of AP innovation In the pursuit of AP innovation, organizations must pursue the new i.e., the truly better way that challenges conventional business-as-usual thinking. Implementing incremental improvements in the imaging or ERP system to make accounting more efficient is not innovation. It may produce some productivity gains, but for real change and innovation to occur, organizations must take a fundamentally new approach to invoice automation that breaks away from legacy technology and solutions that merely image paper, collect data and upload information to the ERP system.

The goal: Real improvements and real change. Not just to business processes, but through a whole new transformative approach a reimagining of invoice automation and finance operations as a whole. Given the pressure organizations are under today, they must take make bolder moves. Theres an old saying: Electricity wasnt invented by making incremental improvements to the candle.

This new reimagined approach starts with real-time integration and interaction with the ERP system designed to eliminate exceptions as much as possible and early as possible in the process, as opposed to sending over bad data for the ERP system to address. Resolving exceptions before invoices are vouchered in the ERP system eliminates unnecessary manual intervention, process latency, cost and complexity delivering maximum automation for optimal results.

Cloud, mobile and advanced analytics are key technologies that make this transformation not only possible, but much more accessible as well. These technologies allow next-gen AP solutions to deliver quicker results and more meaningful business insights than ever before.

Another essential ingredient to this transformation is breaking away from conventional siloed solution-think by combining invoice automation with supplier enablement and dynamic discounting to power the business to absolute peak performance. This approach is also ushering in another paradigm shift moving AP away from a focus purely on operational efficiency to one of value creation for greater strategic impact. These next-generation capabilities provide the force multiplier necessary to make this sea change possible and transforming AP into a force majeure within the organization.

Bringing suppliers directly into the process allows invoices to be created, validated and made exception-free from the get-go, eliminating paper and accelerating operational efficiency. However, there are even greater gains to be realized: By providing valuable and frictionless self-service experiences for suppliers, companies will see a tremendous boost in early-pay discounts driven by an equally impressive increase in supplier adoption. This can literally translate into savings of millions of dollars (up to 2 percent of corporate annual spend), generating a new, fast and compelling revenue stream for the organization. Companies that fail to seize this opportunity are simply leaving big money on the table not to mention the potential loss in competitive advantage.

As Aberdeen vice president and principal analyst Bryan Ball noted, [I]n the modern business, the finance function is no longer looked at as simply the cost of doing business, with behind-the-scenes employees performing functions that, which necessary, are not the core components of organizational success.

Rather, success favors the bold in todays forward-thinking finance organizations, where incremental thinking is being left behind in pursuit of real AP innovation and value creation.

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Voices Reinventing enterprise finance by overhauling AP automation - Accounting Today

Whether we like it or not, an automated workforce is coming. The question is how do we approach it? Its predicted that by 2020 robots will replace 5 million jobs in the US alone. We cannot shy away from this issue. We need a clear position on this, and one which we shout about so the public know what it is. There seems to be only two options offered by the two other parties (universal basic income, that nightmare that wont die) and to erode workers rights so that only big businesses will benefit from it.

We need to offer a third option. We need to embrace change; after all, liberals are progressives. By adopting an approach that works for both workers and business we can be at the forefront of the convocation and ensure we strike a balance. I am not saying what these policies should be, I am merely saying that we should have some and be vocal about them.

I can see three advantages of why we should be at the forefront of the conversation. The first, like I said previously, we can lead the debate and ensure that there is a liberal and progressive view on the matter.

The second is voter perception. In a time of uncertainty and turmoil, people are worried about losing their jobs. If the Lib Dems can show that we have a plan and we can handle what the future hold, we can appeal to these very people, while also not resorting to protectionism. By having a clear plan of how we will deal with it, we can both appeal to the people who want the benefits that automation can bring and the people who are worried and want a clear plan on how a government will deal with it.

The third is we can plan. By discussing it now, we can ensure that in 20 years time we have a more automated society but also one where people are employed and prevent more people being pushed into poverty. We are lacking in IT skills at the moment, in some areas, meaning that jobs dont get filled or are moved overseas. But if we come up with a robust plan for education, we can make sure that the next generations will have the skills that they need. We could help drive the high tech jobs market, limit the damage of job loss and provide people with the skills that businesses will want. This way we will also create more jobs offsetting some of the jobs lost.

