robotics

Reflections on “Humans need not apply”

On 08/13/2014, in 21st century, change, emerging technologies, engineering, future of higher education, game-changing environment, reinvent, robotics, society, staying relevant, surviving, technology (general), by Daniel Christian

With thanks to George Veletsianos and @reddit,
& Audrey Watters for posting this item on Twitter

From DSC:
I don’t know much about this video in terms of who created it or what their purpose was in developing it. Though it paints an overly bleak picture IMHO, at least in some ways, I post it here because I think it outlines some solid topics to think about and to plan for — NOW! Not later.

Automation, algorithms, robotics, and more are with us today, but will be even more prevalent tomorrow. It doesn’t matter what the color is of the collar that we’re currently wearing (white, blue, other), more of our jobs are being replaced by such things. As such, we need to think about what the ramifications are concerning these trends. Societies throughout the globe are most definitely in a game-changing environment.

Along these lines, how do such trends affect what is taught? How it’s taught? In K-12? In higher ed? In the corporate world?

How do we stay relevant/employed?

How do we reinvent ourselves and to what?

Are our vocations affected by this? How so?

Also see:

our new robo-reader overlords — from text-patterns.thenewatlantis.com by Alan Jacobs
Teaching Machines: The Drive to Automate Education — from teachingmachin.es by Audrey Watters
AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs — from pewinternet.org by Aaron Smith and Janna Anderson
Excerpt:
The vast majority of respondents to the 2014 Future of the Internet canvassing anticipate that robotics and artificial intelligence will permeate wide segments of daily life by 2025, with huge implications for a range of industries such as health care, transport and logistics, customer service, and home maintenance. But even as they are largely consistent in their predictions for the evolution of technology itself, they are deeply divided on how advances in AI and robotics will impact the economic and employment picture over the next decade.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC — with thanks to Mr. Joe Byerwalter for this resource):

What is the future of learning? FIRST® LEGO® League teams will find the answers. In the 2014 FLL WORLD CLASS? Challenge, over 230,000 children ages 9 to 16* from over 70 countries will redesign how we gather knowledge and skills in the 21st century. Teams will teach adults about the ways that kids need and want to learn. Get ready for a whole new class – FLL WORLD CLASSSM!

FLL challenges kids to think like scientists and engineers. During FLL WORLD CLASSSM, teams will build, test, and program an autonomous robot using LEGO MINDSTORMS® to solve a set of missions in the Robot Game. They will also choose and solve a real-world question in the Project. Throughout their experience, teams will operate under FLL’s signature set of Core Values.

*9-14 in the US, Canada, and Mexico

5 items re: robotics

On 05/22/2014, in Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, emerging technologies, engineering, human-computer interaction (HCI), robotics, by Daniel Christian

New centre will give robots the gift of sight — from Queensland University of Technology; 18 March 2014

Excerpt:

“Society is on the cusp of a revolution in robotics in which personal robots will become an everyday fact of life. What we need to make this happen is to develop technology which allows a robot to perceive its environment – to sense, understand and learn from the information it gathers.

“We want to use cameras in robots, which are less costly and use less power than other types of sensors,” he said.

“Cameras provide very rich information about the world, and we know from our own experience that our eyes, which are just cameras, provide the information we need to perform complex tasks like driving cars or picking up objects.

“This Centre will deliver the science and technologies that will turn cameras into powerful sensing devices capable of understanding and responding to their environment, and enabling robots to operate reliably over long periods, in complex unstructured surroundings where they will interact with humans as well as objects, many of which will require delicate handling.

US Army to test robots that “think – look – move – talk – work” — from robohub.org by Colin Lewis

Excerpt:

A report issued by the US Department of Defense shows that the army intends to test robots that “think – look – move – talk and work.” Figure 24 from the report summarizes the Army’s vision for these five problem domains, barriers to achieving its vision, and work to be done to advance toward the vision.

