Monthly Archives: August 2017

A robotic lawn mower

If you think youve finally gotten a handle on customer engagement, buckle up.

Thats because automation is reshaping customer engagement, according to a recent Forrester report on agents, bots, hardware robots and intelligent self-service solutions that will address customer-facing problems over the next 10 years. (Self-driving vehicles might also relate to customer engagement, such as with taxis or car services, but they were the subject of another recent report from Forrester.)

Automation Technologies for Customer Engagement gives the example of Dallas-based lawn care company Robin Technologies. Because lawn mowing is the least profitable of its offerings, it partnered with tech development firm Dialexa Labs to create a robotic lawn mowing device.

The device lives on the customers lawn, recharges from a base station, contains a GPS tracker and is restricted to the property via an installed wire perimeter. Robin handles maintenance, and the new product frees it to concentrate on more profitable lines of business.

Report author and Forrester Vice President J.P. Gownder sees automated solutions taking over a lot more than grass cutting. In fact, they appear destined to handle most if not all customer interactions, at least for initial touch points like phone calls or physical store assistance as soon as you walk through the door.

I pointed out that interactive voice response (IVR) on phone calls is often so frustrating that I usually request a live operator because its faster. He agreed, but noted that a second wave of IVR is starting to supplement the first, with such vendors as SmartActions more natural interaction voice automation or IPsofts Amelia, an AI-agent designed for interaction with people:

Theres also the matter of fewer jobs. A separate Forrester report, The Future of Jobs, 2027: Working Side by Side with Robots, deals with that subject. Gownder summarized it as saying that hardware and software automation will displace an estimated 24.7 million jobs in the US, but it will create 14.9 million for a net loss of 9.8 million jobs.

Thats a 7 percent net job loss, which Gownder characterized as like the Great Recession. That is, serious but not Depression-level catastrophic.

In addition to the loss of jobs, he said, the biggest impact for US workers will be a change in how we work.

Most people will work side by side with robots or other automated services, he said, at least for the next 10 years, adding that its impossible to predict farther into the future.

Some of the new jobs, he speculated, could be what he described as white-gloved concierge jobs, where human assistance becomes a premium or differentiating feature for brands, as automated customer service becomes the norm.

Brands might also choose other ways to differentiate their customer experience, he suggested, given that many companies will likely license their AI and interaction engines from the same or similar services.

Agents/bots might have brand-specific personalities, for instance. In some cases, additional functions and scale can differentiate, the way banks now tout how many ATM machines they have and what they can do. Autonomous services can also provide more personalized offers at scale than human-run services can, like Persados automation of optimized marketing emails.

In the near term, companies can begin to differentiate themselves by becoming first movers, he said, just as Robin Technologies is now the first on its block with robot lawn mowers. Heres a graphic from the report, with advice on how companies might adjust their automation strategies for robotics and virtual assistants to their own maturity level:

As for marketers, their role is likely to evolve. Gownder sees them focusing more on overall brand storytelling, such as when Autodesk hired professional novelists to write scripts for chatbots.

But marketing itself will likely have to be reinvented. He envisioned a customer, Maxine, whose personal intelligent agent points out that her calendar shows an upcoming formal dress dinner. Since the agent knows she likes to shop at Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus, it has already pulled up some possible dresses and cross-referenced them with her styles as shown on her social accounts.

But what about other high-end clothing stores? They dont even get a chance to make their case unless their automated agents have kept Maxine up to date on their selections.

Your agent talks to my agent. It sounds like Hollywood, but it may be how marketers interact in a decade or so.

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Forrester report: Automation is taking over customer interaction - MarTech Today

Posted August 09, 2017 16:40:01

What does the worldwide head of research at Google tell his kids about how to prepare for the future of work with artificial intelligence?

"I tell them wherever they will be working in 20 years probably doesn't exist now," Peter Norvig says. "No sense training for it today."

Be flexible, he says, "and have an ability to learn new things".

Future of work experts (yes, it's a thing now) and AI scientists who spoke to Lateline variously described a future in which there were fewer full-time, traditional jobs requiring one skill set; fewer routine administrative tasks; fewer repetitive manual tasks; and more jobs working for and with "thinking" machines.