All these reason I believe will drive us towards a success with the electorate. In a time of Trump and Brexit, the next 20 year look uncertain. But automation is clear part of our future and it is up to the government to know how to deal with it. I think voters will respond well to a party that is looking forward and a party that has ideas and a plan in place for the future. This will also be better for society as a whole, automation will cause disruption to societys already fractured equilibrium, but by debating about how we will deal with it now, we can, keep any disruption to a minimum and reach a new equilibrium quicker. After all, we came back from the industrial revolution.

* Matthew Phillips is a member of the Islington Liberal Democrat exec.

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Lib Dems Should Embrace Automation of the Workforce - Liberal Democrat Voice

Forbes

The Perks Of Automation And The Risks: Why To Think Twice About Getting Into That Driverless Uber Forbes Automation has become an incredibly hot topic in the tech world lately. It was the theme of the most popular items featured at the annual tech gadget conference, CES 2017, held earlier this month in Las Vegas. The show featured self-driving cars (which ...

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The Perks Of Automation And The Risks: Why To Think Twice About Getting Into That Driverless Uber - Forbes

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Whitehall could save 2.6 billion with automation.

250,000 public sector employees could be replaced by robots over the next 15 years, according to a report by Think Tank Reform.

The report, which addresses the creation of a public services workforce organised around the needs of its users, advocates the reduction of staff in favour of automation and digital technology.

Citing analysis by Oxford academics Frey and Osbourne, in which the academics said that admin roles have a 96% chance of being automated by current technology, the report applied their calculations to current public sector numbers. The report found that, over the next 10 to 15 years, central government departments could further reduce headcount by 131,962, saving 2.6 billion from the 2016-17 wage bill.

The report sells automation as the new approach which is needed, saying:

Public services should deliver outcomes that matter to users, and meet expectations of interacting via technology. This approach would see services designed around users and render at least 248,860 administrative roles redundant. The accuracy of decision-making can be further improved by using artificial intelligence to make complex decisions and by understanding why mistakes that, for example, cause 10 per cent of hospital patients to suffer from medical error, are made.

Further calculations found that the NHS could automate 91,208 of 112,726 administrator roles (outside of primary care), reducing the wage bill by approximately 1.7 billion. In primary care, a pioneering GP provider interviewed for the paper has a clinician-to-receptionist ratio of 5:1, suggesting a potential reduction of 24,000 roles across the NHS from the 2015 total. In total this would result in 248,860 administrative roles being replaced by technology.

These findings were further bolstered by the success HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has had in recent times in regrads to automation. Over the last decade, HMRC has reduced its admin staff from 96,000 to 60,000 through expanding its online services and providing real-time information.

Including all types of roles, not just admin, the report said that even the more complex roles in public services stand to be automated. The report said:

Even the most complex roles stand to be automated. Twenty per cent of public-sector workers hold strategic, cognitive roles. They will use data analytics to identify patterns improving decision making and allocating workers most efficiently.

The NHS, for example, can focus on the highest-risk patients, reducing unnecessary hospital admissions. UK police and other emergency services are already using data to predict areas of greatest risk from burglary and fire.

Some technology, will not replace humans, but enhance the work humans produce, with the report stating that some technology will improve public-service delivery. Artificial Intelligence, drones and facial recognition technology should be evaluated by various public services, specifically policing, as alternatives to current practices.

Experts were quick to criticize the report, with many saying that the stark figures overlooked the human cost of such automation. Other critics, like Redwood Softwares Neil Kinson, pointed out that the obsession of humans vs robots would actually hinder the development of robotics and AI.

The implementation of robotics across the public sector will ensure that efficiencies will be gained, simply by taking the robot out the human. That is, freeing staff up from repetitive manual tasks to allow them to focus their efforts on more value-add, strategic activities. However, as long as we remain fixated on the idea that robots replace humans, or narrowly define the sets of tasks to which we can apply robotics, the true potential of robotic process automation will be overlooked. Robotics brings the opportunity to completely re-imagine how the entire process is executed e.g. cash to billing, record to report, procure to pay as well as the interdependencies between these processes.

