robotics

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/Agents/LLMs/and Related, 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/Agents/LLMs/and Related, 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/Agents/LLMs/and Related, 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

Description:
Smart machines do what we thought only people could do. They include conversational assistants like GoogleNow that know how you work, understand written content and make recommendations based on what you’re doing; advisors like IBM’s Watson that can help clinicians keep up with medical literature and suggest courses of action; software that writes sports stories from box scores; and cars that drive themselves.

Key Issues
1. What are smart machines?
2. How will smart machines impact business, technology, economies and society?
3. What should you do about it?

From DSC:
First, some items:

Thinking for the future — from nytimes.com by David Brooks

Excerpt:

We’re living in an era of mechanized intelligence, an age in which you’re probably going to find yourself in a workplace with diagnostic systems, different algorithms and computer-driven data analysis. If you want to thrive in this era, you probably want to be good at working with intelligent machines. As Tyler Cowen puts it in his relentlessly provocative recent book, “Average Is Over,” “If you and your skills are a complement to the computer, your wage and labor market prospects are likely to be cheery. If your skills do not complement the computer, you may want to address that mismatch.”

So our challenge for the day is to think of exactly which mental abilities complement mechanized intelligence. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few mental types that will probably thrive in the years ahead.

Excerpt:

Create your own employment avatar robot to replace you at work. Fight fire with fire. Could this be the solution to the coming robotic automation revolution?

…

The question on everyone’s mind is “If all the jobs are automated, who will have money to buy the products from these corporations?” This is not just a blue-collar issue. Predictive analytics in soft A.I. robots could replace creative jobs as well.

Siri says ‘dump him’? How mobile devices could run (or ruin) your life — from CNN.com by futurist Gerd Leonhard

Excerpt:

(CNN) — The Web is set to change our lives dramatically over the next decade. This will also raise questions about the use of personal data and the need to balance new powers with ethics. Here are five ways you can expect the explosion in technology to impact you:

From DSC:
These items caused me to reflect…they made me wonder…

How should we educate our youth in this age of automation?
How should our curricula respond/change/adapt to these trends?
Or should we even be talking about curricula? Perhaps we should rather be curating and providing streams of content — and doing so on a lifelong basis…?
How should we reinvent ourselves and keep ourselves marketable?

Addendum:

Why Cognition-as-a-Service is the next operating system battlefield — from gigaom.com by Nova Spivack

Drive the robot in this classroom! (from anywhere in the world) — per Kevin Honeycutt

On 09/27/2013, in 21st century, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, global / globalization, innovation, interactivity, K-12 related, learning spaces, robotics, smart classrooms, user experience (UX), videoconferencing, virtual field trips, by Daniel Christian

Almost half the jobs Americans thought were safe will soon be done by robots [Frey & Osborne]

On 09/25/2013, in 21st century, Asia, career development, corporate / business world, future, professional development, robotics, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Almost half the jobs Americans thought were safe will soon be done by robots — from qz.com by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne

Excerpt:

Commentators today are less optimistic. “How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class,” a recent New York Times Column by David Autor and David Dorn, captures an observation made by several commentators: technology has turned on labor.

…

The threat of computerization has historically been largely confined to routine manufacturing tasks involving explicit rule-based activities such as part construction and assembly. But a look at 700 occupation types (pdf) in the US suggests that 47% are at risk from a threat that once only loomed for a small proportion of workers.

From DSC:
What does — or should — this mean for K-12? For higher education? For the corporate world? For curricula? Skills? Values? How can we pivot NOW to help our students survive/thrive in this quickly-changing world?

Addendum on 9/27/13:

Robots May Revolutionize China’s Electronics Manufacturing — wsj.com by Paul Mozur and Eva Dou
Machines in Pipeline to Supplant Workers as Pay Soars and People Age

The science-fiction world continues to develop — but it’s often for real!

On 07/17/2013, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), computer science, Daniel S. Christian, digital video, engineering, global / globalization, Google, interactivity, internet, learning ecosystem, robotics, society, telecommunications, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Some items that made me think of this posting:

DARPA unveils Atlas DRC Robot — from spectrum.ieee.org by Stephen Cass

Specs:

Six feet, two inches tall (1.88m)
330 pounds (150kg)
On-board real-time control computer
On-board hydraulic pump and thermal management
Tethered for networking and 480-V three-phase power at 15 kW
Two arms, two legs, a torso and a head
28 hydraulically actuated joints
Carnegie Robotics sensor head with LIDAR and stereo sensors
Two sets of hands, one provided by iRobot and one by Sandia National Labs

Drone Home — from time.com by Lev Grossman — also see TIME: “Rise of the Robots” Special Issue

Excerpt:

Flying a drone, even just a Parrot, makes you realize what a radically new and deeply strange technology drones are. A drone isn’t just a tool; when you use it you see and act through it — you inhabit it. It expands the reach of your body and senses in much the same way that the Internet expands your mind. The Net extends our virtual presence; drones extend our physical presence. They are, along with smart phones and 3-D printing, one of a handful of genuinely transformative technologies to emerge in the past 10 years.

.

Bioengineers 3D print tiny functioning human liver — from wired.co.uk

Peek inside Tesla’s robotic factory — from wired.com

Image from
http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/alternative/1206_2012_tesla_model_s_first_drive/photo_11.html

.