Deep Learning’s Role in the Age of Robots — from innovationinsights.wired.com by Julian Green

Review: Robots App brings world of robotics to iPad — from by Colin Lewis

IEEE_Spectrum_-robots-app

Avidbots wants to automate commercial cleaning with robots — from spectrum.ieee.orgby Evan Ackerman

These are the surprising jobs you’ll be doing by the 2030s [Dvorsky]

On 05/22/2014, in Canada, career development, future, robotics, workplace, by Daniel Christian

These are the surprising jobs you’ll be doing by the 2030s — from io9.com by George Dvorsky

These Are The Surprising Jobs You'll Be Doing By The 2030s

Excerpt:

As our technological and sociological realities change, so too do our jobs. But just what, exactly, will we be doing 15 years from now? Here are some completely unexpected jobs you’ve almost certainly never heard of—but likely will soon.

Indeed, the landscape of careers is changing. But knowing which vocations are around the corner is not obvious. This is why the Canadian Scholarship Trust, as part of its Inspired Minds campaign, recently collaborated with the foresight experts at Idea Couture (a team that included scifi author Karl Schroeder). Together, they came up with 10 jobs that are likely to appear within the next 15 years or so, along with the skills and education required.

The end result is Careers 2030—an intriguing piece of speculative work designed to inspire conversations—between parents and kids, teachers and students, and so on—about what the world of work might look like in the near future. To learn more, we contacted Jayar LaFontaine, a Foresight Strategist at Idea Couture.

From DSC:
As this article illustrates, we need to be more inventive in the jobs that we think of, create, recognize, and pay for.

Technology is leaving too many of us behind [McAfee & Brynjolfsson]

On 05/16/2014, in Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, creativity, education reform, innovation, reinvent, robotics, society, staying relevant, surviving, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, by Daniel Christian

Technology is leaving too many of us behind — from cnn.com by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson

Excerpts:

Technology is racing ahead so quickly, in fact, that it’s leaving a lot of our institutions, organizations, policies and practices behind. It’s in these latter areas where we must increase the pace of innovation. The solution is not to slow technology down but instead to speed up the invention of new jobs. That requires unleashing entrepreneurs’ creativity. It also requires a host of other conditions.

…

Will our primary education system decrease its current emphasis on rote learning and standardized testing and start teaching skills computers don’t have, such as creativity and problem-solving?

…

The greatest flaw with our current path is the fact that a large group is being left out in every important sense. Too many people aren’t getting the skills and support they need in order to participate in a rapidly changing economy and don’t feel that they have any stake in a society that’s being created around them and without them. As a result, many are dropping out — of education, of the work force, out of their communities and out of family life.

MIT Technology Review’s “10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2014”

On 05/14/2014, in Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, Augmented Reality (AR), biology, collaboration, data related items, emerging technologies, engineering, mobile technologies, research, robotics, technology (general), by Daniel Christian

10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2014 — from MIT Technology Review

Also see:

MIT Lists its 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2014 – Part 1 — from WFS.org

Will our children need to know how to interface with robots? — from quib.ly by Daniel Christian

Also see:

4 robots that teach children science and math in engaging ways– from scientificamerican.com by David Greer
Modular, programmable automatons make STEM learning fun

National All-Star [robot trading cards] Lineup for 2014 — from robotics.gatech.edu

CeBIT 2014: Three ways machine learning is changing the world — from businessinsider.com.au by Alex Heber

5 items re: robotics

On 05/03/2014, in 21st century, engineering, robotics, STEAM-related, by Daniel Christian

5 cool (and informative) robot videos you don’t want to miss — from robohub.org by Frank Tobe

Excerpt:

This wide-ranging group of robotics-related videos are worth watching. Set aside some time, make sure you have a hi-speed connection, and watch them. They range from cool to informative to downright scary.

5 areas in robotics that will transform society and their economic impact — from robohub.org by Colin Lewis

Excerpt:

The 5 areas in Robotics, which are already here, that I believe will have a major economic impact and help to transform society over the next decade or so are:

Drones
Medical Procedures, Operations and Health
Prosthetics and exoskeletons
Artificial Assistants
Driverless Cars

Robot gives telecommuters a presence in the workplace — from bostonherald.com

Excerpt:

The robot memorizes the layout of an office building, allowing a remote user to simply press a point on a map to dispatch Ava 500 to a certain office or conference room. Once there, the worker “teleports” into the robot, appearing on the screen and engaging with whoever’s around.

