‘Robots’ Are Not ‘Coming for Your Job’—Management Is — from gizmodo.com by Brian Merchant; with a special thanks going out to Keesa Johnson for her posting this out on LinkedIn

A robot is not ‘coming for’, or ‘stealing’ or ‘killing’ or ‘threatening’ to take away your job. Management is.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

At first glance, this might like a nitpicky semantic complaint, but I assure you it’s not—this phrasing helps, and has historically helped, mask the agency behind the *decision* to automate jobs. And this decision is not made by ‘robots,’ but management. It is a decision most often made with the intention of saving a company or institution money by reducing human labor costs (though it is also made in the interests of bolstering efficiency and improving operations and safety). It is a human decision that ultimately eliminates the job.

 

From DSC:
I’ve often said that if all the C-Suite cares about is maximizing profits — instead of thinking about their fellow humankind and society as a whole —  we’re in big trouble.

If the thinking goes, “Heh — it’s just business!” <– Again, then we’re in big trouble here.

Just because we can, should we? Many people should be reflecting upon this question…and not just members of the C-Suite.

 

 

 

10 things we should all demand from Big Tech right now — from vox.com by Sigal Samuel
We need an algorithmic bill of rights. AI experts helped us write one.

We need an algorithmic bill of rights. AI experts helped us write one.

Excerpts:

  1. Transparency: We have the right to know when an algorithm is making a decision about us, which factors are being considered by the algorithm, and how those factors are being weighted.
  2. Explanation: We have the right to be given explanations about how algorithms affect us in a specific situation, and these explanations should be clear enough that the average person will be able to understand them.
  3. Consent: We have the right to give or refuse consent for any AI application that has a material impact on our lives or uses sensitive data, such as biometric data.
  4. Freedom from bias: We have the right to evidence showing that algorithms have been tested for bias related to race, gender, and other protected characteristics — before they’re rolled out. The algorithms must meet standards of fairness and nondiscrimination and ensure just outcomes. (Inserted comment from DSC: Is this even possible? I hope so, but I have my doubts especially given the enormous lack of diversity within the large tech companies.)
  5. Feedback mechanism: We have the right to exert some degree of control over the way algorithms work.
  6. Portability: We have the right to easily transfer all our data from one provider to another.
  7. Redress: We have the right to seek redress if we believe an algorithmic system has unfairly penalized or harmed us.
  8. Algorithmic literacy: We have the right to free educational resources about algorithmic systems.
  9. Independent oversight: We have the right to expect that an independent oversight body will be appointed to conduct retrospective reviews of algorithmic systems gone wrong. The results of these investigations should be made public.
  10. Federal and global governance: We have the right to robust federal and global governance structures with human rights at their center. Algorithmic systems don’t stop at national borders, and they are increasingly used to decide who gets to cross borders, making international governance crucial.

 

This raises the question: Who should be tasked with enforcing these norms? Government regulators? The tech companies themselves?

 

 

Microsoft rolls out healthcare bot: How it will change healthcare industry — from yourtechdiet.com by Brian Curtis

Excerpt:

AI and the Healthcare Industry
This technology is evidently the game changer in the healthcare industry. According to the reports by Frost & Sullivan, the AI market for healthcare is likely to experience a CAGR of 40% by 2021, and has the potential to change industry outcomes by 30-40%, while cutting treatment costs in half.

In the words of Satya Nadella, “AI is the runtime that is going to shape all of what we do going forward in terms of the applications as well as the platform advances”.

Here are a few ways Microsoft’s Healthcare Bot will shape the Healthcare Industry…

 

Also see:

  • Why AI will make healthcare personal — from weforum.org by Peter Schwartz
    Excerpt:
    Digital assistants to provide a 24/7 helping hand
    The digital assistants of the future will be full-time healthcare companions, able to monitor a patient’s condition, transmit results to healthcare providers, and arrange virtual and face-to-face appointments. They will help manage the frequency and dosage of medication, and provide reliable medical advice around the clock. They will remind doctors of patients’ details, ranging from previous illnesses to past drug reactions. And they will assist older people to access the care they need as they age, including hospice care, and help to mitigate the fear and loneliness many elderly people feel.