From chief executives to cleaners, "everyone will do their job differently working with machines over the next 20 years," Andrew Charlton, economist and director of AlphaBeta, says.

But experts are split on whether this technological transformation will create more jobs than it destroys, which has been the case historically.

"Copying [AI computer] code takes almost no time and cost. Anyone who says they know that more jobs will be created than destroyed is fooling themselves and fooling us. Nobody knows that," says University of New South Wales professor of AI Toby Walsh.

"The one thing we do know is the jobs that will be created will require different skills than the jobs that will be destroyed. And it will require us to constantly be educating ourselves to keep ahead of the machines."

Yes, says Hamilton Calder, acting chief executive of the Committee for Economic Development Australia (CEDA). "Coding will need to be ubiquitous within the workforce and taught at all levels of the education system."

No, says Mr Charlton. "I think the big misconception here is that in order to be successful in the future economy you need to be competing with machines [and] become a coder, a software engineer. That's quite wrong."

Not everyone needs to code because ultimately AI programs will likely be better coders than humans, says Professor Walsh. But "if you're a geek like myself, there is a good future in inventing the future".

A "broad, basic education with a strong STEM focus (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) will provide the core skills and flexibility that people will need," says PWC chief economist Jeremy Thorpe, "given they will likely change jobs or careers much more than previously".

Seventeen jobs and five careers it is exhausting just thinking about it. But that is the prediction for school-leavers, according to research done for the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA).

"We should stop encouraging young people to think about a 'dream' job," Jan Owen, CEO of FYA, says.

"It's important not to focus on individual jobs rather they should aim to develop a skill set that is transferrable [including] financial and digital literacy, collaboration, project management and the ability to critically asses and analyse information."

Future work will fall into one of three categories, says Robert Hillard, managing partner, Deloitte Consulting.

"Firstly, people who work for machines such as drivers, online store pickers and some health professionals who are working to a schedule," Mr Hillard says.

"Secondly, people who work with machines such as surgeons using machines to help with diagnosis, and thirdly, people who work on the machines, such as programmers and designers."

Human-machine teams will combine the lightning-fast speed and accuracy of AI algorithms with instinctive human skills such as intuition, judgment and emotional intelligence, according to a report by the US based Institute for the Future.

Mr Hillard says AI's ability "is to answer a unique question by synthesizing the answers to thousands or millions of related but different questions".

"What AI can't do is design new questions and that's the skill that will make people most competitive: helping their customer or employer find the right question to ask."

While he expects the number of jobs to increase, the danger is they may not be better jobs. Those working for machines will experience the most disruption.

There is one skill we already have that can increasingly be leveraged for income: being human.

"We don't make computers that have a lot of emotional intelligence," Professor Walsh says. "[But] we like interacting with people.

"We are social people, so the jobs that require lots of emotional intelligence being a nurse, marketing jobs, being a psychologist, any job that involves interacting with people those will be the safe jobs. We want to interact with people, not robots."

Futurist Ross Dawson gives an example of how this could be turned into a new kind of job.

"Perhaps it is a productive role in society to interact, to have conversations [with other people] and then we can remunerate that and make it a part of people's lives," he says.

Mr Charlton says: "Most of the opportunities are to do things that machines can't do, things that humans do well in the caring economy to be empathetic, to work in a range of occupations which require interpersonal skills."

China's most successful tech venture capitalist and former Google and Microsoft executive Kai-Fu Lee recently wrote in The New York Times that traditionally unpaid volunteering roles could become future "service jobs of love".

"Examples include accompanying an older person to visit a doctor, mentoring at an orphanage, serving as a sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous or, potentially soon, Virtual Reality Anonymous."

Jobs growth is already strong in the caring economy with unmet demand in child care, aged care, health care and education although many of those jobs are poorly paid.

"The challenge is to recognize that those jobs should be paid well. It's a choice for us as a society, community and government to value those types of human jobs well," Mr Charlton says.

Computers are not imaginative or very creative.

"We have one of the most creative brains out there," Professor Walsh says.

So, ironically, "one of the oldest jobs on the planet, being a carpenter or an artisan, we will value most because we will like to see an object carved or touched by the human hand, not a machine".