Its time for a shift in language on how the robotics revolution is defined and explained.

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Automation, robots could replace 250000 public sector workers in the next 15 years - Computer Business Review

LOUISVILLE, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Design Automation Conference (DAC), the premier conference devoted to the design and automation of electronic systems, is now accepting nominations for the Under-40 Innovators Award at the 54th DAC. The Under-40 Innovators Award is new this year and is sponsored by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Electronic Systems Design Alliance (ESDA), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The award will recognize the top five young innovators (nominees should be 40 years or younger in age as of June 1, 2017) who are movers and shakers in the field of design and automation of electronics. The 54th DAC will be held at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas from June 18 - 22, 2017. Nominations must be received no later than Wednesday, March 1, 2017.

From beyond the traditional automation around chip implementation, design automation is rapidly expanding to new areas such as neuromorphic computing, biological systems, cyber-security and cyber-physical systems. Within the electronics industry, the advent of new technologies and alternate scaling approaches using new integration approaches are emerging as traditional CMOS technology scaling slows down. Young innovators are redefining and shaping the future of the design automation field in industry, research labs, start-ups and academia, and DAC wants to recognize the best and brightest.

Nomination criteria:

The Under-40 Innovators Award is open to men and women in industry or academia with technical contributions in the field of design and automation of electronics. Nominees are individuals who have made a notable impact and contributions through work within an individual organization, to the design automation community and to the broader society. The award is intended for specific contributions such as commercial products, software or hardware systems, or specific algorithms or concepts incorporated into other systems widely used by industry or academia. Nominations that emphasize only metrics such as number of publications, patents, and citations will not be sufficient.

The nomination for this award should include a one-page summary (fewer than 500 words) of the nominees technical work. All nominations should be supported by at least three letters of recommendation. One of those letters of recommendation needs to be from a leader inside the nominees organization. Self-nominations are not allowed.

Up to five awards will be given each year at DAC, sponsored by ACM, IEEE, and ESDA. The winners will be recognized at the opening session at the 54th DAC. Nominations must be received by March 1, 2017 as a single PDF file and sent to: dacunder40award@dac.com

For additional information on the award, and the Design Automation Conference visit http://www.dac.com

About DAC

The Design Automation Conference (DAC) is recognized as the premier event for the design of electronic circuits and systems, and for electronic design automation (EDA) and silicon solutions. A diverse worldwide community representing more than 1,000 organizations attends each year, represented by system designers and architects, logic and circuit designers, validation engineers, CAD managers, senior managers and executives to researchers and academicians from leading universities. Close to 60 technical sessions selected by a committee of electronic design experts offer information on recent developments and trends, management practices and new products, methodologies and technologies. A highlight of DAC is its exhibition and suite area with approximately 200 of the leading and emerging EDA, silicon, intellectual property (IP) and design services providers. The conference is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Electronic Systems Design Alliance (ESDA), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and is supported by ACM's Special Interest Group on Design Automation (ACM SIGDA).

Design Automation Conference acknowledges trademarks or registered trademarks of other organizations for their respective products and services.

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Design Automation Conference - Business Wire (press release)

What will replace capitalism as we currently know it? (Photo: Wolf-Ulf Wulfrolf / Flickr)

Is capitalism's collapse inevitable? If so, what kind of post-capitalist society do we face? InFour Futures: Life After Capitalism, Peter Frase draws on social science, speculative fiction and social theory to create an engaging and thought-provoking portrait of four possible scenarios, some more dystopian than others. Order your copy of this book today from Truthout by clicking here!

As we automate more jobs and continue on a road to scarcity of resources, whither capitalism? The following is the Truthout interview with Peter Frase, author of Four Futures.

Mark Karlin: Your very first sentence in your introduction describes contextual forces that shape your book: "Two specters are haunting Earth in the twenty-first century: the specters of ecological catastrophe and automation." Can you, in a paragraph or two, describe the potential impact of ecological catastrophe on economic systems in general?

Peter Frase: One of the distinctive peculiarities of capitalism is the way it inverts the logic of scarcity and abundance. That is, it tries to impose scarcity where none need exist, while at the same time treating truly scarce things as though they are actually unlimited.

