Monthly Archives: May 2017

Automation is here and we need to pay attention Phoenix Business Journal Construction on the oncology clinic in the lot next to PADT's Tempe headquarters is almost done and they are starting on landscaping. When I pulled in to work the other day I saw a giant truck full of red crushed rock backing up, so I sat in my car in ...

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Automation is here and we need to pay attention - Phoenix Business Journal

When machines control all the worlds finances and run factory floors, what will humans be left to do?

Well make art, says Kai-Fu Lee, a former Google and Microsoft executive who has since launched VC firm Sinovation Ventures.

Art and beauty is very hard to replicate with AI. Given AI is more objective, analytical, data driven, maybe its time for some of us to switch to the humanities, liberal arts, and beauty, Lee told Quartz editor-in-chief Kevin Delaney during a live Q&A session. Maybe professions where its hard to find a job might be good to study.

Students now deciding whether to pursue arts or sciences face an uncertain future: While automation is just starting to impact the workforce, Lee believes that 50% of jobs held by humans today will be automated in 10 years, extrapolating from an often-cited 2013 Oxford study. Jobs that require less than five seconds of thinking will be among the first to disappear, Lee says. He offers receptionists and factory workers as examples, which have already faced some level of automation. Next will be jobs that rely on crunching numbers, where data is available to make decisions, like bankers, traders, and insurance adjusters.

While art isnt on Lees list of skills that will be replaced by AI, both large tech companies and small startups have dedicated resources to making AI that can generate artistic images, doodles, music, and entertainment. Googles Magenta project has the sole purpose of developing creative artificial intelligence and is working to make AI sketch, while Sony frequently releases research on generating new musiceven actress Kristen Stewart has explored using AI to help her make art.

But human authenticity wont go out of fashion, whether that be in art or even service jobs. In a commencement speech to Columbia Universitys engineering department yesterday, Lee said that a new class of workers will be born from AI: Workers of love.

The displaced workers can take up careers spreading love and experienceswhether a passionate tour guide, an attentive concierge, a funny bartender, an infectious sushi chef, he said. If those jobs dont pay, Lee suggests they volunteer, supported by some kind of universal basic income.

Lee also imagines this same kind of authenticity benefitting other professions, like doctors and oncologists. He predicts people wont want to hear their diagnoses from machines, so instead a doctors role will focus on delivering the bad news and assisting in treatment, rather than making the primary medical decisions.

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Your art degree might save you from automation, an AI expert says - Quartz

Washington Post

Federal Reserve official speaks about jobs and automation Washington Post May 16, 2017 10:17 AM EDT - Glenn Hutchins, a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Board of Directors, spoke about automation and jobs at the Center of American Progress Ideas Conference on May 16. (The Washington Post). May 16, 2017 ...

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Federal Reserve official speaks about jobs and automation - Washington Post

What do automation and embedded systems have in common? The short answer is more and more. The annual Embedded World trade fair, held every winter in Nuremberg, Germany, has become the worlds largest show for the highly fragmented embedded community of suppliers, developers and users. Though the embedded market is fragmented into thousands of different application areas, the focus on automation has grown sharply in recent years as automation suppliers put more intelligence into their field devices.

The ongoing success of Embedded World is due to the growing influence of embedded systems, primarily in the automotive sector, but also in automation. Just as the importance of software is rising, embedded systems (the combination of computer hardware and software designed for a specific function within a larger system) is growing rapidly. In addition to everyday applications like automobiles, medical equipment, airplanes, vending machines, cameras, household appliances, toys and mobile devices, embedded systems are employed frequently in industrial machines and process industry devices. And the number of applications is expanding as industrial devices become more connected.

Time-Sensitive Networking

Many exhibitors at the show highlighted implementations of the IEEE standards for Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN). National Instruments, for example, is cooperating with the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), Bosch Rexroth, Cisco, Intel, Kuka, Schneider Electric and TTTech to develop a testbed for this new IEEE 802.1 real-time Ethernet standard for use in industrial applications. The testbed will evaluate the use of TSN in a live production application.

