Tag: software

Adapt or die: How to cope when the bots take your job

Adapt or die: How to cope when the bots take your job

Image caption Will smart virtual assistants take our jobs or make them more fulfilling? Reports that robots, automation and artificial intelligence are going to put millions of us out of work may sound troubling, but should we believe them? That largely depends on whether we’re technology optimists or pessimists. In our Future of Work series we look at how jobs might change in the future.

The Snewing family lived in 62 Falkner Street, Liverpool, for more than four decades. They were saddlers working in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. And while the horse-drawn economy dominated, they enjoyed a […]

Is technology taking jobs or creating new ones? | Noelle Neff

Is technology taking jobs or creating new ones? | Noelle Neff

Noelle Neff Noelle Neff is an accomplished photographer and aspiring journalist based in Coral Gables, Florida. Her passion began with photography but she quickly realized that while a picture is worth a thousand words, those words still need to be written. She believes that as technology brings the world together regional news has an increasingly global impact.

In the 18th-century, England was the starting point for the Industrial revolution which would spark the transition to the modern world we occupy today. As any history teacher will attest to, the people of the 18th and 19th-centuries were initially unhappy with […]

Are We Prepared for Automation?

Are We Prepared for Automation?

We are barreling toward a future of automation. A great proportion of the six million US manufacturing jobs that have disappeared over the last few decades were lost as a direct result of automation’s slow absorption of physical labor and factory work. Now the pace is quickening and thanks to developments in artificial intelligence, automation’s reach is expanding, too.

According to Elon Musk, self-driving cars will displace 15% of the world’s workforce. Musk warns that driverless cars are closer than they might appear. Increasingly, trading on the stock market is becoming automated. A staggering 70% of daily trading is done […]

Automation vs. jobs and human contact

Automation vs. jobs and human contact

Igor Faletski is CEO of Mobify, a Vancouver company working on mobile technology. In the future of retail, it is likely that bricks-and-mortar stores and online commerce will merge into a seamless and convenient entity, says Vancouver tech entrepreneur Igor Faletski.

As CEO of the Vancouver-based online-commerce platform Mobify, Faletski has had a front-row view of the trend toward using technology to create a “frictionless transaction” that maximizes convenience for consumers while minimizing the amount of time they spend waiting in line.

“The days of a retail store as a place where you have inventory, you sell it and take money […]

What Your CEO Is Reading: Squishy Robots; Failing Fast, Breaking Eggs; The Mid-Tech Boom

What Your CEO Is Reading: Squishy Robots; Failing Fast, Breaking Eggs; The Mid-Tech Boom

A ‘Marty’ miniature walking robot, manufactured by Robotical, stands on display at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Feb. 27, 2018. The future of robotics is softer, squishier. MIT roboticist and AI expert Daniela Rus writes in FT Magazine that it’s getting easier to build robots, a process that “has traditionally been difficult, tedious and expensive.” Automation is entering the robot-building space, but not how one would expect. Her team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is close to building robots that can be designed by “free-form sketching and fabricated to actually walk right out of a […]

Automated 3D Printing: How Industrial Additive Manufacturing Is Evolving

Automated 3D Printing: How Industrial Additive Manufacturing Is Evolving

For years, science fiction has portrayed images of robots and appliances catering to every need and whim of human managers completely automatically. In some ways, 3D printers have represented the first steps toward such sci-fi visions of the future: simply punch in a design and the machine fabricates the object, as though out of thin air. For this reason, MakerBot dubbed its desktop 3D printer the “Replicator,” after the Star Trek device that could reconstitute matter into anything desired by the ship’s crew. An industrial robotic arm can swap out used pellet containers or tool heads in Stratasys’ Infinite […]

AI-Based Systems Are Becoming As Smart As, If Not Smarter Than Us

AI-Based Systems Are Becoming As Smart As, If Not Smarter Than Us

After outlining the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation on jobs, work processes and tasks, a recent report from British accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) predicted that the most affected employment segment by automation over the next 5 to 8 years will be administrative and white collar office jobs.

Yet a new study has shown that AI can already work faster than lawyers on certain non-core legal tasks such as reviewing legal contracts. In the study, the Tel Aviv-based AI startup LawGeex put 20 top corporate lawyers – who had decades of experience in reviewing non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and whose […]

B.C. breakthrough highlights rise of the robots

B.C. breakthrough highlights rise of the robots

Genesis Robotics has developed an actuator that can lower costs and reduce the bulk of robots. The company has also patented designs for an exoskeleton that uses the actuator to assist people with disabilities | Submitted A robotic exoskeleton is a ferocious fighting machine to many who were introduced to the concept in the 1986 sci-fi action film Aliens, in which the protagonist uses a giant apparatus to battle the titular antagonists.

But Mike Hilton hopes to soften the image of such devices with advances in robotics coming out of a B.C. research and development (R&D) firm.

“We want to see […]

Facing a New Industrial Revolution – Alex Cook

Facing a New Industrial Revolution – Alex Cook

Right now, we might be in the midst of the biggest industrial revolution in human history. New research from Oxford University suggests that more than half of the jobs we’re doing now could be done by robots or computers within the next 20 years. Respected Chinese technologist Kai Fu Lee believes this could even happen within the next decade.

Meanwhile, most jobs which require a desk and a computer can now be outsourced to cheaper workers overseas. Christian employees reading about these developments fear a job market which may soon have no room for them. And Christian business owners will […]

Workforce Gap Grows as Boomers Retire

Workforce Gap Grows as Boomers Retire

Manufacturers are having difficulty finding skilled workers. Many are trying creative approaches to close the gap.

The manufacturing industry is experiencing growing pressure as it becomes more difficult to find available talent to run operations. A perfect storm of issues has formed, making it increasingly difficult to find skilled labor. One of the biggest challenges is the retirement of the Baby Boom generation. Many of the industry’s highest skilled workers are now beginning to leave. The number of Boomers retiring will increase precipitously over the next five years. Building the right team of skilled workers is a puzzle that is […]