The automated store of the future is heading closer to our doorsteps.
Self-checkout and online delivery services might soon be outmoded. Automated, cashier-less and mobile, doorstep-accessible shopping outlets are popping up globally—these offer not only a quick and seamless shopping experience, but also allow customers to handpick the items they are seeking.
Retail giant Amazon launched its Amazon Go store in Seattle in late January 2018. Amazon Go stocks everyday items, Whole Foods Market goods and Amazon-branded meal kits, but has no cashiers, no check-out lines and no barcode scanners. Shoppers enter by scanning an app, shop and leave—items purchased are automatically charged to their accounts. Dilip Kumar, vice president of technology for Amazon Go, suggests the concept is Amazon’s answer to solving “time poverty,” which he calls people’s “number one problem.”
This is just the tip of the iceberg. While Amazon Go currently only operates in Seattle, two other mobile concepts are hoping to reach a wider audience by physically bringing roving stores directly to the consumer. Robomart, based in the Bay Area, is a prototype tap-to-request grab-and-go food mart. Conventional grocery delivery services like those run by Amazon, FreshDirect or Instacart don’t let customers select products for themselves. If you’re particular about the ripeness of an avocado or conscious about bruises on tomatoes, being able to choose your own produce is essential. An autonomy-focused platform like Robomart puts consumers in the metaphorical driver’s seat, while still maintaining a high level of ease.
5 benefits of using Augmented & Virtual Reality Technologies in eLearning — from elearningindustry.com by Christoper Pappas Are you looking for ways to make your eLearning course stand out from the crowd? What if I told you there is technology that can help you achieve not only that but also increase online learner engagement and motivation? In this article, I’ll share the most notable benefits of using Augmented and Virtual Reality technologies in your eLearning course.
Excerpt:
Although their full implications are yet to be explored, alternate reality technologies make eLearning more engaging and productive. They are here to stay, and who knows what benefits they will bring to future learners. As the technology evolves, so too will the applications in eLearning. Which is why it’s essential for eLearning pros to keep up with cutting-edge tech and think of new and innovative uses for AR and VR tools.
Augmented reality (AR) technologies that blend computer-generated images and data from MRI and CT scans with real-world views are making it possible for doctors to “see under the skin” of their patients to visualize bones, muscles, and internal organs without having to cut open a body.
Experts say AR will transform medical care by improving precision during operations, reducing medical errors, and giving doctors and patients alike a better understanding of complex medical problems.
Healthcare VR innovations are healing patients — from cio.com by Peter Nichol Virtual reality is healing patients with augmented technologies. The patient experience has been transformed. Welcome to the era of engaged recovery — the new world of healing.
Excerpt:
Three emerging realities will change the hospital experience with unparalleled possibilities:
Virtual reality (VR): full immersion, a simulated reality.
Mixed reality: partial immersion, virtual objects in a real world.
Augmented reality (AR): information overlay, simulated information on top of the real world.
Today, we’ll explore how advances in virtual reality are creating worlds that heal.
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The next generation of clinical education
The list of possibilities for VR is endless. Augmented and virtual reality medical solutions are removing distractions, improving the quality of critical thinking, and maturing learning solutions, saving time and money while supercharging the learning experience. Explosive developments in 3D virtual and augmented reality have taken clinical education and hands-on learning to the next level.
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Innovation is ever present in the virtual reality space for healthcare.
Mindmaze has developed a breakthrough platform to build intuitive human-machine interfaces combining virtual reality, computer graphics, brain imaging and neuroscience.
MindMotionPRO is a healthcare product offering immersive virtual reality solutions for early motor rehabilitation in stroke patients.
Live 360 uses consumer-level virtual reality devices such as the Oculus Rift.
Medical Realities offers systems designed to reduce the cost of training.
ImmersiveTouch is a surgical virtual reality technology that offers a realistic surgical touch and feel. It also brings patient images to life with AR and VR imaging.
BioFlight VR offers a broad range of medical VR and AR services, including VR training and simulations, AR training, behavior modification and 360-degree video.
Zspace is an immersive medical learning platform, virtualizing anatomical representations into complete procedural planning. zSpace brings a new dimension to medical learning and visualization across three spaces: gross anatomy VR lab (13,000 plus anatomical objects), teaching presentation view (share the teaching experience with the class via HD TV) and DICOM Viewer (volumetrically render 2D DICOM slices).