TSN, an open standard network architecture, provides cross-vendor integration and interoperability. The technology supports open, deterministic real-time communication over a single Ethernet network, such as between motor control applications and industrial robots. TSN provides access to data in real time. This is necessary to optimize business processes and create new business models based on intelligent, interlinked networks, systems and machines. So TSN will play an important role for the realization of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

Open source in industry

For the developer community, the open source idea has long been a golden rule. Increasingly, this approach is now entering the traditionally conservative automation industry. Companies like Kunbus or Janz Tec are offering small industrial PCs (IPCs) based on Raspberry Pi modules.

Though there are limitations for industrial use, these types of open systems lower the entry barrier for developing software applications. Depending on the knowledge and preferences of software developers, they can use various programming languagesfrom simple graphical, up to more demanding high-level languages.

Automation companies discover Embedded World

Just a few years ago, no major automation suppliers were to be found at Embedded World. But times have changed. From year to year, we see more and more automation companies participating, even if their numbers are small compared with the SPS IPC Drives exhibition held every year in November at the same location.

Some of the automation suppliers we spoke to at Embedded World include:

Cooperation and alliances abound

One notable ARC Advisory Group takeaway from this years Embedded World was the high level of cooperation and alliances announced among embedded suppliers, automation suppliers and IT suppliers. Many exhibitors highlighted their respective cooperation with partners, especially in areas like networking, security and the cloud. The embedded industry clearly does not regard this just as a technical task and the partnerships with associations like OPC Foundation will help to make different systems and protocols compatible for end users.

Automation end users and suppliers alike should keep an eye on the embedded industry and visit Embedded World or similar exhibitions. Trends from the embedded industry are entering the automation industry at an increasing rate as the operational technology, engineering technology and information technology worlds converge. This trend will continue for the foreseeable future as the importance of embedded systems for industrial automation continues to grow.

>>Fabian Wanke is an analyst for ARCs automation team in Europe, and is based in Dresden, Germany. He specializes in the automotive, aerospace and polymers industries, as well as economic modeling and forecasting. He has a special focus on industrial PCs and operator panels, and is also responsible for the European automotive research. David Humphrey, director of research, Europe, is based in Munich, Germany. He has more than 25 years of experience in industrial automation, including specifying, designing and programming control systems in areas ranging from automobile to packaging, implementing projects involving PLCs, HMI hardware and software, industrial networks, drives and motion control.

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Automation Meets Embedded Systems - Automation World

Well, this is exciting the Apple world has a new conference dedicated to automation on 9 August 2017 in Santa Clara, California. CMD-D offers a packed 13-hour day of sessions on many aspects of scripting and automation. For those new to automation, theres an optional Scripting Boot Camp on the day before, 8 August 2017 (more details on that will be forthcoming).

The conference is organized by Mr. Automation himself, Sal Soghoian, with help from Macworld Expo producer Paul Kent and PR veteran Naomi Pearce. Its sponsored by the Omni Group and Apple device management firm JAMF.

The speakers lined up so far are top-notch, which I would say even if they werent all friends. Sal knows more about Apple automation than anyone, and hell be talking about power features of AppleScript, AppleScriptObj-C, and JavaScript for Automation that even most experts dont know. John Welch has been in the admin trenches for longer than I can imagine and will be talking about when automation is a must and when not to bother. Jon Pugh was one of the original members of the AppleScript team and will be talking about how AppleScript was created. Andy Ihnatko well, everyone knows Andy, and he is slated to discuss automation as a martial art practiced against tedious, repetitive work. And finally, Jason Snell, who has become one of the premiere podcasters in the Apple world after leaving Macworld, will be hosting a live Six Colors podcast session with the speakers on the present and future of automation.