4 robots that teach children science and math in engaging ways — from scientificamerican.com by David Greer
Modular, programmable automatons make STEM learning fun

Excerpt:

Robots can capture a child’s imagination like no other tool by creating a fun, physical learning process. With robots, kids learn programming via interactive play by moving a robot in various sequences and using intuitive, visual programming on a computer screen. The children also learn STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) by watching and interacting with robots that demonstrate the practical results of the day’s lesson.

Microsoft makes socially interactive robots a reality (video) — from technocrazed.com by Arsalan Rasheed

From DSC:
This is a bit troubling to me. My fear? Businesses will replace people with robots in a heartbeat if they can cut costs. If a robot can learn to give directions to visitors, will the companies keep their receptionists, information center employees, other — or lay them off?

Along those lines, here are a couple of items that speak to this fear:

It is not skills or majors that are being devalued. It is people.

Sarah Kendzior
Surviving the post-employment economy

Do today’s leaders actually care about the person that is doing the work?
Do they even know their name let alone what provides them with job satisfaction?

Dan Pontefract
Whose job is leadership, anyway?

From DSC:
Last spring, I saw the following graphic from Sparks & Honey’s presentation entitled, “8 Exponential Trends That Will Shape Humanity“:

If today’s changes are truly exponential — and I agree with Sparks & Honey that they are, especially as they relate to technological changes — how soon will it be before each of us is interacting with a robot?

This is not an idle idea or question, nor is it a joke. It will be here sooner than most of us think! The science fiction of the past is here (at least in part). Some recent items I’ve run across come to my mind, such as:

Hitachi’s EMIEW Robot Learns to Navigate Around the Office — from spectrum.ieee.org by Jason Falconer

Photo: Hitachi

Excerpt:

Now EMIEW 2 still relies on maps of its surroundings, but its navigation software has a new feature: It uses designated zones that make the robot change its speed and direction.

iRpobot Ava 500

Excerpt:

Ava 500 enables this new dimension in telepresence with:

autonomous navigation and mobility – remote users simply specify a destination and the robot automatically navigates to the desired location without any human intervention.
standards-based videoconferencing – built-in Cisco Telepresence® solutions deliver enterprise-class security and reliability.
an easy-to-use client application – an iPad mini™ tablet enables remote users to schedule and control the robot.
scheduling and management -seamlessly handled through an iRobot managed cloud service.

Also see:

Chinese city aims to have 80% of production done by Robots by 2020 — from robohub.org
Robohub Digest March 2014 — — from robohub.org
With Farm Robotics, the Cows Decide When It’s Milking Time — from the New York Times by Jesse McKinley

Excerpt:

‘Intelligent machines’ are increasingly interconnecting. The Internet of Things is imminent, with sensor networks and mobile devices connecting everyone and everything everywhere in the near future., Singularity’ – the moment of when machines become as capable as humans – is quickly becoming a buzzword that rivals Social Media. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is certain to play a role everywhere, and robots are dropping in price dramatically while gaining quickly in functionality and skills. Exponential technological progress is evident everywhere – but how will we – as linear beings – cope with this increasing empowerment of software and machines, the tremendous gain in the flow of real-time information, and the far-reaching implications that these developments will have? How will we keep up with thousands of real-time datafeeds, the ever-increasing volume, variety and depth of input, the tsunami of incoming communications and the rapidly improving smartness – and increasingly deep intelligence – of software, devices and machines? Will humans need to be ‘augmented’, soon, in order to keep up, and if so, where will this take us? What will happen to our ethics in a world of ultra-smart intelligent agents, artificial intelligence and the coming ‘trans-humanism’?

Immigrants from the future [The Economist]

On 04/05/2014, in change, computer science, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, human-computer interaction (HCI), psychology, robotics, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Immigrants from the future — from The Economist
Robots offer a unique insight into what people want from technology. That makes their progress peculiarly fascinating, says Oliver Morton

The pieces in the Special Report include:

Major questions need to be asked — and addressed — due to these shifts [Christian]

On 03/17/2014, in 21st century, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, business, career development, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, emerging technologies, engineering, entrepreneurship, experimentation, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, informal learning, K-12 related, leadership, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, marketplaces, new business models, pace of change, professional development, reinvent, robotics, staying relevant, strategy, surviving, the downsides of how people use tech, training / L&D, trends, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Excerpts:

If Daniel Nadler is right, a generation of college graduates with well-paid positions as junior researchers and analysts in the banking industry should be worried about their jobs. Very worried.