From DSC:
And, if you are up to filtering through a great deal of content, create some Google Alerts on the following things to see what’s happening with them:
.

Internet of Things
.
Augmented reality
.
WebRTC
.
Artificial intelligence
.
Self-driving cars
.
Wearable technologies

Employment & Sustainability: Report of the Cornell ILR School 2013 Roundtable on Employment & Technology

On 07/08/2013, in 21st century, business, career development, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, economics, higher education, robotics, society, surviving, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Employment & Sustainability: Report of the Cornell ILR School 2013 Roundtable on Employment and Technology — from ilr.cornell.edu

Excerpt:

The Great Recession has compounded the ongoing forces of technological change and globalization to drive an even more profound transformation in the relationships between Americans and work. Jobs are disappearing, skill sets are a moving target and the evolving concept of earning a sustainable living is becoming increasingly complex and, for many, increasingly remote.

The Cornell ILR School, a renowned leader in advancing the world of work, recognizes that today’s and tomorrow’s challenges demand a new paradigm, one that joins together the many highly educated – but also siloed – discussions about employers’ use of new technologies and the impact on quality job creation.

On April 12, 2013, the ILR School convened 40 economists and engineers, academics and corporate executives, social scientists and philanthropists, policy makers and journalists and statisticians in a ground-breaking, cross-sector, invitation-only dialogue. It was a day full of agreement, fervently diverse opinions and insights – notably that most participants had never before discussed these issues with such a varied group of stakeholders, and that the country’s best hope for reaping widespread gains from technological progress rests on continuing and expanding such discourse.

Also see:

Should we fear “the end of work”? — from pbs.org by Frank Koller

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Key points raised and addressed:

Technological advancement and globalization are significantly impacting U.S. jobs and raising the risk that more and more U.S. workers will be caught “in the middle” as jobs migrate to higher-skill and lower-skill work.
Collection of U.S. economic data for measuring work and the labor market is not keeping pace with the rapidly changing world of work.
As globalization and technology make it more efficient for companies to engage fewer U.S. workers, and more of them in countries such as India and China, these forces are also changing the U.S. innovation advantage.
Current conceptualization of Corporate Social Responsibility isn’t enough.

Overall, there was widespread agreement that a much broader and more vigorous national discussion is needed regarding the short- and longer-term impacts of technological advances on the nature of work, the creation and elimination of jobs, and the ability of U.S. workers to earn a sustainable living.

…

“There is a real need for corporate leadership, and there is a need for accountability. When companies engage in productivity layoffs with record profitability, unprecedented levels of cash and all-time-high stock prices, no one in the media says, ‘Isn’t this terrible?’ No political leader speaks up to protest. We don’t hear anything from the labor unions. The companies are applauded for it because they’re cutting costs and improving profitability, and that’s supposedly what a company exists for. But it’s not that simple. They do have other responsibilities.”

…

“In terms of a market failure, it’s the reality that it’s not in the interests of any individual firm in the United States to try to solve the jobs problem. So, we’ve got to figure out a way to deal with that…and the only way that you solve this is by getting people and institutions and organizations to work together, to engage these issues collectively.

“It’s about an institutional failure over the last 30 years. With the decline of the labor movement, you’ve seen a lot of institutions go downhill equivalently. We don’t see the kind of dialogue, we don’t see the enforcement of our social norms and social policies that discipline corporations, and that really provided the kind of collective spreading of wage patterns and wage norms across the society.

“We’ve got to rebuild those, but we can’t try to rebuild them in an old-fashioned way. Now we’re in a more digital economy, a more knowledge-based economy, and we need to invent the new institutions that will cut across and aggregate these interests to address these challenges. We’ve got to get the education community working with business and employers, working with labor and civil society.

“I’m not a believer that technology is going to naturally eliminate jobs and cut income, but if we don’t do anything about it, if we just leave it, as we have, to individual market forces and to individual corporate actions and to individual technology innovations, then that’s probably where we are headed.

Reflections on “A swiveling proxy that will even wear a tutu” by Bobbie Brown [NYT]

On 06/28/2013, in 21st century, Daniel S. Christian, K-12 related, robotics, student-related, technologies for your home, telecommunications, telepresence, videoconferencing, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

A swiveling proxy that will even wear a tutu — from nytimes.com by Bobbie Brown

.

John W. Adkisson for The New York Times

.

Excerpt:

SUMTER, S.C. — Lexie Kinder solves problems during math class, earns gold stars from her teacher and jokes with classmates at her elementary school.

All without leaving her living room.

Born with a chronic heart disorder that weakened her immune system and made attending school risky, Lexie, 9, was tutored at her home in Sumter for years. But this spring, her family began experimenting with an alternative — a camera-and-Internet-enabled robot that swivels around the classroom and streams two-way video between her school and house.

From DSC:
I sometimes get the feeling that I’m coming across as though I want everyone to learn from their living room and that’s it; end of story. But that’s not the case. I just get encouraged/excited about the opportunities that various technologies can provide for us, if we leverage them properly. Ultimately, I see blended solutions being the most effective solutions in the future. But this article is a great example of when technology can benefit someone.

Learning Ecosystems

Immigrants from the future [The Economist]

Almost half the jobs Americans thought were safe will soon be done by robots [Frey & Osborne]

Employment & Sustainability: Report of the Cornell ILR School 2013 Roundtable on Employment & Technology

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