Other sessions include a deep dive into Automator, automations role in managing hundreds or thousands of iOS devices, how to use the Apple-acquired Workflow to automate tasks in iOS, an introduction to the Omni Groups cross-platform scripting solution for their apps, and even an open-mic automation slam for attendees to share their most impressive solutions while competing for an award. I hope its a big shiny gear.

CMD-D will take place in the Santa Clara Convention Center, which is near the San Jose International Airport and not far from the airports in both San Francisco and Oakland. You can register independently for the CMD-D conference and the Scripting Boot Camp for $295, or sign up for both for $590. Thats early bird pricing, which is good through the middle of June; after that, each days fee goes up to $395 and the two-day pass increases to $790. Lunch and afternoon snacks are included.

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New CMD-D Conference Targets Automation - TidBITS

Robotics, automation taking root on...

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - Technology is rapidly changing how we live, work and learn here on the Central Coast and all indications point to that trend continuing.

At their workshop next to Atascadero High School, Team 973 The Greybots is celebrating their second World Team Robotics Championship they recently won in Houston, Texas.

"We created a robot with both an effective gear mechanism and an effective shooter that set us up to rank high at competitions and win", says team member Leila Silver.

Team 973 had just six weeks to conceptualize, design and build their award-winning Bloodhound Robot.

"We take chunks of metal and we make it do amazing things, like win a world championship", says Team 973 member Bryce Nelson, "what we're learning here and what we're seeing in the world, pretty much the application for robots is endless."

Students in the Cal Poly Mechanical Engineering Department's Robotics Program have designs of their own in what has become a fast-growing industry.

"They are becoming more and more intelligent", says Cal Poly Professor Saeed Niku, "we give them the intelligence, they don't really learn that on their own, they don't create that intelligence, but we can have processes where they actually learn behavior."

"Its applications in general surgery has pretty much exploded", says general surgeon Dr. Brian Tuai who has performed a record 500 robotic surgeries at St. John's Regional Medical Center in Oxnard.

"It allows us to perform the operation in a safer manner, more precise manner", Dr. Tuai says, "people talk about you have to have the hand of a surgeon, I think you may have to change that to you have to have the hand of a robot, there's really no tremors at all, it gets rid of any kind of tremor that's in a surgeon's hand."

Dr. Tuai says the robot has dramatically altered surgical procedures including gall bladder and hernia operations.

"I think anecdotally we see that, from experience, patients recoveries are significantly quicker and better", Dr. Tuai says.

Mechanization has been part of Central Coast agriculture for decades but with a growing shortage of agricultural workers, due in large part to a lack of federal immigration reform, and more stringent regulations, robotics and automation are quickly becoming a viable option for local growers and farmers trying to stay in business.

"I think it has to be", says Kevin Merrill with Mesa Vineyards and the Santa Barbara County Farm Bureau, "when we're seeing labor rates going up, we're paying 12, 14,15 dollars an hour, they're talking about limiting the number of hours you can work out in the field, something has to give."

Merrill is the seventh-generation in his family to work in agriculture.

"Unfortunately new folks coming along, kids in high school and going into college, they're not attracted to come out here and work in the fields, they don't want to, its a hard job", Merrill says, "so somewhere we have to replace those bodies and we're lucky in the wine grape industry that we're able to do that mechanically."

Those who are profiting from the transition to automation say they are creating jobs just as the robots they make take jobs away.

"The problem with robots is they also do replace human workers in many situations", says Cal Poly Professor Niku, "so we always have to think about that in the back of our minds, what do the robots do to other people, the workers."

"It still relies on the surgeon's expertise and experience, it is not going to do everything by itself, it doesn't do anything by itself", says Dr. Brian Tuai, "it is completely under control of the surgeon during the operation."

In the meantime, the future is now and very bright for members of Team 973 The Greybots.

