The 10 vital skills you will need for the future of work — from Bernard Marr

Excerpt:

Active learning with a growth mindset
Anyone in the future of work needs to actively learn and grow. A person with a growth mindset understands that their abilities and intelligence can be developed and they know their effort to build skills will result in higher achievement. They will, therefore, take on challenges, learn from mistakes and actively seek new knowledge.

Start by adopting a commitment to lifelong learning so you can acquire the skills you will need to succeed in the future workplace.

 

Redefining Norms Critical to Sustained Relevance in the Changing Postsecondary Environment — from evolllution.com by Hunt Lambert
Sticking to the status quo will end in disaster for most postsecondary institutions. To stay relevant, institutions have to rethink all aspects of the higher education product, from programming to student support to organizational models.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Higher education has existed for over a millennium in an effectively unchanged state, but the impetus to transform has arrived. Fast-changing labor demands, evolving learner expectations and transformed market realities are forcing college and university leaders to rethink the traditional postsecondary model and find ways to serve the growing numbers of lifelong learners. This idea has been broadly articulated as the 60-Year Curriculum (60YC), and executing on this vision demands a fundamental change in how higher education institutions must operate to serve students. In this interview, Hunt Lambert expands on the 60YC vision and shares his insights into how the organizational models of postsecondary institutions need to evolve to adapt to this approach.

The 60YC proposes that higher education providers, who happen to be best in the world at knowledge creation and dissemination through well-designed curriculum, expand that curricula concept from the current two-year AA, four-year BA, two-year master’s and seven-year PhD learning models into a 60-year model inclusive of 15- to 75-year-old learners and, most likely, beyond.

 

 

The Jobs of Tomorrow: LinkedIn’s 2020 Emerging Jobs Report — from blog.linkedin.com by Guy Berger

Excerpt:

Here’s what you should know about this year’s emerging jobs.

  • Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to make a strong showing on our Emerging Jobs lists, which is no surprise.
  • Professionals are on the move, likely a result of factors like housing costs, political and regulatory change, or more flexibility with remote work opportunities.
  • Demand for soft skills is likely to increase as automation becomes more widespread. Skills like communication, creativity, and collaboration are all virtually impossible to automate…

Also see these reports:

Online learning is here to stay.
The multibillion-dollar e-learning industry is taking off, and it’s staffing up to prepare. LinkedIn data shows the industry is snapping up both sales and tech talent, indicating continued customer demand for these types of solutions.

 

Creativity Required: How a Tesla Partnership is Setting the Stage for Program and Credential Innovation — from evolllution.com by Lenore Rodicio
By building strong employer partnerships and bringing a creative approach to program design and credentialing, it’s possible for colleges to create opportunities for learners to build the skills they need to work while progressing toward a degree.

Excerpt:

So for this particular program, a new state-of-the-art facility is being specifically constructed at MDC’s west campus from the ground up. Tesla provides the vehicles, equipment, instructors, tools and curriculum for hands-on learning.

 

Here’s another item that deals with creativity:

  • Digital Transformation: A Focus on Creativity, Not Tools — from campustechnology.com by Mary Grush and Ellen Wagner
    Excerpt:
    It is easier to talk about [the technology tools] than it is to talk about the things people need to do to adapt to working with the new tools. And what’s odd is the lack of anticipation about the potential of digital transformation to open up true innovation and creativity. That’s the real prize, and it seems like this point is often missed.

    Of course, in my role as a researcher at the Mixed Emerging Technology Integration Lab (the METIL lab) at the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Simulation and Training, I’ve begun work on three new projects that incorporate simulation, mobile, and artificial intelligence. We don’t just learn about the tools; we study their impact and how they can extend creativity.For another example of related research, take a look at ShapingEdu and the Humersive Learning Project at Arizona State University. There, the researchers look specifically at immersive learning and how to humanize it while fostering innovation.
 

Delta Model Lawyer: Lawyer Competencies for the Computational Age — from law.mit.edu by Caitlin “Cat” Moon
Technology changes the ways that people interact with one another. As a result, the roles and competencies required for many professions are evolving. Law is no exception. Cat Moon offers the Delta Model as a tool for legal professionals to understand how adapt to these changes.

Excerpt:

The [law] schools must begin training the profession to cope with and understand computers. […] Minimizing the pain and problems which may be caused by computer-created unknowns is a responsibility of the profession.

 

The future of law and computational technologies: Two sides of the same coin — from law.mit.edu by Daniel Linna
Law and computation are often thought of as being two distinct fields. Increasingly, that is not the case. Dan Linna explores the ways a computational approach could help address some of the biggest challenges facing the legal industry.