But humans have always created imaginative new economic opportunities as well.

With current education and training currently struggling to meet some of the challenges for the future workforce, Mr Dawson says we should "plan for [ourselves], look at the change and create a path and see what skills need to be developed".

"This is about organisational, social and personal responsibility. For all ages and people, we can learn and develop ourselves."

UTS professor of social robotics Mary-Anne Williams says there is only one strategy.

"Embrace the technology and understand as far as possible what kind of impact it has on your job and goals," she says.

"You need to pay attention and look around and think about the impact."

Topics: robots-and-artificial-intelligence, science-and-technology, australia

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Artificial intelligence and automation are coming, so what will we all do for work? - ABC Online

We need to call automation what it is: a real threat, and a danger to critical human infrastructure. Illustration: Rosie Roberts

Weve heard a lot lately about how humans will suffer thanks to robots.

Recently, these dark premonitions have come from famed techno-positive-ists like Elon Musk and Bill Gates. These grandees have offered their own solutions, from a robot tax or universal basic income. But among the dire warnings and the downright sci-fi utopias (a robot for president, anyone?), the actual human pain resulting from future job loss tends to be forgotten.

Given that 38% of US jobs could be lost to automation in the next 15 years, this tendency to gloss over the enormity of this number is puzzling. And yet, most would argue that we cannot and should not slow down progress: that any attempt to stymy is is embarrassingly Luddite.

My question to them: why? So what if we decelerated, and established a Slow Tech movement to match our Slow Food and Slow Fashion trends? Or at the very least, what if we started to rethink who owns autonomous trucks? The effect of robotization would be profoundly different if, say, truckers possessed their own autonomous vehicles rather than a corporation controlling them all.

In the meantime, we need to call automation what it is: a real threat, and a danger to critical human infrastructure.

What is human infrastructure? Well, infrastructure usually means electricity grids, power plants, roads, fiber optic cables and so on. Human infrastructure, on the other hand, is a phrase that lets us see that people are also, in the words of the Department of Homeland Securitys website, essential services. These things underpin American society and serve as the backbone of our nations economy, security, and health.

Critical human infrastructure could describe the guys in trucker-author Finn Murphys new memoir The Long Haul. Murphy explains to me that if long hauls become autonomous, as has been threatened in the next 10 years, his driver friends will most likely have their trucks foreclosed. With a limited education and in latter middle age, theyll only be able work for places like Walmart at best.

Tellingly, though, Murphy adds: I am not going to take the Luddite perspective driverless vehicles are going to happen. The Luddites put their wrenches in the weaving machines and they still existed. And there will still be these trucks. (If Luddites were part of co-ops and had a stake in the automated looms that replaced them, would this have happened in the first place? Discuss.)

Murphy understands the sheer scale of what will happen to drivers like him. But the tech billionaires, cyborg jingoists, various political pundits dont have the same empathy. They may touch on workers potential distress, but then they tend to launch into strangely frisson-filled discussions of a future apocalypse.

Instead of working to give robots personhood status, we should concentrate on protecting our human workers. If that means developing a more cooperative approach to ownership of autonomous trucks so millions of drivers are not left out in the literal cold, so be it. For other job categories, from nurses and legal assistants to movie ushers and cashiers, perhaps we could concoct legislation to help all strata of workers who will be displaced by our mechanical friends.

One thing is for certain: this will inevitably mean we must reduce the speed at which automation is occurring.

Indeed, given how easy automated systems like driverless vehicles may be to hack they are quite the security challenge, as former Uber employee/hacker Charlie Miller has said slowing down the robots might also mean slowing down a serious global calamity. (Imagine that 1973 Stephen King short story Trucks about semi-trailers gone berserk now imagine it authored by international hackers who turned vehicles into murderers and jackknifing American security.)

There are some ideas out there that seek to slow down the march of the cyborgs. The not-for-profit organization New York Communities for Change has been agitating against automation in trucking and driving, for instance. In February, the group launched a campaign targeting Elaine Chao and the Department of Transportation, which has billions of dollars set aside to subsidize the development and spread of autonomous vehicles.