"That's kind of for our generation because what we see here, we're learning more and more about robots", says Team 973 member Bryce Nelson, "we need to kind of find that balance between jobs that robots can do more efficiently and also having jobs for the American people."

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Robotics, automation taking root on Central Coast - KEYT

Time to rest my servos?

SM/AIUEO/Getty

By Timothy Revell

Therobot takeoverwill start in the smaller cities. Towns and small cities have a smaller proportion of jobs that will be resilient to automation than larger urban centres, according to a new study.

By looking at the jobs that are most susceptible toautomationand their distribution across different US cities, Iyad Rahwanat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and his team have found a trend between the size of a city and the impact we should expect artificial intelligence and robots to have on human workers. Roughly speaking, cities with fewer than 100,000 inhabitants are more at risk.

The East Coast cities are full of jobs that should be resilient to automation. Washington DC, for example, has many government-related roles that are hard to automate, and New York, with its population of 8.5 million, is able to support many specialist jobs too.

On the other hand, in Madera County in California a wine-growing area with a population of just 60,000 many of the agricultural jobs can be done by machines. Nearby San Francisco with a population of 850,000 will be resilient due to its size and thanks to being a centre of innovation.

Thats the overall trend, but there are, of course, outliers. Las Vegas is relatively large, having about 600,000 residents, but its economy is very dependent on the gambling industry, much of which will probably be automated. Another exception is Boulder in Colorado, a small city with some 100,000 residents. It should be resilient to automation because, like San Francisco, it is home to many start-up companies.

We shouldnt be alarmist, saysRahwan. We shouldnt think that automation will mean massive unemployment, but there will be some kind of a shock. The impact may lead toretraining, migration or new types of jobs, not simply unemployment.

One example from history is the impact that the invention of the ATM had on bank tellers. Initially people thought bank tellers would disappear, but actually their numbers increased. ATMs meant it was cheaper to open new branches, and staff could focus on customer service instead of counting cash.

Much of the recent hype around automation comes froma study from the University of Oxford in 2013, which asked experts how easy certain jobs would be to automate using artificial intelligence and robotics. The study then extrapolated from this and found that 47 per cent of all US jobs were at high risk of computerisation.

Guessing absolute numbers is tricky, because predicting the impact of automation is really just an educated guess. But looking at the relative impact whether one place is more susceptible than another can still be revealing.

In the new study, Rahwan and his team have found that the types of jobs that are hardest to automate become increasingly prevalent in larger cities. For example, the job of a checkout assistant is relatively easy to automate, and so regardless of a citys population you would expect the proportion of residents there with that job to remain the same.

But the proportion of people with jobs that rely on analytical, management and organisational skills, such as computer scientists or chemists, increases with city size. Once a city becomes large enough, it can support more technical jobs than smaller cities.

The study adds evidence to the idea that megacities will become even more important, says Lesley Giles at the Work Foundation in London. Larger cities attract resources, skills and expertise, and this creates a virtuous circle of improvements and growth, she says.

These findings are also likely to apply in Europe where cities have a similar range of jobs. But some places follow a different model. In China, for example, cities often specialise in one type of product, which could make the influence of automation quite different.

The future effect of automation on jobs is yet to be fully determined, but it looks as if city size will play a part. For us to survive the tidal wave of automation we need to be able to do more creative work and combine our skills with others in a creative way, says Rahwan. Maybe the metropolis is the answer to our fears.

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Automation will have a bigger impact on jobs in smaller cities - New Scientist

Forbes

Restaurants Look To Automation To Cut Labor, But Will Consumers Buy What The Drone Is Serving? Forbes Have you ordered lunch via a kiosk rather than a human order-taker? Maybe you've paid for dinner at an on-table iPad instead of giving your card to your server? Automation including kiosks, iPads, robots, drones and other frictionless modes of ...

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Restaurants Look To Automation To Cut Labor, But Will Consumers Buy What The Drone Is Serving? - Forbes