Excerpt:

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (“AI”) introduces opportunities to improve legal processes and facilitate social progress. At the same time, AI presents an original set of inherent risks and potential harms. From a Law and Computational Technologies perspective, these circumstances can be broadly separated into two categories. First, we can consider the ethics, regulations, and laws that apply to technology. Second, we can consider the use of technology to improve the delivery of legal services, justice systems, and the law itself. Each category presents an unprecedented opportunity to use significant technological advancements to preserve and expand the rule of law.

For basic legal needs, access to legal services might come in the form of smartphones or other devices that are capable of providing users with an inventory of their legal rights and obligations, as well as providing insights and solutions to common legal problems. Better yet, AI and pattern matching technologies can help catalyze the development of proactive approaches to identify potential legal problems and prevent them from arising, or at least mitigate their risk.

We risk squandering abundant opportunities to improve society with computational technologies if we fail to proactively create frameworks to embed ethics, regulation, and law into our processes by design and default.

To move forward, technologists and lawyers must radically expand current notions of interdisciplinary collaboration. Lawyers must learn about technology, and technologists must learn about the law.

 

 

Technology is increasingly being used to provide legal services, which demands a new breed of innovative lawyer for the 21st century. Law schools are launching specialist LL.M.s in response, giving students computing skills — from llm-guide.com by Seb Murray

Excerpts:

Junior lawyers at Big Law firms have long been expected to work grueling hours on manual and repetitive tasks like reviewing documents and doing due diligence. Increasingly, such work is being undertaken by machines – which can be faster, cheaper and more accurately than humans. This is the world of legal technology – the use of technology to provide legal services.

The top law schools recognize the need to train not just excellent lawyers but tech-savvy ones too, who understand the application of technology and its impact on the legal market. They are creating specialist courses for those who want to be more involved with the technology used to deliver legal advice.

“Technology is changing the way we live, work and interact,” says Alejandro Touriño, co-director of the course. “This new reality demands a new breed of lawyers who can adapt to the emerging paradigm. An innovative lawyer in the 21st century needs not only to be excellent in law, but also in the sector where their clients operate and the technologies they deal with.” 

The rapid growth in Legal Tech LL.M. offerings reflects a need in the professional world. Indeed, law firms know they need to become digital businesses in order to attract and retain clients and prospective employees.

 

From DSC:
In case it’s helpful or interesting, a person interested in a legal career needs to first get a Juris Doctor (J.D.) Degree, then pass the Bar. At that point, if they want to expand their knowledge in a certain area or areas, they can move on to getting an LL.M. Degree if they choose to.

As in the world of higher ed and also in the corporate training area, I have it that the legal field will need to move more towards the use of teams of specialists. There will be several members of the team NOT having law degrees. For example, technologists, programmers, user experience designers, etc. should be teaming up with lawyers more and more these days.

 
 

30 influential AI presentations from 2019 — from re-work.co

Excerpt:

It feels as though 2019 has gone by in a flash, that said, it has been a year in which we have seen great advancement in AI application methods and technical discovery, paving the way for future development. We are incredibly grateful to have had the leading minds in AI & Deep Learning present their latest work at our summits in San Francisco, Boston, Montreal and more, so we thought we would share thirty of our highlight videos with you as we think everybody needs to see them!. (Some are hosted on our Videohub and some on our YouTube, but all are free to view!).

Example presenters:

  • Dawn Song, Professor, UC Berkeley.
  • Doina Precup, Research Team Lead, DeepMind.
  • Natalie Jakomis, Group Director of Data, goCompare.
  • Ian Goodfellow, Director, Apple.
  • Timnit Gebru, Ethical AI Team, Google.
  • Cathy Pearl, Head of Conversation Design Outreach, Google.
  • Zoya Bylinskii, Research Scientist, Adobe Research.
  • …and many others
 

The 20 top tech skills that employers want and that can help you find a job, according to recruiting site Indeed — from businessinsider.com by Rosalie Chan and Bani Sapra

Excerpt:

The job search site Indeed released a report this month about the top tech skills of 2019 based on job descriptions that are being posted.

Andrew Flowers, an economist at Indeed, says that in today’s job market, there are two major trends that drive the top skills in tech. The first is the rise of data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The second is the rise of cloud computing.

“Python has had explosive growth,” Flowers told Business Insider. “If I’m around the dinner table and a nephew asks what should I learn? Having done this report, I would say, learn Python.”

 

AI innovators should be listening to kids — from wired.com by Urs Gasser, executive director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, the principal investigator of the Center’s Youth and Media project, and a professor at Harvard Law School.
Input from the next generation is crucial when it comes to navigating the challenges of new technologies.

Excerpts:

With another monumental societal transformation on the horizon—the rise of artificial intelligence—we have an opportunity to engage the power and imagination of youth to shape the world they will inherit. Many of us were caught off guard by the unintended consequences of the first wave of digital technologies, from mass surveillance to election hacking. But the disruptive power of the internet to date only sets the stage for the even more radical changes AI will produce in the coming decades.

Instead of waiting for the youth to respond to the next crisis, we should proactively engage them as partners in shaping our AI-entangled future.

Young people have a right to participate as we make critical choices that will determine what kind of technological world we leave for them and future generations. They also have unique perspectives to contribute as the first generation to grow up surrounded by AI shaping their education, health, social lives, leisure, and career prospects.

Youth have the most at stake, and they also have valuable perspectives and experiences to contribute. If we want to take control of our digital future and respond effectively to the disruptions new technology inevitably brings, we must listen to their voices.

 

6 reasons why higher education needs to be disrupted — from hbr.org by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Becky Frankiewicz

In our view, until the entire higher educational system prioritizes the classroom over the research lab, it will be a challenge for this dynamic to change.

Excerpts:

  1. Employers need skills, not just knowledge or titles:
  2. Students want jobs, not knowledge or titles:
  3. Students are paying more and more to get less and less:
  4. Students have unrealistic expectations (understandably) about college:
  5. Many elite universities prioritize research, often at the expense of teaching:
  6. Instead of boosting meritocracy, universities reinforce inequality:

The fundamental question we see is this: If a university claims to be a top educational institution, shouldn’t it admit the people with the lowest test scores, and turn them into the leader of tomorrow (as opposed to admitting the people with the highest income and test scores, who would probably rule the world tomorrow regardless of those three or four years in college)?

From DSC:
My hat’s off to those who teach in those institutions who “open wide” the gates of entry!!! They are the professors who have to work their tails off to help their students. 

And shame on the elite institutions who continue to value research/grant $$ waaaaaay over teaching — all while charging more and more for less and less…and while many graduates students end up teaching a lot of the undergraduate students. Those graduate students most likely haven’t been taught how to teach either!

And what higher ed pays adjunct faculty members is a complete disgrace — while many coaches make millions of $’s. Full-time faculty members — and administrators/provosts/other members of leadership — who were suddenly put into the adjunct faculty member’s role/wages would be outraged and demand immediate change.

 
 

 

From DSC:
I wish that more faculty members would share their research, teaching methods, knowledge, and commentary with the world as this professor does (vs. talking to other professors behind publishers’ walled off content). In this case, Arvind happens to use Twitter. But if one doesn’t like to use Twitter, there’s also LinkedIn, WordPress/blogging, podcasting, and other outlets. 

 

 

 

MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab releases groundbreaking research on AI and the future of work — from liwaiwai.com

Excerpt:

IBM believes 100% of jobs will eventually change due to artificial intelligence, and new empirical research released last October 30 from the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab reveals how. The research, The Future of Work: How New Technologies Are Transforming Tasks, used advanced machine learning techniques to analyze 170 million online job postings in the United States between 2010 and 2017. It shows, in the early stages of AI adoption, how tasks of individual jobs are transforming and the impact on employment and wages.

“As new technologies continue to scale within businesses and across industries, it is our responsibility as innovators to understand not only the business process implications, but also the societal impact,” said Martin Fleming, vice president and chief economist of IBM. “To that end, this empirical research from the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab sheds new light on how tasks are reorganizing between people and machines as a result of AI and new technologies.”

While most jobs will change as new technologies, such as AI, scale, the research shows few jobs will actually disappear. What is fundamentally changing is the way we work. 

 

Key findings from the paper here — from mitibmwatsonailab.mit.edu

  1. Tasks are Shifting Between People and Machines – But the Change has been Small
  2. Tasks Increasing in Value Tend to Require Soft Skills
  3. High- and Low-Wage Jobs are Gaining Tasks and Earning More

 

Also related/see:

Brookings: AI will heavily affect tech and white-collar jobs — from venturebeat.com by Khari Johnson

Excerpt:

AI is set to have a big impact on high-wage, white-collar, and tech jobs, according to a new Brookings Institution study released today. The report analyzes overlap between job descriptions and patent database text, using NLP to assign each job an exposure score.

“High-tech digital services such as software publishing and computer system design — that before had low automation susceptibility — exhibit quite high exposure, as AI tools and applications pervade the technology sector,” the report reads.

 
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