Digital reality is generally defined as the wide spectrum of technologies and capabilities that inhere in AR, VR, MR, 360° video, and the immersive experience, enabling simulation of reality in various ways (see figure 1).
Key players in digital reality
In terms of key players, the digital reality space can be divided into areas of activity:
Tools/content—platforms, apps, capture tools, etc.
Application content—information from industry, analytics, social, etc.
Infrastructure—hardware, data systems, HMDs, etc.
Increasing investment in infrastructure may drive the growth of software and content, leading to new practical applications and, possibly, an infusion of digital reality software development talent.
This All-Female Founders Pitch Event Was Held in VR — from vrscout.com by Malia Probst Hailing from 26 countries across the world, people came together in virtual reality to cheer on these top female founders in the XR industry.
Enterprise leading consumer tech adoption Concerning the need for a VR/AR eco system Max referred to the challenge of technology adoption: people need to be able to try different use cases and be convinced about the potential of AR ,VR and MR. In order to become available (and affordable) for consumers, the technology would have to be adapted by businesses first as the story of 3D printing shows as one example.
He also highlighted the importance of the right training for users to reduce the general learning curve for immersive technology. Poor instructions in the first instance can lead to bad user experiences and cause doubt and even a dismissall of ‘new’ technologies.
We see this firsthand at Kazendi when users try out Microsoft HoloLens for the first time. Max commented that: ‘When people try to make the basic hand gestures and fail they often take the device off and say it’s broken.’
We do have a robust entry demo process to combat this but at the consumer level, and this is as true for VR as much as it is for MR and AR, there is little room for error when learning curves are concerned.
Mapping the Trends on Our Doorstep: The Pace of Change Has Changed— from an article that I did out at — and with — evoLLLution.com [where LLL stands for lifelong learning]; my thanks to Mr. Amrit Ahluwalia, Managing Editor out at evolllution.com and to his staff as well! The higher education industry has changed significantly over the past decade, and given the pace and significance of change hitting other industries as a result of technological advances, it’s fair to say the postsecondary space is ripe for further transformation.
From DSC: From the perspective of those of us working within higher education, we see massive changes occurring in the corporate world, and we see innovations and changes also occurring in the world of K-12. Higher education should also be adapting, changing, questioning, and reflecting upon how we can best prepare our students for a rapidly changing workplace.
Below is another interesting item that I believe gives credence to the idea that we are now on an exponential pace of change. Companies are coming and going on the S&P Index…at an ever faster pace.
The 33-year average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 in 1964 narrowed to 24 years by 2016 and is forecast to shrink to just 12 years by 2027 (Chart 1).
With this in mind, we asked remote workers from companies like Treehouse, Help Scout, Zapier, Buffer, and Zest to share their favorite online collaboration tools. Here’s what they said.
Slack: The best team communication app
Zoom: The best video conferencing app
InVision: The best design collaboration app
GitHub: The best software development tool
Trello: The best project management software
Dashlane: The best password manager
Google Drive: The best file management app
Zapier: Workflow automation for business
World Time Buddy: Time converter for distributed teams
From DSC: With some predictions saying that the workforce is going to be composed of upwards of ~50% of us beingcontingent workers, (I’ve already seen figures around mid 30’s and even 40%), the question I have is:
Are we teaching students how to protect themselves, how to sell themselves, how to sell their businesses, how to plan financially, etc.?
Would our students know about these types of mistakes?
Also, it seems to me that higher education should be helping students “future proof” themselves — or at least as much as possible. One of the values higher education should be bringing to the table is to identify which jobs are going to be around for the next 5-10 years and which ones aren’t.
Along these lines, lifelong learning and learning how to learn are becoming increasingly important. Thus, I will continue to try and post articles/resources on this blog in regards to metacognition and the like.
What these firms all have in common are powerful digital platforms that provide the scale and scope to expand into new growth markets and geographies at speeds never before possible.
From DSC:
To me, the item below provides another example of the exponential pace of change that we are beginning to experience:
Few companies are immune to the forces of creative destruction. Our corporate longevity forecast of S&P 500 companies anticipates average tenure on the list growing shorter and shorter over the next decade.
Key insights include:
The 33-year average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 in 1964 narrowed to 24 years by 2016 and is forecast to shrink to just 12 years by 2027 (Chart 1).
Record private equity activity, a robust M&A market, and the growth of startups with billion-dollar valuations are leading indicators of future turbulence.
A gale force warning to leaders: at the current churn rate, about half of S&P 500 companies will be replaced over the next ten years.
Retailers were especially hit hard by disruptive forces, and there are strong signs of restructuring in financial services, healthcare, energy, travel, and real estate.
The turbulence points to the need for companies to embrace a dual transformation, to focus on changing customer needs, and other strategic interventions.
… Are Corporations Ready for Increased Turbulence?
Viewed as a larger picture, S&P 500 turnover serves as a barometer for marketplace change. Shrinking lifespans of companies on the list are in part driven by a complex combination of technology shifts and economic shocks, some of which are beyond the control of corporate leaders. But frequently, companies miss opportunities to adapt or take advantage of these changes. For example, they continue to apply existing business models to new markets, are slow to respond to disruptive competitors in low-profit segments, or fail to adequately envision and invest in new growth areas which often takes a decade or longer to pay off.
At the same time, we’ve seen the rise of other companies take their place on the list by creating new products, business models, and serving new customers. Some of the market forces driving these exits and entries include the mass disruption in retail, the rising dominance of digital technology platforms, the downward pressure on energy prices, strength in global travel and real estate, as well as the failure of stock buyback efforts to improve performance.
From DSC: DC: Will Amazon get into delivering education/degrees? Is is working on a next generation learning platform that could highly disrupt the world of higher education? Hmmm…time will tell.
But Amazon has a way of getting into entirely new industries. From its roots as an online bookseller, it has branched off into numerous other arenas. It has the infrastructure, talent, and the deep pockets to bring about the next generation learning platform that I’ve been tracking for years. It is only one of a handful of companies that could pull this type of endeavor off.
And now, we see articles like these:
Amazon Snags a Higher Ed Superstar — from insidehighered.com by Doug Lederman Candace Thille, a pioneer in the science of learning, takes a leave from Stanford to help the ambitious retailer better train its workers, with implications that could extend far beyond the company.
Excerpt:
A major force in the higher education technology and learning space has quietly begun working with a major corporate force in — well, in almost everything else.
Candace Thille, a pioneer in learning science and open educational delivery, has taken a leave of absence from Stanford University for a position at Amazon, the massive (and getting bigger by the day) retailer.
Thille’s title, as confirmed by an Amazon spokeswoman: director of learning science and engineering. In that capacity, the spokeswoman said, Thille will work “with our Global Learning Development Team to scale and innovate workplace learning at Amazon.”
No further details were forthcoming, and Thille herself said she was “taking time away” from Stanford to work on a project she was “not really at liberty to discuss.”
Jeff Bezos’ Amazon empire—which recently dabbled in home security, opened artificial intelligence-powered grocery stores, and started planning a second headquarters (and manufactured a vicious national competition out of it)—has not been idle in 2018.
The e-commerce/retail/food/books/cloud-computing/etc company made another move this week that, while nowhere near as flashy as the above efforts, tells of curious things to come. Amazon has hired Candace Thille, a leader in learning science, cognitive science, and open education at Stanford University, to be “director of learning science and engineering.” A spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that Thille will work “with our Global Learning Development Team to scale and innovate workplace learning at Amazon”; Thille herself said she is “not really at liberty to discuss” her new project.
What could Amazon want with a higher education expert? The company already has footholds in the learning market, running several educational resource platforms. But Thille is famous specifically for her data-driven work, conducted at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University, on nontraditional ways of learning, teaching, and training—all of which are perfect, perhaps even necessary, for the education of employees.
From DSC: It could just be that Amazon is simply building its own corporate university and will stay focused on developing its own employees and its own corporate learning platform/offerings — and/or perhaps license their new platform to other corporations.
But from my perspective, Amazon continues to work on pieces of a powerful puzzle, one that could eventually involve providing learning experiences to lifelong learners:
Personal assistants
Voice recognition / Natural Language Processing (NLP)
The development of “skills” at an incredible pace
Personalized recommendation engines
Cloud computing and more
If Alexa were to get integrated into a AI-based platform for personalized learning — one that features up-to-date recommendation engines that can identify and personalize/point out the relevant critical needs in the workplace for learners — better look out higher ed! Better look out if such a platform could interactively deliver (and assess) the bulk of the content that essentially does the heavy initial lifting of someone learning about a particular topic.
Amazon will be able to deliver a cloud-based platform, with cloud-based learner profiles and blockchain-based technologies, at a greatly reduced cost. Think about it. No physical footprints to build and maintain, no lawns to mow, no heating bills to pay, no coaches making $X million a year, etc. AI-driven recommendations for digital playlists. Links to the most in demand jobs — accompanied by job descriptions, required skills & qualifications, and courses/modules to take in order to master those jobs.
Such a solution would still need professors, instructional designers, multimedia specialists, copyright experts, etc., but they’ll be able to deliver up-to-date content at greatly reduced costs. That’s my bet. And that’s why I now call this potential development The New Amazon.com of Higher Education.
[Microsoft — with their purchase of Linked In (who had previously
purchased Lynda.com) — is another such potential contender.]
1 in 5 workers will have AI as their co worker in 2022
More job roles will change than will be become totally automated so HR needs to prepare today
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As we increase our personal usage of chatbots (defined as software which provides an automated, yet personalized, conversation between itself and human users), employees will soon interact with them in the workplace as well. Forward looking HR leaders are piloting chatbots now to transform HR, and, in the process, re-imagine, re-invent, and re-tool the employee experience.
How does all of this impact HR in your organization? The following ten HR trends will matter most as AI enters the workplace…
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The most visible aspect of how HR is being impacted by artificial intelligence is the change in the way companies source and recruit new hires. Most notably, IBM has created a suite of tools that use machine learning to help candidates personalize their job search experience based on the engagement they have with Watson. In addition, Watson is helping recruiters prioritize jobs more efficiently, find talent faster, and match candidates more effectively. According to Amber Grewal, Vice President, Global Talent Acquisition, “Recruiters are focusing more on identifying the most critical jobs in the business and on utilizing data to assist in talent sourcing.”
…as we enter 2018, the next journey for HR leaders will be to leverage artificial intelligence combined with human intelligence and create a more personalized employee experience.
From DSC: Although I like the possibility of using machine learning to help employees navigate their careers, I have some very real concerns when we talk about using AI for talent acquisition. At this point in time, I would much rather have an experienced human being — one with a solid background in HR — reviewing my resume to see if they believe that there’s a fit for the job and/or determine whether my skills transfer over from a different position/arena or not. I don’t think we’re there yet in terms of developing effective/comprehensive enough algorithms. It may happen, but I’m very skeptical in the meantime. I don’t want to be filtered out just because I didn’t use the right keywords enough times or I used a slightly different keyword than what the algorithm was looking for.
Also, there is definitely age discrimination occurring out in today’s workplace, especially in tech-related positions. Folks who are in tech over the age of 30-35 — don’t lose your job! (Go check out the topic of age discrimination on LinkedIn and similar sites, and you’ll find many postings on this topic — sometimes with 10’s of thousands of older employees adding comments/likes to a posting). Although I doubt that any company would allow applicants or the public to see their internally-used algorithms, how difficult would it be to filter out applicants who graduated college prior to ___ (i.e., some year that gets updated on an annual basis)? Answer? Not difficult at all. In fact, that’s at the level of a Programming 101 course.
From DSC: “Persons of interest” comes to mind after reading this article. Persons of interest is a clever, well done show, but still…the idea of combining surveillance w/ a super intelligent #AIis a bit unnerving.
Suncorp has revealed it is exploring image recognition and augmented reality-based enhancements for its insurance claims process, adding to the AI systems it deployed last year.
The insurer began testing IBM Watson software last June to automatically determine who is at fault in a vehicle accident.
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“We are working on increasing our use of emerging technologies to assist with the insurance claim process, such as using image recognition to assess type and extent of damage, augmented reality that would enable an off-site claims assessor to discuss and assess damage, speech recognition, and obtaining telematic data from increasingly automated vehicles,” the company said.
Here’s the trade-off: what we gain in development ease-of-use (native SDKs, integration into existing workflows) and performance enhancements (load times, battery efficiency, render quality, integration with native apps), we lose in universality; naturally, each company wants you staying within its own ecosystem.
In a nutshell: new AR platforms from today’s tech giants are aimed at reducing technical headache so you can focus on creating amazing experiences… but they also want you creating more apps for their respective mobile ecosystems.
Learning to play the piano is getting an immersive upgrade with a new augmented reality (AR) piano training software called Music Everywhere. The HoloLens app aims to help students of all talent levels build fundamental music theory and performance skills. While traditional piano lessons can cost upwards of $100 per hour, Music Everywhere is free on the Microsoft store and offers a cost effective tutoring solution that provides students with immediate interaction feedback, making it differ greatly from watching a video tutorial.
Founded in 2017, Music Everywhere began at Carnegie Mellon’s ETC with Seth Glickman, Fu Yen Hsiao, and Byunghwan Lee realizing the nascent technology could be used for skills training. The app was the first Augmented Reality music learning platform to take first prize in Microsoft’s HoloLens Developer Contest, beating more than one-thousand submissions.
The market for virtual reality applications is growing at a rapid pace, and is expected to double in the next five years (Bolkan, 2017). As the cost of equipment falls and schools have greater access to technology, there is great interest in virtual reality as an educational tool. A small but growing group of educators have started to integrate virtual reality in their classrooms, with promising results (Castaneda, Cechony & Bautista, 2017). We reached out to teachers and administrators who are currently using virtual reality in their classrooms to hear their perspectives and practical strategies for infusing this resource into their classrooms.
Teachers have creative ideas for how to incorporate immersive education in current classrooms: how to select activities, how to set up the classroom, how to get support during the activity and how to transport devices. Teachers also shared their ideas for future applications of VR, including how to deepen the learning experience and to expand the reach of these technologies to a greater population of students.
Here we share three vignettes of three different approaches: a social studies class in a suburban school district, a district-wide perspective from an urban school district and a class designed entirely around understanding and implementing VR for other classrooms. We also share how we are using these ideas to inform our own project in designing a collaborative immersive virtual reality educational game for introductory high school biology.
VR is already being used for many real-world applications–hiring, training, marketing/sales, medical purposes, entertainment, and more–and is worth considering for many different university departments.
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At German University in Cairo, architecture students used our platform to create tours of historical Cairo buildings, complete with educational hotspot overlays on particularly interesting features. This multimedia approach educated students without them having to travel to the buildings. It also made for a more “stickier” learning experience for the students involved in creating it.
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At Emporia State University, for example, the forensic science students view virtual crime scenes recorded at the Kansas Bureau of Investigation in Topeka. Forensic-science students can look for clues and learn facts via voiceover, mimicking an actual crime-scene inquiry quite impressively.
Just as televisions and driverless cars have become part of the furniture at the CES technology show, so too have virtual and augmented reality headsets.
Although the momentum behind VR’s growth slowed in 2017 – the industry seemingly unsure if it should progress with a technology destined to remain a niche – AR is being welcomed into the spotlight with open arms.
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Here are six AR and VR highlights from CES 2018.
The University of Washington, hoping to get ahead in the burgeoning field of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), has launched the UW Reality Lab, a center for research, education and innovation in AR and VR.
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One of the first research centers in the world built for AR and VR projects, the UW Reality Lab is also located in Seattle — a hotspot for technology companies, from behemoths like Amazon and Microsoft to startups still trying to get off the ground.
“We’re seeing some really compelling and high-quality AR and VR experiences being built today,” Steve Seitz, center co-lead and Allen School professor, said in the university’s statement. “But, there are still many core research advances needed to move the industry forward — tools for easily creating content, infrastructure solutions for streaming 3D video, and privacy and security safeguards — that university researchers are uniquely positioned to tackle.”
Why Augmented Reality is Important for eLearning According to a report released by CCS Insight, augmented and virtual reality hardware is set to become a $4 billion market by 2018. Let’s take a look at how augmented reality can be leveraged in the online learning space:
Simulated working environments One of the most common advantages of online learning is the ability to form an environment in which the users have the freedom to experiment. As people usually learn from their mistakes, when they work in a consequence-free environment, they are most likely to remember the right way to do things.
Support Gamification
As online learning management systems (LMSs) use gamification widely, augmented reality can be directly applied. In AR reality training module, employees will be rewarded for effectively performing their routine tasks in the right way, which will eventually improve performance.
Immersive Learning Environments
Using a tablet, smartphone for the online training software means the users are constantly distracted with emails, notifications from social channels etc. This is one of the reasons why elearning content uses interactive multimedia elements to engage students. With augmented reality, elearning courses can be supported with 360° video, which will engage the user and remove distractions for them.
Motion tracking
Motion and gesture tracking are part of the AR experience. They are commonly leveraged for choosing menu items or engaging with video game-based environments.
In the online learning domain, LMSs can use this technology to track learner’s progress to ensure that they are achieving the set targets without fail. This will boost real-time training performance and improve interactivity with instant feedback.
Simply put, with augmented reality the possibilities are endless. With the growing number of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) workplaces, it is expected that employees and learners will be delighted to use augmented reality.
The Musical Future of VR
VR technology is still in its earliest stages, but musicians are already seeing how they will be able to connect to fans and make news ones without the expense of touring. In artificial environments, bands can invite music lovers into their world.
But beyond the obvious entertainment factor, VR has the potential to become a tool for education. Music students could enter a studio space using VR gear for lessons and practice. The immediate feedback provided and game-like atmosphere may keep students more motivated and engaged. Imagine methods for teaching that include ways to slow down and loop difficult parts or bringing in the composer for lessons.
VR can also connect music lovers to the many people behind the scenes involved in producing the music they enjoy. Listeners can learn about the industry and how a song comes to life. They’ll understand why it’s important to play a part in sustaining the music business.
For this technology to become a reality in itself inside consumers’ listening and learning spaces, obstacles need addressing. The hardware is still pricey, bulky and requires a power source. Apps need creators who will need more in the way of artificial intelligence.
“The ability to combine digital information with the real world is going to disrupt every business model, transform human/machine interaction, and generate innovative use cases across every discipline and in every vertical including education, healthcare, manufacturing,” Werner continued. “I see ARiA as the TED for AR, where the best minds come together to solve real work problems and share ideas to capitalize on the huge opportunity.”
Broadcast news and sports now routinely lay data, graphics, and animation onto the physical world. AR has become ubiquitous in ways that have nothing to do with smart glasses. “AR is on the verge.
In regards to mixed reality for immersive learning:
Pearson – the world’s largest education company – will begin rolling out in March curriculum that will work on both HoloLens and Windows Mixed Reality immersive VR headsets. These six new applications will deliver seamless experiences across devices and further illustrate the value of immersive educational experiences.
We are expanding our mixed media reality curriculum offerings through a new partnership with WGBH’s Bringing the Universe to America’s Classrooms project****, for distribution nationally on PBS LearningMedia™. This effort brings cutting-edge Earth and Space Science content into classrooms through digital learning resources that increase student engagement with science phenomena and practices.
To keep up with growing demand for HoloLens in the classroom we are committed to providing affordable solutions. Starting on January 22, we are making available a limited-time academic pricing offer for HoloLens. To take advantage of the limited-time academic pricing offer, please visit, hololens.com/edupromo.
Amazon on Monday [opened] its automated grocery in Seattle to the public, replacing cashiers with a smartphone app and hundreds of small cameras that track purchases. For the past year, the 1,800-square foot mini-mart has been open to the company’s employees. There is no waiting in line for check out at Amazon Go, as the store is called — instead, its computerized system charges customers’ Amazon account as they exit the store.
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Amazon has dubbed the technology “Just Walk Out” and, according to CNBC, “it uses computer vision, deep learning algorithms and sensor fusion — many of the same advances being used to develop autonomous driving.”
After nearly a year’s delay, Amazon Go is finally opening to the public on Monday morning.
It’s Amazon’s first automated grocery store that promises, “no lines, no checkouts, no registers” – and could be a game-changer for the grocery and retail industry
For now, Amazon is testing the concept on a limited basis and has no plans to implement the technology in Whole Foods.
Using a combination of LinkedIn data and survey results, we determined both the soft and the hard skills companies need most. And then we provided LinkedIn Learning courses that teach those skills, which we’ve made free for all of January 2018.
Enjoy. Learning these skills will help you stay ahead of change and make the most of all that opportunity in 2018.
As we enter 2018 it’s become clear that the jobs landscape in the United States is changing. How people are thinking about their careers and how they define success is changing. The rise of technology across every industry has created a flurry of new jobs and associated skills (and these aren’t necessarily all tech roles). While we all may take a different approach to reach our own definition of success, we’ve compiled a list of the most promising jobs and in-demand skills, plus a few stand-out trends, to help you get there.
The Trends
You don’t need to be technical to be successful. Despite the prominence of technical jobs and skills, soft skills like management, leadership, and strategy are equally as important. The proof is in the data: we surveyed 2,000 business leaders who told us the soft skills most in-demand are leadership, communication, collaboration, and time management. In fact, 57% of them said these soft skills are more important than hard skills.
Customer is king. As we saw in our Emerging Jobs Report, as a side effect of the technology boom, customer success, marketing, and sales-related jobs are growing quickly. Reaching potential customers and ensuring current customers are successful with your product are both critical for business success.
Technology is here to stay. Year-over-year technology jobs and skills have dominated these lists, and that’s a trend that’s likely here to stay. All jobs are likely going to require some technical skills in the future, so make sure to brush up on the basics.
The beginning of a year is a great time to take stock of the year gone by and plan for the year ahead. In this blog post, we will have a quick glimpse of what we believe would be some of the key trends in workplace learning this year.
Artificial Intelligence is the talk of the town. It has evolved past merely being a buzzword in 2016, to be used in a more practical manner in 2017. As 2018 rolls out, we will gradually notice AI transitioning into a necessity. We have prepared a detailed report, on what we can expect from AI in the upcoming year. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride through the future. (Don’t forget to wear your VR headgear! )
Here are 18 things that will happen in 2018 that are either AI driven or driving AI:
Artificial General Intelligence may gain major traction in research.
We will turn to AI enabled solution to solve mission-critical problems.
Machine Learning adoption in business will see rapid growth.
Safety, ethics, and transparency will become an integral part of AI application design conversations.
Mainstream adoption of AI on mobile devices
Major research on data efficient learning methods
AI personal assistants will continue to get smarter
Race to conquer the AI optimized hardware market will heat up further
We will see closer AI integration into our everyday lives.
The cryptocurrency hype will normalize and pave way for AI-powered Blockchain applications.
Deep learning will continue to play a significant role in AI development progress.
AI will be on both sides of the cybersecurity challenge.
Augmented reality content will be brought to smartphones.
Reinforcement learning will be applied to a large number of real-world situations.
Robotics development will be powered by Deep Reinforcement learning and Meta-learning
Rise in immersive media experiences enabled by AI.
A large number of organizations will use Digital Twin.
Inside AI — from inside.com The year 2017 has been full of interesting news about Artificial Intelligence, so to close out the year, we’re doing two special retrospective issues covering the highlights.
Excerpt:
A Reality Check For IBM’s A.I. Ambitions. MIT Tech Review. This is a must read piece about the failures, and continued promise, of Watson. Some of the press about Watson has made IBM appear behind some of the main tech leaders, but, keep in mind that Google, Amazon, Facebook, and others don’t do the kinds of customer facing projects IBM is doing with Watson. When you look at how the tech giants are positioned, I think IBM has been vastly underestimated, given that they have the one thing few others do – large scale enterprise A.I. projects. Whether it all works today, or not, doesn’t matter. The experience and expertise they are building is a competitive advantage in a market that is very young where no other companies are doing these types of projects that will soon enough be mainstream.
The Business of Artificial Intelligence. Harvard Business Review. This cover story for the latest edition of HBR explains why artificial intelligence is the most powerful general purpose technology to come around in a long time. It also looks into some of the key ways to think about applying A.I. at work, and how to expect the next phase of this technology to play out.
The Robot Revolution Is Coming. Just Be Patient. Bloomberg. We keep hearing that robots and A.I. are about to make us super productive. But when? Sooner than we think, according to this.
There are few electronic devices with which you cannot order a Domino’s pizza. When the craving hits, you can place an order via Twitter, Slack, Facebook Messenger, SMS, your tablet, your smartwatch, your smart TV, and even your app-enabled Ford. This year, the pizza monger added another ordering tool: If your home is one of the 20 million with a voice assistant, you can place a regular order through Alexa or Google Home. Just ask for a large extra-cheese within earshot, and voila—your pizza is in the works.
Amazon’s Alexa offers more than 25,000 skills—the set of actions that serve as applications for voice technology. Yet Domino’s is one of a relatively small number of brands that has seized the opportunity to enter your home by creating a skill of its own. Now that Amazon Echoes and Google Homes are in kitchens and living rooms across the country, they open a window into user behavior that marketers previously only dreamt of. But brands’ efforts to engage consumers directly via voice have been scattershot. The list of those that have tried is sparse: some banks; a couple of fast food chains; a few beauty companies; retailers here and there. Building a marketing plan for Alexa has been a risky venture. That’s because, when it comes to our virtual assistants, no one knows what the *&^& is going on.
But if 2017 was the year that Alexa hit the mainstream, 2018 will be the year that advertisers begin to take her seriously by investing time and money in figuring out how to make use of her.
8 emerging AI jobs for IT pros— from enterprisersproject.com by Kevin Casey What IT jobs will be hot in the age of AI? Take a sneak peek at roles likely to be in demand
Excerpt:
If you’re watching the impact of artificial intelligence on the IT organization, your interest probably starts with your own job. Can robots do what you do? But more importantly, you want to skate where the puck is headed. What emerging IT roles will AI create? We talked to AI and IT career experts to get a look at some emerging roles that will be valuable in the age of AI.
This past June, Fortune Magazine asked all the CEOs of the Fortune 500 what they believed the biggest challenge facing their companies was. Their biggest concern for 2017: “The rapid pace of technological change” said 73% of those polled, up from 64% in 2016. Cyber security came in only a far second, at 61%, even after all the mega hacks of the past year.
But apart from the Big 8 technology companies – Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba – business leaders, especially of earlier generations, may feel they don’t know enough about AI to make informed decisions.
For the first time, artificial intelligence has been used to discover two new exoplanets. One of the discoveries, made by Nasa’s Kepler mission, brings the Kepler-90 solar system to a total of 8 planets – the first solar system found with the same number as our own.
Two University at Buffalo education researchers have teamed up to create an interactive classroom environment in which state-of-the-art virtual reality simulates difficult student behavior, a training method its designers compare to a “flight simulator for teachers.”
The new program, already earning endorsements from teachers and administrators in an inner-city Buffalo school, ties into State University of New York Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher’s call for innovative teaching experiences and “immersive” clinical experiences and teacher preparation.
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The training simulator Lamb compared to a teacher flight simulator uses an emerging computer technology known as virtual reality. Becoming more popular and accessible commercially, virtual reality immerses the subject in what Lamb calls “three-dimensional environments in such a way where that environment is continuous around them.” An important characteristic of the best virtual reality environments is a convincing and powerful representation of the imaginary setting.
TeachLive.org TLE TeachLivE™ is a mixed-reality classroom with simulated students that provides teachers the opportunity to develop their pedagogical practice in a safe environment that doesn’t place real students at risk. This lab is currently the only one in the country using a mixed reality environment to prepare or retrain pre-service and in-service teachers. The use of TLE TeachLivE™ Lab has also been instrumental in developing transition skills for students with significant disabilities, providing immediate feedback through bug-in-ear technology to pre-service teachers, developing discrete trial skills in pre-service and in-service teachers, and preparing teachers in the use of STEM-related instructional strategies.
From DSC: It will be interesting to see all the “places” we will be able to go and interact within — all from the comfort of our living rooms! Next generation simulators should be something else for teaching/learning & training-related purposes!!!
The next gen learning platform will likely offer such virtual reality-enabled learning experiences, along with voice recognition/translation services and a slew of other technologies — such as AI, blockchain*, chatbots, data mining/analytics, web-based learner profiles, an online-based marketplace supported by the work of learning-based free agents, and others — running in the background. All of these elements will work to offer us personalized, up-to-date learning experiences — helping each of us stay relevant in the marketplace as well as simply enabling us to enjoy learning about new things.
But the potentially disruptive piece of all of this is that this next generation learning platform could create an Amazon.com of what we now refer to as “higher education.” It could just as easily serve as a platform for offering learning experiences for learners in K-12 as well as the corporate learning & development space.
In 2014, Kings College in New York became the first university in the U.S. to accept Bitcoin for tuition payments, a move that seemed more of a PR stunt than the start of some new movement. Much has changed since then, including the value of Bitcoin itself, which skyrocketed to more than $19,000 earlier this month, catapulting cryptocurrencies into the mainstream.
A handful of other universities (and even preschools) now accept Bitcoin for tuition, but that’s hardly the extent of how blockchains and tokens are weaving their way into education: Educators and edtech entrepreneurs are now testing out everything from issuing degrees on the blockchain to paying people in cryptocurrency for their teaching.
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