Artificial scarcities are imposed wherever landlords are allowed to charge exorbitant rents, where drug companies charge enormous rates for drugs that cost virtually nothing to produce, where people are sued for thousands of dollars for downloading a few music files, and so on. Yet when it comes to our ecosystems, businesses will, wherever possible, extract resources with no regard to their potential exhaustion, and dump their waste into our air and water.

People are increasingly recognizing the limits of that strategy, as can be seen in everything from the depletion of ocean fish populations to lack of access to fresh water to the accelerating impact of climate change due to atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions. However, the fact that we are running up against these material limits does not necessarily mean that the ruling elite is doomed. The question is a bit more complex: will they find a way to impose the costs of ecological degradation on poor and working people, or will we force them to pay the costs?

Can you next explain the impact of automation -- a very important theme in your book -- on present and future economic systems, and why automation is intractable?

The biggest problem with a lot of contemporary debates about automation is that people speak as though the phenomenon is new. But this is a central problematic of industrial capitalism, going back a couple of centuries. Once upon a time, almost everyone worked in agriculture; now that employs only a tiny fraction of people in rich countries. Then manufacturing became a main source of employment, before that too diminished due to automation (and also due to outsourcing, but to a much lesser degree than many people think). Now we see service sector and professional jobs being subject to the same basic force, which is the capitalist drive to economize on labor: to do more with less workers in order to increase profits.

Peter Frase. (Photo: Verso Books)I'm not going to say it's impossible that we might turn the wheel one more time, and shift everyone into some new kind of employment, rather than simply eliminating the need for labor. But I'm more interested in what's possible in a world where we do have a drastically reduced need for work.

Because another problem is that people speak as though there's no human agency here; that the robots just come for our jobs, and there's nothing we can do about it. But for as long as the capitalist drive to automate has existed, there has been a counter-movement from the side of labor: the demand that the benefits of increased productivity should accrue to the working masses, not to the tiny elite of owners. This drives demands for shorter hours, higher wages, and even such things as a Universal Basic Income, guaranteeing everyone a basic standard of living irrespective of work.

Let's make this an exercise in distillation. What are each of the four possible future economic options in the most basic terms of the two "specters" haunting the earth beginning with, as you do, communism?

The four futures emerge from a two-by-two diagram, which I generate from the interaction of two different dichotomies. These are ways of thinking about how our social systems might be transformed if, as I just suggested, most human labor can be automated.

One question is the ecological question we started out with: what do we do about the damage that capitalism has done to our ecosystems? Maybe we can find a way to move to renewable energy, use materials more efficiently, even mitigate and reverse the effects of climate change. Then we can live in a world of abundance, where automation allows us to live comfortable lives liberated from the need to work. This is the world of Star Trek, where people can simply walk up to a device called a replicator, and ask it to instantly materialize whatever material thing they need.

I call this future communism not in the sense of the 20th century Communist regimes, but in the sense Karl Marx talked about: a society characterized by the principle "from each according to her ability, to each according to his need." In other words, your basic material needs are provided for, and you are free to explore and develop your talents and abilities in a truly free way, to take up whatever projects you find most fulfilling. In the context of today's world, you can think of things like Wikipedia, where people are writing encyclopedia entries not because anyone is paying them, but just because that's what they want to do.

Now let's move to rentism -- and can you define that in your own terms first?

The scenario I described above presupposes not just automation and a resolution of the ecological crisis, but also a fundamental change in our class structures and property relations. That is, all the material abundance we have available to us must become the common property of humanity, rather than the private property of the owning class, the 0.1% that controls most of the economy today.

I sketch out a world of "rentism" as a way of laying out my differences with those futurists who suggest that technological changes automatically lead to a world of leisure. The ruling class has ways of preserving its power. In a time when more and more of the economy is made up of immaterial patterns, and things that can be freely copied over the internet, this increasingly takes the form of rent extraction enforced by intellectual property laws.

When we think of "rent," traditionally we speak about things like land and housing. But the term applies more generally to situations where it's possible to make money not by making things, but simply by owning them and charging for access. A landlord can charge whatever the market will bear; in the same way, the patent-holder for a life-saving medicine can charge any price they want, irrespective of the actual cost of producing it, because they are the only one allowed to make it. The chapter on rentism explores what life could be like in a society that is dominated by this particular property form.