 

  • Introducing New Alexa Healthcare Skills — from developer.amazon.com by Rachel Jiang
    Excerpts:
    The new healthcare skills that launched today are:Express Scripts (a leading Pharmacy Services Organization)
    Cigna Health Today (by Cigna, the global health service company)
    My Children’s Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) (by Boston Children’s Hospital, a leading children’s hospital)
    Swedish Health Connect (by Providence St. Joseph Health, a healthcare system with 51 hospitals across 7 states and 829 clinics)
    Atrium Health (a healthcare system with more than 40 hospitals and 900 care locations throughout North and South Carolina and Georgia)
    Livongo (a leading consumer digital health company that creates new and different experiences for people with chronic conditions)

Voice as the Next Frontier for Conveniently Accessing Healthcare Services

 

  • Got health care skills? Big Tech wants to hire you — from linkedin.com Jaimy Lee
    Excerpt:
    As tech giants like Amazon, Apple and Google place bigger and bigger bets on the U.S. health care system, it should come as no surprise that the rate at which they are hiring workers with health care skills is booming.We took a deep dive into the big tech companies on this year’s LinkedIn Top Companies list in the U.S., uncovering the most popular health care skills among their workers — and what that says about the future of health care in America.
 

Video: Chatbots’ History and Future — from which-50.com by Joseph Brookes

Excerpt:

What’s Next For Chatbots?
One area where chatbots will have an increasing impact in the future is language, according to Kraeutler. He argues the further integration of language services from the likes of Google will bring down processing times in multilingual scenarios.

“Having a chatbot where a consumer can very easily speak in their native tongue and use services like Google to provide real-time translation — and increasingly very accurate real-time translation. That allows the bot to respond to the consumer, again, very accurately, but also in their native tongue.”

That translation feature, Kraeutler says, will also be vital in assisted conversations — where bots assist human agents to provide next-best actions — allowing the two human parties to converse in near real time in their native languages.

 

From DSC:
This is much more than a Voice Response Unit (VRU) Phase II…the educational realm should watch what happens with chatbots…as they could assist with doing some heavy lifting in the learning world.

 

 

Artificial intelligence seeing massive surge in education — from campustechnology.com by David Nagel

Excerpt:

Education will experience the third-largest growth of any sector, coming in slightly behind government (44.3 percent) and “personal and consumer services” (43.3 percent).

The top use cases for AI at present, based on current market share, are:

  • Automated customer service agents (12.5 percent);
  • Sales process recommendation and automation (7.6 percent);
  • Automated threat intelligence and prevention systems (7.5 percent);
  • Program advisors and recommendation systems (6.4 percent); and
  • Automated preventative maintenance, diagnosis and treatment systems (6.2 percent).

 

 

Map of fundamental technologies in legal services — from remakinglawfirms.com by Michelle Mahoney

Excerpt:
The Map is designed to help make sense of the trends we are observing:

  • an increasing number of legal technology offerings;
  • the increasing effectiveness of legal technologies;
  • emerging new categories of legal technology;
  • the layering and combining of fundamental technology capabilities; and
  • the maturation of machine learning, natural language processing and deep learning artificial intelligence.

Given the exponential nature of the technologies, the Fundamental Technologies Map can only depict the landscape at the current point in time.

 

Information processing in legal services (PDF file)

 

Also see:
Delta Model Update: The Most Important Area of Lawyer Competency — Personal Effectiveness Skills — from legalexecutiveinstitute.comby Natalie Runyon

Excerpt:

Many legal experts say the legal industry is at an inflection point because the pace of change is being driven by many factors — technology, client demand, disaggregation of matter workflow, the rise of Millennials approaching mid-career status, and the faster pace of business in general.

The fact that technology spend by law firms continues to be a primary area of investment underscores the fact that the pace of change is continuing to accelerate with the ongoing rise of big data and workflow technology that are greatly influencing how lawyering gets done. Moreover, combined with big unstructured data, artificial intelligence (AI) is creating opportunities to analyze siloed data sets to gain insights in numerous new ways.