Mr Nadler’s start-up, staffed with ex-Google engineers and backed partly by money from Google’s venture capital arm, is trying to put them out of work.

…

The threat to jobs stretches beyond the white-collar world. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) also make possible more versatile robots capable of taking over many types of manual work. “It’s going to decimate jobs at the low end,” predicts Jerry Kaplan, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who teaches a class about AI at Stanford University. Like others working in the field, he says he is surprised by the speed at which the new technologies are moving out of the research labs.

From DSC:
After reading the above article — and seeing presentations about these trends (example) — I have some major questions to ask:

What changes do those of us working within higher education need to make due to these shifts? How should we modify our curricula? Which skills need to be reinforced/developed?
What changes do Learning & Development groups and Training Departments need to make within the corporate world?
How should we be developing our K-12 students to deal with such a volatile workplace?
What changes do adult learners need to make to stay marketable/employable? How can they reinvent themselves (and know what that reinvention should look like)?
How can each of us know if our job is next on the chopping block and if it is, what should we do about it?
What kind of future do we want?

These changes are for real. The work of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee further addresses some of these trends and changes. See:

Addendum:

Also see:

Bill Gates: Yes, robots really are about to take your jobs — from bgr.com by Brad Reed

Bill Gates Interview Robots

Excerpt:

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates isn’t going to sugarcoat things: The increasing power of automation technology is going to put a lot of people out of work. Business Insider reports that Gates gave a talk at the American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington, DC this week and said that both governments and businesses need to start preparing for a future where lots of people will be put out of work by software and robots.

Also see:

Make Work More Human — from Harold Jarche

Digital life in 2025 [PewResearch; Anderson & Rainie]

On 03/15/2014, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, Augmented Reality (AR), digital learning, elearning, emerging technologies, future, global / globalization, internet, leadership, learning ecosystem, legislatures / government / legal, political science, robotics, society, by Daniel Christian

Digital life in 2025 — from by Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie
Experts predict the Internet will become ‘like electricity’ — less visible, yet more deeply embedded in people’s lives for good and ill

Report here.

Excerpts from report:

One striking pattern is that these experts agree to a large extent on the trends that will shape digital technology in the next decade. Among those expected to extend through 2025 are:

A global, immersive, invisible, ambient networked computing environment built through the continued proliferation of smart sensors, cameras, software, databases, and massive data center s in a world-spanning information fabric known as the Internet of Things.
“Augmented reality” enhancements to the real-world input that people perceive through the use of portable/wearable/implantable technologies.
A continuing evolution of artificial intelligence-equipped tools allowing anyone to connect to a globe-spanning information network nearly anywhere, anytime.
Disruption of business models established in the 20th century (most notably impacting finance, entertainment, publishers of all sorts, and education).
Tagging, databasing, and intelligent analytical mapping of the physical and social realms

Also see:

The Rise of the Digital Silhouette — from shift2future.com by Brian Kuhn
Excerpt:
Switching gears for a moment… there are some significant benefits to education systems in the ‘Internet of things’ movement. Imagine that students, wearing various data logging technologies, including Google Glasses, interacting with each other, with ‘text books’, human teachers, each other, and other learning resources, along with a host of educational apps, are continuously digitally documented. Imagine that there are ‘intelligent’ algorithms (think IBM’s Watson but even more advanced) that look for patterns, provide real-time recommendations and coaching that adjust the student’s personalized learning plan, directly interacting with and advising the students like a personal learning coach. Imagine that when a report card is due, the student’s ‘digital learning guide’ automatically produces a summative report card complete with a ‘live’ info graphic on the student’s learning and generates it directly in the student’s online learning portfolio and sends an alert to the parents.

Items re: disruption in the workplace, freelancing, and futureproofing your career

On 02/22/2014, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, business, career development, entrepreneurship, innovation, pace of change, professional development, robotics, student-related, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, workplace, by Daniel Christian

What jobs will the robots take? – from The Atlantic by Derek Thompson
Nearly half of American jobs today could be automated in “a decade or two,” according to new research. The question is: Which half?

Excerpt:

It is an invisible force that goes by many names. Computerization. Automation. Artificial intelligence. Technology. Innovation. And, everyone’s favorite, ROBOTS.

Whatever name you prefer, some form of it has been stoking progress and killing jobs—from seamstresses to paralegals—for centuries. But this time is different: Nearly half of American jobs today could be automated in “a decade or two,” according to a new paper by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, discussed recently in The Economist. The question is: Which half?

A Guide to the Job Market in 2034 — from mashable.com by Todd Wasserman

Excerpt:

Whether you’re an aspiring lawyer, policeman or programmer, you should be aware that at some point — maybe a decade from now, maybe two, perhaps less — many jobs in those industries will be replaced by an algorithm.

That’s what many economists predict and in some cases it looks like it will happen very soon. For instance, algorithms currently perform some tasks previously executed by paralegals, patent attorneys and contract lawyers. In Doha, Sao Paulo and Beijing, municipal governments use cheap sensors on pipes, pumps and other water infrastructure components to watch out for water leaks, a practice that has led some to speculate that fewer law enforcement workers will be needed on patrol once more sensors are deployed. Even programming — once the epitome of a safe-as-milk job in the 21st century — could be taken over by the bots as machine learning lets algorithms make and optimize design choices in coding.

All told, some 47% of U.S. employment is at risk of being automated over the next two decades, according to a 2013 study by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne of the University of Oxford.

…

Feudalism 2.0?
Workplace automation, fewer jobs and an increasingly winner-take-all society do not necessarily bode well for democracy. In 2013, the top 85 individuals in the world owned more wealth than the bottom 50% of a planet of 7 billion. Conflate that with the 47% claim and for some you have the makings of Feudalism 2.0.

Online labour marketplaces: job insecurity gone viral? — from theconversation.com by Veronica Sheen, Research Associate, Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University

Excerpt:

Some of the newest enterprises online are those which link workers to anyone who wants a job done. They’re not concerned with employment or jobs but with “tasks”. These are small, one-off, discrete portions of work for completion within a short time frame at short notice.

They are different from employment websites like seek.com which have essentially substituted for newspapers in employment advertising.

Websites Airtasker, Ozlance and Sidekicker show what’s on offer: home help tasks like cleaning or painting and small administrative jobs (Airtasker); web based assignments that can be done online (Ozlance); or explicitly business oriented, (Sidekicker), offering helpers for office work, events, hospitality, and promotions. Others include Odesk, Freelancer and Elance mostly offering online work like programming, web design and translation.

Futureproofing Your Career Part II — from WorkStrong/weddles.com

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

As I mentioned in my last post, futureproofing is now a core competency of successful career activism for one simple reason: In today’s workplace, there is only one certainty – tomorrow will be different from today.

We’re now seeing more change more frequently than at any other time in the past 100 years or more. And that change is increasingly disruptive … to our jobs, occupational fields, industries and, as a consequence, our careers.

How do you implement futureproofing so that it works for you? It’s a five step process that should be repeated twice a year:

Entrepreneurs & freelancers: Add more value or find another job — from hongkiat.com

Excerpt:

Everything changes. Change is the only constant in this Universe said Heraclitus of Ephesus. It’s funny how something talked about 2,500 years ago still isn’t understood by the majority of people. If you’re trying to succeed in business, whether you’re a freelancer or an entrepreneur, your first objective is growth.

In place of text CVs, platform lets freelancers blog their work history — from springwise.com
From Germany, Somewhere is a visual blogging platform that enables freelancers and small teams to show potential employers and clients a more engaging story of their work.

alttext

Learning Ecosystems

Reflections on “Humans need not apply”

5 items re: robotics

These are the surprising jobs you’ll be doing by the 2030s [Dvorsky]

Technology is leaving too many of us behind [McAfee & Brynjolfsson]

If today’s changes are truly exponential, how soon will it be before each of us is interacting with a robot?

Immigrants from the future [The Economist]

Digital life in 2025 [PewResearch; Anderson & Rainie]

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