Next is socialism, which means so many different government-economic structures to different people. How is socialism defined in your mind and how would you make us arrive at that economic state?

I gave above my definition of communism, which could also be considered a kind of anarchist utopia where the state doesn't need to manage labor and resources, because the machines have replaced labor and there are plenty of resources to go around. Whereas socialism, traditionally, has been seen to be about economic planning, particularly government planning of the economy.

My chapter on socialism is also about an egalitarian, post-class society. And it returns to the idea of planning, but with a different spin. Unlike most 20th century theorists of planning, I'm not so concerned with questions like "Who does what job?" or "How many of each type of widget should be produced?" Because I'm starting with the premise that it might be possible to basically automate that problem away.

But we still must return to the ecological axis. If we take a more sober view of environmental limits than in the discussion of communism, we come to the question of how we plan, not for production, but for consumption. That is, it might be that we all have magical machines that can make anything we need at the press of a button. But perhaps it's not environmentally sustainable for anyone to simply make as much stuff as they like. So we need a process to ensure that nobody is taking more than their fair share.

That issue motivates a discussion of planning, which in turn leads to the question of democracy. How will we, collectively, decide on the most just and equitable way of providing everyone with the best life possible given our ecological constraints?

Now comes the grimmest and most unimaginable alternative, exterminism? Can you explain how we would arrive at the "exterminism endgame"?

Although I'd like to think it's the most unimaginable, many of my readers seem to find it the most plausible!

The relationship between bosses and workers in capitalism has historically been characterized by a relationship of both conflict and mutual interdependence. That is, bosses need workers to run their shops and factories, while workers need bosses because they have no control of the means of production, no other way to make a living. And they then struggle over who gets what share of the social product.

But what happens when you break this interdependence -- when the bosses don't need workers because they have robots? One option is the rent-based society mentioned above. But that only works if there can be arbitrarily large amounts of stuff, with the capitalists simply acting as gatekeepers and charging for access. But what if there just fundamentally isn't enough stuff, due to the rapid degradation of the environment? What if providing a decent life to the masses would mean lower standards of living for the elites?

The logical endgame, in that case, is that the rich wall themselves off, protect themselves with their drones and surveillance systems, and leave the rest of us to rot. That's the world of a few gated communities and private islands, with everyone else left in slums, prisons, or refugee camps. It's a world where the people who have been rendered superfluous as workers are left to die -- if not through an overt campaign of genocide, then merely by malign neglect, as resource wars, climate change-driven disasters and untreated disease epidemics take their toll.

That last scenario is obviously the most dystopian, and many people tend to gravitate to it in a despairing way, particularly in the current political moment. But the larger point of my book is that none of the futures is our destiny. Actually, all of them, in some ways, are already here. The question is what we will do, together, to get more of the futures we want and less of the futures we don't.

See the article here:

Futures Shaped by Automation and Catastrophe: Peter Frase on Capitalism's Endgame - Truth-Out

Dive Brief:

Insurance underwriters are the most likely to be replaced by automation in the near future, according to Carl Frey co-director of the Oxford Martin program on technology and employment at Oxford University, who published a study on the topic.

Real estate brokers, loan officers and credit analysts were not far behind. Each of the occupations had more than a 97% chance of becoming completely automated within 10 years, according to Frey.

Physicians and surgeons, sales engineers and dietitians and nutritionists were at the bottom of the list, indicating those positions would be harder to replace with automation.

It isnt a big surprise that the insurance industry is at the top of the list. There are many areas within the insurance industry ripe for automation, and businesses within the ultra-competitive industry are always on the lookout for ways to save money.

Last month, Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance in Japan said it was already replacing some human insurance claim workers with an artificial intelligence-based system from IBM. Fukoku said the system will replace 34 human insurance claim workers, saving it $1.1 million per year on employee salaries.

A recentForrester reportpredicted automation supported by intelligent software agents will be on the rise in the next five years, accounting for the elimination of a net 6% of U.S. jobs.

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Automation expected to displace insurance underwriters, real estate brokers - CIO Dive