Many truckers are very fearful, says Zachary Lerner, the groups Senior Director of Labor Organizing, who has been organizing drivers against the driverless vehicles. Trucking is not the best job but it pays the most in lots of rural communities. They worry: are they going to support their families? And what will happen to all of the small towns built off the trucking economy?

Our demand is to freeze all the subsidies for the research on autonomous vehicle until there is a plan for workers who are going to lose their jobs, Lerner says.

As part of this effort, NYCC regularly puts together conference calls between dozens of taxi, Uber, and Lyft drivers. They discuss how theyve all gotten massive loans to get the cars for Uber and how they are still going to being paying off these loans when the robots come for their jobs the robot vehicles Uber has promised within the decade.

There has also been a smattering of other workers actions against automation: last year, 4,800 nurses at five Minnesota hospitals protested against a computer determining staffing choices as well as broader healthcare questions.

And then theres Bill Gatess fix: to have governments tax companies that use robots to raise alternative funds. These funds would in turn help displaced human workers train for irreplaceably human jobs and to perhaps lull the swift turn to automation. In early 2017, the business press attacked him, partly for hypocrisy. As DailyWire wrote, Bill Gates Proposes One Of The Dumbest Ideas Ever To Fix The Economy. But what is so wrong with Gates idea? He was at least trying to address the way that humans may be pushed out of the workforce by robots metal hands (and their owners hands within them).

His solution is echoed by thinkers like Martin Ford, the futurist author of 2015 book Rise of The Robots. Ford eschews the Luddite perspective, and sees his very own books title as a sign of progress. Nevertheless, he tells me that for our society to remain equitable; we must leverage that progress on behalf of everyone. That means, for Ford, that if businesses use automation and get higher profits as a result we then need do something about inequality, by taxing the capital and profits rather than labor. Which is a lot easier than taxing robots, explains Ford, because who is going to come in and figure out what to tax: is software a robot, for example?

In addition, there are those who see Universal Basic Income (UBI) as the panacea to the cyborg revolution. When I spoke with UBI advocate Scott Santens, he wasnt critical of automated trucking or robotic nurses. Rather, he believes that due to them, will all need to be subsidized by a monthly basic income guarantee if we are to survive with any standard of living intact.

I think we should go further. Why not stand up for the values of humanity more directly? Why not ask why anything that will eject millions more human beings from their work is indeed progress?

More than a century ago, the German Romantic writer ETA Hoffman wrote, in his story Automata: Yet the coldest and most unfeeling executant will always be far in advance of the most perfect machines.

This warmth and feeling must be honored, at the very least. If we dont at least try to make the future more equitable, most of us will left left with simply scraps.

Outclassed: The Secret Life of Inequality is our new column about class. Read all articles here.

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Automation is a real threat. How can we slow down the march of the cyborgs? - The Guardian

Wednesday, August 09, 2017

By WhatTheyThink Staff

Prepress automation can significantly accelerate job throughput and increase capacity. By investing in Esko Automation Engine, Promotional Screenprint (www.simply-reliable.com) has already helped to automatically send nesting layouts much faster to their Esko Kongsberg finishing tables, and has enhanced the preflight processand thats just a start.

Led by president and founder Robbie McDaniel, Decatur GA-based Promotional Screenprint (PSP) is known in the industry for its innovative approach, bringing better solutions to the retail graphics space. Their print production department, including a new HP10000and four HP7600 flatbed printers along with various other small presses, runs 24/6, and is utilized for both decor and promotional print applicationsand fast speed to market. PSP Fulfillment handles everything from concept and creation of the storefront site to putting the last box on the truck. PSP has been listed on the Inc. magazine 5000 listits annual ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in Americafour times since 2010.

Until recently, PSP was doing their prepress work manually. Everything, recalls Ronald Whitfield, Automated Systems Manager. We were doing layouts, imposition, and all other tasks manually in Adobe InDesign and Illustrator without any automation. We even converted colors ourselves. We didn't have an imposition application for nesting. It would take us a good ten to fifteen minutes for a layout, including nesting and shapes.