 

 

Is Thomas Frey right? “…by 2030 the largest company on the internet is going to be an education-based company that we haven’t heard of yet.”

From a fairly recent e-newsletter from edsurge.com — though I don’t recall the exact date (emphasis DSC):

New England is home to some of the most famous universities in the world. But the region has also become ground zero for the demographic shifts that promise to disrupt higher education.

This week saw two developments that fit the narrative. On Monday, Southern Vermont College announced that it would shut its doors, becoming the latest small rural private college to do so. Later that same day, the University of Massachusetts said it would start a new online college aimed at a national audience, noting that it expects campus enrollments to erode as the number of traditional college-age students declines in the coming years.

“Make no mistake—this is an existential threat to entire sectors of higher education,” said UMass president Marty Meehan in announcing the online effort.

The approach seems to parallel the U.S. retail sector, where, as a New York Times piece outlines this week, stores like Target and WalMart have thrived by building online strategies aimed at competing with Amazon, while stores like Gap and Payless, which did little to move online, are closing stores. Of course, college is not like any other product or service, and plenty of campuses are touting the richness of the experience that students get by actually coming to a campus. And it’s not clear how many colleges can grow online to a scale that makes their investments pay off.

 

“It’s predicted that over the next several years, four to five major national players with strong regional footholds will be established. We intend to be one of them.”

University of Massachusetts President Marty Meehan

 

 

From DSC:
That last quote from UMass President Marty Meehan made me reflect upon the idea of having one or more enormous entities that will provide “higher education” in the future. I wonder if things will turn out to be that we’ll have more lifelong learning providers and platforms in the future — with the idea of a 60-year curriculum being an interesting idea that may come into fruition.

Long have I predicted that such an enormous entity would come to pass. Back in 2008, I named it the Forthcoming Walmart of Education. But then as the years went by, I got bumbed out on some things that Walmart was doing, and re-branded it the Forthcoming Amazon.com of Higher Education. We’ll see how long that updated title lasts — but you get the point. In fact, the point aligns very nicely with what futurist Thomas Frey has been predicting for years as well:

“I’ve been predicting that by 2030 the largest company on the internet is going to be an education-based company that we haven’t heard of yet,” Frey, the senior futurist at the DaVinci Institute think tank, tells Business Insider. (source)

I realize that education doesn’t always scale well…but I’m thinking that how people learn in the future may be different than how we did things in the past…communities of practice comes to mind…as does new forms of credentialing…as does cloud-based learner profiles…as does the need for highly efficient, cost-effective, and constant opportunities/means to reinvent oneself.

Also see:

 

 

Addendum:

74% of consumers go to Amazon when they’re ready to buy something. That should be keeping retailers up at night. — from cnbc.com

Key points (emphasis DSC)

  • Amazon remains a looming threat for some of the biggest retailers in the country — like Walmart, Target and Macy’s.
  • When consumers are ready to buy a specific product, nearly three-quarters of them, or 74 percent, are going straight to Amazon to do it, according to a new study by Feedvisor.
  • By the end of this year, Amazon is expected to account for 52.4 percent of the e-commerce market in the U.S., up from 48 percent in 2018.

 

“In New England, there will be between 32,000 and 54,000 fewer college-aged students just seven years from now,” Meehan said. “That means colleges and universities will have too much capacity and not enough demand at a time when the economic model in higher education is already straining under its own weight.” (Marty Meehan at WBUR)

 

 

The Future Today Institute’s 12th Annual Emerging Tech Trends Report — from futuretodayinstitute.com

Excerpts:

At the Future Today Institute, we identify emerging tech trends and map the future for our clients. This is FTI’s 12th annual Tech Trends Report, and in it we identify 315 tantalizing advancements in emerging technologies — artificial intelligence, biotech, autonomous robots, green energy and space travel — that will begin to enter the mainstream and fundamentally disrupt business, geopolitics and everyday life around the world. As of the publication date, the annual FTI Tech Trend Report report has garnered more than 7.5 cumulative views.