The industry is focusing on personalized materials and fast paced jobs, especially in digital. PSP had to keep up with its presses, which meant operating faster than they were manually. Our manual process went from receiving files and preflighting them, to delivering press-proofs for approvals, says Whitfield. Because of the variation of contentlike pricingthere are so many more files to create, all at the same time. We wanted to automate redundant and time-consuming tasks every day with every file. That would allow us to put more time into the more complex jobs.

PSP knew of Esko because they were already very happy with their two Esko Kongsberg XP finishing tables, and invested in Esko Automation Engine. It was quickly apparent that Automation Engine would allow PSP to add functionality and the possibility to automate the full department, from design to finishing. That included creating a workflow to prepare a filewith the cut pathto be sent to the Kongsberg finishing table.

PSP has been in production mode for six months. I was hired eight months ago to help make Automation Engine work in the prepress department. After 1 months, I visited Esko for Automation Engine training. When I returned to the office, we programmed i-cut Layout first because when the file arrives for nesting, it is complete and has been proofed outand approved. All the proof, cutting and print files go through the workflow without anything holding it back, explains Whitfield. Its a repetitive process. Now, about 95% of the layouts are driven by a customized workflow created for Automation Engine. It has been extremely productive. Before, if we received an order with 25 layouts that needed to be done at the end of the day, we would have left for the day and returned to the job in the morning. Now, by morning all layouts are automatically ready for the press. We have increased the workflow to the presses just by automating the layouts. Instead of taking 15 minutes to create a complex layout, it takes only 45 secondsand that doesn't include the time-savings well expect to see with preflights and proofs.

Before, PSP was not sending preflight reports in a timely manner. Now we conduct preflights very quickly, up front. The Automation Engine preflight report can tell us if there are errors or unreported sizes. It also allows us to send proofs within 24 hours, adds Whitfield.

PSP customer service project and account managers manually enter job data into PSPs MIS system, Retail Reliability Suite. While we are not utilizing web to print at the moment, we are working in that direction, explains Whitfield. However, Automation Engine already takes XML data from files to create jobs and their specs in the workflow. They also direct the workflow to do various tasks. It creates a folder hierarchy on the jobs server, which we had always done manually for new orders. Prepress no longer makes an error. And while they haven't done so yet, Promotional Screenprint plans to use Automation Engine Connect to pass job information from their external business systems to further drive automation and reduce human interaction.

I am excited about the potential to do more, exclaims Whitfield. Automation Engine can do so much more than what we are utilizing, at the moment. I would tell anyone who needs a workflow to invest in Automation Engineand don't even think of boundaries when you do.

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Promotional Screenprint adds Esko Automation Engine to pick up the speed - What They Think

Dozens of recent studies have stoked fears that robots and 'artificial intelligence' will displace millions of workers and lead to permanently high joblessness.

AlphaBeta's new report, The Automation Advantage, is an antidote to these fears. Commissioned by Google, this report is the most comprehensive study to date on how every Australian job is being changed by automation, analysing over 20 billion hours of work.

If Australia plays its cards right, automation doesn't have to be an economic risk. In fact, it could be one of the largest economic opportunities facing our nation -- delivering up to $2.2 trillion in economic benefits by 2030.

But aren't the benefits of automation, um, automatic?

No. Automation is the biggest opportunity to grow Australia's prosperity in decades. But, this prosperity wont fall in our lap.

To unlock the benefits of automation, Australian policy makers and companies must take action now. First, they have to embrace these technologies. This report shows that just nine percent of Australian companies are engaging in significant automation.

Second, the benefits of automation will be erased if we don't ensure that the gains are widely distributed. That means doing much more to help affected workers to re-skill and transition, and it means a robust framework involving employers, unions and government to ensure that the benefits of automation are widely shared.

Making work more human

While most of the media attention is focused on the potential to destroy jobs, the biggest impact of automation will be to change the way we do every job.

In every occupation, machines are gradually taking away tasks that were once done by humans. The first tasks to be replaced tend to be the 'dirty, dull and dangerous' tasks -- manual and routine tasks. This means that humans can focus on work that requires more creativity, personality and more EQ than IQ.

The report shows that rather than replacing the work, automation has the potential to make our work safer, more valuable and more meaningful... More human.

MORE ON THE BLOG:

Technology Is Speaking And We Really Like The Sound Of Its Voice.

But what about my job?

Which jobs are most at risk of automation?

The research for this report analysed every job in Australia -- breaking each job into up to 2,000 different tasks and looking at the rate at which those tasks have been replaced by machines.

We uploaded this data into interactive tool to show which jobs are most likely to be affected by automation. See how much of your job could be done by a machine.

Balanced debate

Our public debate on automation and the future of work needs balance. Yes, it's true that there will be challenges for many workers who will need to be supported to adjust and retrain. Those challenges are real and must be addressed.

But, the answer cannot be to eschew the benefits of automation or try to hold back the tide of technology. That would relegate Australian business to lack of competitiveness, and deprive millions of current (and future) workers of the tremendous economic opportunities these technologies could bring.

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Automation Is The Biggest Opportunity To Grow Australia's Prosperity In Decades - Huffington Post Australia

Andrew Charlton from AlphaBeta warns automation is a huge productivity shock but "productivity shocks are only valuable it the workers are successfully transitioned".

Automation could add $2.2 trillion to Australia's annual income by 2030, but we risk blowing it because companies invest less in robotics than their offshore competitors, a report commissioned by Google has found.

The AlphaBeta report released on Tuesday found only about 9 per cent of publicly listed companies were engaging in automation, compared to 14 per cent for leading nations and more than 20 per cent in the United States.

Andrew Charlton, co-founder of the economic consultancy firm and a former adviser to prime minister Kevin Rudd, said the low investment rate was acting as a "handbrake" on productivity and if Australian companies accelerated automation investments it could add $1 trillion to economic output over the next 15 years.

"It would be dire for Australia's competitiveness if companies continued with a business-as-usual approach," he said.

"Slowing down the pace of automation, rather than accelerating it may do more harm than good, depriving Australia of the resulting productivity benefits and potentially reducing the global competitiveness of local industries."

There is no official data on automation so AlphaBeta adopted a unique method by identifying firms that increased both capital expenditure and labour productivity by 5 per cent or more between 2010 and 2015.

The report found Australia's automation levels were similar to Sweden but three times lower than Switzerland, where more than 25 per cent of publicly listed firms appear heavily engaged in automation.

"How it shook out was a large part of Australia's automation is in the mining sector, but we actually lag in manufacturing, most parts of services, retail and wholesale trade," Mr Charlton told The Australian Financial Review.

Miners BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto were Australia's most automated listed companies by AlphaBeta measure, the latter's fleet of 69 fully automated trucks in the Pilbara making it the world's largest owner and operator of autonomous haulage systems.

Mr Charlton said Australia's overall low rate of automation could be explained by factors such as scale and direct competitive pressures.

"Embracing automation can require a large capex investment and a lot of firms in Australia seem to be a lot smaller than European and US firms," he said.

"So the ability to make a bit of up-front investment in artificial intelligence is potentially lower to the extent there are fixed costs in making that investment."

Applying working hours data to a US breakdown of occupations into tasks, the report found that over the past 15 years Australia had reduced the amount of time spent on physical and routine tasks by two hours a week.

"So, for example, retail workers have spent less time ringing up items and more time helping customers, bank employees less time counting banknotes and more time giving financial advice," it said.

However, if local companies were as committed to automation as their US peers, the report estimated they would save more than four hours a week, boost productivity by 50 per cent and add another $1 trillion to economic output.

Companies would also save money from fewer working days lost to injuries sustained from physical work, which on current automation trends could fall by 11 per cent in 2030.

While the report found automation would mostly involve changes in the way workers did their current jobs, 29 per cent of the change would involve workers changing jobs.

It warned that if companies merely allowed automation to displace workers or reduce work time, productivity would rise but GDP growth would be limited.

But in a scenario where workers "transitioned" to other jobs and reinvested time savings into "uniquely human tasks", the economy would be boosted by $1.2 trillion in value over 15 years.

"This is a huge productivity shock but productivity shocks are only valuable it the workers are successfully transitioned," Mr Charlton said.

He urged policymakers, companies, unions, education providers and workers to focus on teaching students critical future skills, support workers affected by the change and look overseas for international best practice.

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Automation could add $2.2 trillion to Australian economy by 2030 - The Australian Financial Review