Key findings for 2019 (emphasis DSC)

  • Privacy is dead. (DC: NOT GOOD!!! If this is true, can the situation be reversed?)
  • Voice Search Optimization (VSO) is the new SEO.
  • The Big Nine.
  • Personal data records are coming. (DC: Including cloud-based learner profiles I hope.)
  • China continues to ascend, and not just in artificial intelligence.
  • Lawmakers around the world are not prepared to deal with new challenges that arise from emerging science and technology.
  • Consolidation continues as a key theme for 2019.

 

 

Why AI is a threat to democracy — and what we can do to stop it — from technologyreview.com by Karen Hao and Amy Webb

Excerpt:

Universities must create space in their programs for hybrid degrees. They should incentivize CS students to study comparative literature, world religions, microeconomics, cultural anthropology and similar courses in other departments. They should champion dual degree programs in computer science and international relations, theology, political science, philosophy, public health, education and the like. Ethics should not be taught as a stand-alone class, something to simply check off a list. Schools must incentivize even tenured professors to weave complicated discussions of bias, risk, philosophy, religion, gender, and ethics in their courses.

One of my biggest recommendations is the formation of GAIA, what I call the Global Alliance on Intelligence Augmentation. At the moment people around the world have very different attitudes and approaches when it comes to data collection and sharing, what can and should be automated, and what a future with more generally intelligent systems might look like. So I think we should create some kind of central organization that can develop global norms and standards, some kind of guardrails to imbue not just American or Chinese ideals inside AI systems, but worldviews that are much more representative of everybody.

Most of all, we have to be willing to think about this much longer-term, not just five years from now. We need to stop saying, “Well, we can’t predict the future, so let’s not worry about it right now.” It’s true, we can’t predict the future. But we can certainly do a better job of planning for it.

 

 

 
 

Microsoft built a chat bot to match patients to clinical trials — from fortune.com by Dina Bass

Excerpt:

A chat bot that began as a hackathon project at Microsoft’s lab in Israel makes it easier for sick patients to find clinical trials that could provide otherwise unavailable medicines and therapies.

The Clinical Trials Bot lets patients and doctors search for studies related to a disease and then answer a succession of text questions. The bot then suggests links to trials that best match the patients’ needs. Drugmakers can also use it to find test subjects.

 

Half of all clinical trials for new drugs and therapies never reach the number of patients needed to start, and many others are delayed for the same reason, Bitran said. Meanwhile patients, sometimes desperately sick, find it hard to comb through the roughly 50,000 trials worldwide and their arcane and lengthy criteria—typically 20 to 30 factors. Even doctors struggle to search quickly on behalf of patients, Bitran said.

 

 

The 10+ best real-world examples of augmented reality — from forbes.com by Bernard Marr

Excerpt:

Augmented reality (AR) can add value, solve problems and enhance the user experience in nearly every industry. Businesses are catching on and increasing investments to drive the growth of augmented reality, which makes it a crucial part of the tech economy.

 

As referenced by Bernard in his above article:

 

 

From DSC:
Along these lines, I really appreciate the “translate” feature within Twitter. It helps open up whole new avenues of learning for me from people across the globe. A very cool, practical, positive, beneficial feature/tool!!!

 

 

81% of legal departments aren’t ready for digitization: Gartner — from mitratech.com by The Mitratech Team

Excerpt:

Despite the efforts of Legal Operations legal tech adopters and advocates, and the many expert voices raised about the need to evolve the legal industry?  A Gartner, Inc. report finds the vast majority of in-house legal departments are unprepared for digital transformation.

In compiling the report, Gartner reviewed the roles of legal departments in no less than 1,715 digital business projects. They also conducted interviews with over 100 general counsel and privacy officers, and another 100 legal stakeholders at large companies.

The reveal? That 81% of legal departments weren’t prepared for the oncoming tide of digitization at their companies. That leaves them at a disadvantage when one considers the results of Gartner’s CEO Survey.  Two-thirds of its CEO respondents predicted their business models would change in the next three years, with digitization as a major factor.

 

Also relevant here/see:
AI Pre-Screening Technology: A New Era for Contracts? — from by Tim Pullan, CEO and Founder, ThoughtRiver

Excerpt:

However, enterprises are beginning to understand the tangible value that can be delivered by automated contract pre-screening solutions. Such technology can ask thousands of questions defined by legal experts, and within minutes deliver an output weighing up the risks and advising next steps. Legal resources are then only required to follow up on these recommendations, whether they be a change to a clause, removing common bottlenecks altogether, or acting quickly to monetise a business opportunity.

There are clear benefits for both the legal team and the business. The GC’s team spends more time on enterprise-wide strategy and supporting other departments, while the business can move at pace and gain considerable competitive advantage.

 

 

Google and Microsoft warn that AI may do dumb things — from wired.com by Tom Simonite

Excerpt:

Alphabet likes to position itself as a leader in AI research, but it was six months behind rival Microsoft in warning investors about the technology’s ethical risks. The AI disclosure in Google’s latest filing reads like a trimmed down version of much fuller language Microsoft put in its most recent annual SEC report, filed last August:

“AI algorithms may be flawed. Datasets may be insufficient or contain biased information. Inappropriate or controversial data practices by Microsoft or others could impair the acceptance of AI solutions. These deficiencies could undermine the decisions, predictions, or analysis AI applications produce, subjecting us to competitive harm, legal liability, and brand or reputational harm.”

 

Chinese company leaves Muslim-tracking facial recognition database exposed online — from by Catalin Cimpanu
Researcher finds one of the databases used to track Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang.

Excerpt:

One of the facial recognition databases that the Chinese government is using to track the Uyghur Muslim population in the Xinjiang region has been left open on the internet for months, a Dutch security researcher told ZDNet.

The database belongs to a Chinese company named SenseNets, which according to its website provides video-based crowd analysis and facial recognition technology.

The user data wasn’t just benign usernames, but highly detailed and highly sensitive information that someone would usually find on an ID card, Gevers said. The researcher saw user profiles with information such as names, ID card numbers, ID card issue date, ID card expiration date, sex, nationality, home addresses, dates of birth, photos, and employer.

Some of the descriptive names associated with the “trackers” contained terms such as “mosque,” “hotel,” “police station,” “internet cafe,” “restaurant,” and other places where public cameras would normally be found.

 

From DSC:
Readers of this blog will know that I’m generally pro-technology. But especially focusing in on that last article, to me, privacy is key here. For which group of people from which nation is next? Will Country A next be tracking Christians? Will Country B be tracking people of a given sexual orientation? Will Country C be tracking people with some other characteristic?

Where does it end? Who gets to decide? What will be the costs of being tracked or being a person with whatever certain characteristic one’s government is tracking? What forums are there for combating technologies or features of technologies that we don’t like or want?

We need forums/channels for raising awareness and voting on these emerging technologies. We need informed legislators, senators, lawyers, citizens…we need new laws here…asap.

 

 

 

The real reason tech struggles with algorithmic bias — from wired.com by Yael Eisenstat

Excerpts:

ARE MACHINES RACIST? Are algorithms and artificial intelligence inherently prejudiced? Do Facebook, Google, and Twitter have political biases? Those answers are complicated.

But if the question is whether the tech industry doing enough to address these biases, the straightforward response is no.

Humans cannot wholly avoid bias, as countless studies and publications have shown. Insisting otherwise is an intellectually dishonest and lazy response to a very real problem.

In my six months at Facebook, where I was hired to be the head of global elections integrity ops in the company’s business integrity division, I participated in numerous discussions about the topic. I did not know anyone who intentionally wanted to incorporate bias into their work. But I also did not find anyone who actually knew what it meant to counter bias in any true and methodical way.

 

But the company has created its own sort of insular bubble in which its employees’ perception of the world is the product of a number of biases that are engrained within the Silicon Valley tech and innovation scene.

 

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian