The term "Luddite" originally described 19th-century English textile workers who destroyed machinery in protest, fearing that new technologies would threaten their jobs and working conditions.

Contrary to the popular misconception that Luddites were simply anti-technology, historical analysis reveals that their resistance was rooted in a labor struggle against poverty, exploitation, and the loss of agency, rather than a blanket rejection of innovation or progress .

In the 21st century, the concept of the Luddite has been revived to characterize individuals or groups who resist new technologies—particularly artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and digital platforms—due to a complex array of economic, social, ethical, and psychological concerns .

**Economic Fears and Job Security** A primary driver of 21st-century Luddite resistance is the fear of job displacement.

The rapid adoption of AI and automation in the workplace has led to widespread anxiety about employment stability.

For every 1% increase in AI adoption, firms reduce hiring by about 1%, directly fueling concerns about future job prospects .

Large-scale studies estimate that up to 300 million jobs globally could be affected by generative AI, with two-thirds of jobs in the U.S.

and Europe at risk of some degree of automation .

Administrative support, legal work, and engineering are particularly vulnerable, with up to 46% of administrative tasks potentially automated .

Low-wage and lower-skilled workers are 14 times more likely to lose their jobs to automation than higher-wage workers, exacerbating economic inequality and threatening the middle class .

These fears are not unfounded, as actual job losses attributed to AI have been reported, including over 80,000 jobs cut in a single month, with 3,900 specifically due to AI .

**Skill Gaps and Adaptation Challenges** The transition to a technology-driven workplace requires significant upskilling and reskilling, which many workers find daunting.

Only 55% of students aged 16-18 feel confident in their digital abilities, highlighting a substantial skills gap that can foster resistance due to lack of competence or confidence .

The need for continuous learning and adaptability is emphasized by organizations like the World Economic Forum, but the pace of change can overwhelm workers, leading to anxiety and reluctance to embrace new tools .

**Cultural and Social Implications** Technological integration has transformed social interactions, often making them more solitary.

AI’s role in creative fields, for example, enables individuals to produce content without collaboration, potentially diminishing communal creativity and leading to feelings of isolation .

The shift from community-oriented values to a consumer-driven culture has contributed to a sense of alienation, with individuals feeling like mere consumers rather than active participants in their communities .

This transformation is perceived as a loss of agency, echoing the original Luddites’ desire to preserve human skills and social cohesion .

**Distrust in Institutions and Technology** Skepticism toward new technologies is fueled by distrust in the motives of large corporations and governments.

Many critics argue that innovations like the metaverse and AI primarily serve the interests of wealthy tech executives, leaving ordinary people disenfranchised .

This distrust extends to health-related technologies, such as mRNA vaccines, where aversion is rooted in fears about safety and efficacy, often exacerbated by a lack of trust in institutions .

Past experiences where technologies promised benefits but resulted in negative outcomes for workers or the environment have bred skepticism and resistance .

**Ethical and Moral Concerns** Ethical considerations are central to modern Luddite resistance.

The rapid pace of technological advancement raises questions about transparency, accountability, and bias mitigation, especially in AI systems .

There is significant concern that AI and automated systems can perpetuate or exacerbate societal biases and discrimination, particularly in hiring and lending decisions .

Data privacy and security are also major issues, as individuals worry about how their personal information is managed and protected .

The absence of inclusive public dialogue about the ethical implications of technology adoption further contributes to resistance .

**Surveillance, Control, and Digital Authoritarianism** AI is often described as a "surveillance derivative," intensifying privacy concerns and fears of exploitation [25f118cf-5b3d-418d-8874-79d21f77d6d4_798933008_1].

The use of technology for monitoring and suppressing dissent, especially by authoritarian regimes, has led to resistance among those who value privacy and freedom of expression .

This phenomenon, known as digital authoritarianism, is particularly pronounced in regions where governments use technology to stifle protests and dissent .

**Environmental and Sustainability Concerns** Many modern Luddites resist technology due to its environmental impact.

The relentless pursuit of speed and efficiency in technological advancements often leads to significant ecological degradation, with critics arguing that the costs of progress are frequently overlooked in favor of immediate comforts and conveniences .

This critique challenges the ideology of progress that prioritizes rapid consumption and production at the expense of planetary health .

**Psychological and Workplace Impacts** The fear of being replaced by machines can cause anxiety and resistance, with the narrative around automation often emphasizing job loss without adequately addressing potential job transformation or enhancement .

Automation can also negatively affect workers’ health and wellbeing by increasing workloads, standardizing tasks, and diminishing the meaningfulness and autonomy of work .

Employees may feel like replaceable numbers in a data-driven environment, fostering alienation and a sense that their work is undervalued .

The reduction in face-to-face interactions due to automation can lead to feelings of isolation and negatively affect team dynamics and morale .

**Generational and Demographic Differences** Older generations often exhibit insecurity in navigating digital technologies, preferring traditional methods due to unfamiliarity and lack of confidence .

However, younger generations, while adept at using technology, are increasingly aware of its drawbacks, leading to nuanced skepticism that aligns with Luddite concerns .

In creative industries, there is particular concern that AI could displace entry-level positions, prompting labor organizations to advocate for legal protections against the exploitation of creative works by AI .

**Community, Solidarity, and Collective Action** Community engagement is crucial in shaping attitudes toward technology.

Transparent and inclusive engagement with stakeholders can alleviate resistance by building trust and ensuring that technologies meet users’ needs .

Community networks that allow local populations to plan, implement, and manage their own infrastructures promote digital inclusion and a sense of ownership, enhancing acceptance .

Co-creation in policy-making and urban planning, where community members are involved in decision-making, builds trust and support for technological changes .

**Role of Education** Education plays a pivotal role in shaping attitudes toward technology.

Emphasizing digital skills, critical thinking, and ethical reflection can reduce resistance by empowering individuals to engage thoughtfully with technology .

Teacher training, curriculum adaptation, and community involvement are essential for fostering positive attitudes and bridging educational gaps .

Teaching about environmental responsibility and the impact of technology on the planet can frame technological advancements as tools for positive, sustainable change .

**Policy and Regulatory Responses** Governments are increasingly responding to concerns about technological disruption by developing regulations to protect workers.

For example, the Biden administration issued an executive order to establish principles and best practices aimed at mitigating AI’s risks, including job displacement and algorithmic discrimination .

Policy discussions have also included ideas like Universal Basic Income (UBI) to provide a safety net for displaced workers .

**Identity and Cultural Resistance** Some individuals openly embrace a "tech-averse Luddite" identity, rejecting mainstream technologies like smartphones in favor of simpler alternatives, reflecting broader unease with the pervasive influence of large tech companies .

This cultural resistance is not a wholesale rejection of technology but a call for critical examination, ethical development, and implementation of technology that serves human interests and preserves dignity, autonomy, and social

The term "Luddite" originally described 19th-century English textile workers who destroyed machinery in protest, fearing that new technologies would threaten their jobs and working conditions.

The term "Luddite" originally described 19th-century English textile workers who destroyed machinery in protest, fearing that new technologies would threaten their jobs and working conditions.

The term "Luddite" originally described 19th-century English textile workers who destroyed machinery in protest, fearing that new technologies would threaten their jobs and working conditions.

Contrary to the popular misconception that Luddites were simply anti-technology, historical analysis reveals that their resistance was rooted in a labor struggle against poverty, exploitation, and the loss of agency, rather than a blanket rejection of innovation or progress .

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Content: Special Report
Classroom Technology Q&A

How Technology Should Influence Learning for This Generation

By Lauraine Langreo — September 21, 2022 10 min read
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Patricia Brown started her role as director of technology for the Ladue school district in Missouri in July and already has big ideas on how to effectively use technology in the classroom.

“I do believe we now have this opportunity to really look at our systems, at what we’ve been providing educationally for our students and for our teachers and for our parents—our community as a whole, all the stakeholders,” Brown said. It’s time to “challenge some of the things that have always been” and think about how schools can improve education for all kids.

Brown is not new to the ed-tech space. For 11 years, she was the instructional technology coordinator for the 4,300-student school district. And she’s currently a board member for the nonprofit International Society for Technology in Education.

In her 21-year career, she’s racked up awards for her work as a technology integration specialist: She earned the Ladue school district’s Excellence in Education award in 2021, was part of the Apple Distinguished Educators class of 2019, was one of the National School Board Association’s 20 to Watch educational technology leaders in 2016, and has been named one of the top ed-tech influencers by EdTech Digest in five different years.

Here’s what she had to say in a Zoom conversation with Education Week about what’s next for technology use in the classroom, what the biggest tech challenges are for schools, and what her priorities are in her first year as tech director for Ladue.

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

What is your philosophy when it comes to using technology in the classroom?

For a long time—especially early on, when we were first adopting the use of technology—it was always about that “wow,” that cool thing you can do. I remember thinking around the time when we first adopted iPads, and it was always the whole mantra: ‘There’s an app for that.’ We were just pulling so many resources, so many tools, so many apps, where it was completely overwhelming for a teacher. So I started to think about what do we actually want students to do with the technology? What can technology do? Where can it take us? Where can we provide those opportunities for our kids to be creators and producers and critical thinkers and not just consumers of technology?

For me, when I’m using technology with my students, it is not an add-on. It’s not just a cool thing that you do. It’s integrated in the classroom, where it’s a part of the curriculum and it’s a part of the learning process. We learn with technology, we learn through technology, we allow it to provide opportunities that we wouldn’t have [had] before.

As hard as these last three years have been on the educational system, I do believe it has created opportunities for us to provide a level of engagement for our students that we haven't had before.

Equity is a big part of my philosophy. I feel like when we’re utilizing technology as just a consumption tool, we are providing inequity for our students. The real goal is to provide those opportunities where they can invent, they can create, they can produce, they can connect and communicate with people outside of the four walls of their classrooms. That’s a really powerful thing that we’ve learned through COVID. As hard as these last three years have been on the educational system, I do believe it has created opportunities for us to provide a level of engagement for our students that we haven’t had before.

I know that every student doesn’t learn the same way, but what technology allows us to do is to differentiate [and] provide those different opportunities for our students. It allows teachers to have a more efficient way for them to grade papers, for them to roll out curriculum, for them to interact with their students, for them to create more innovative projects.

Schools continue to push technology use to the next level. What does that mean for education? Where do we go from here?

What we’re left with, as we journey through this pandemic, is we have a generation of students who are very different from the pre-COVID times, meaning their level of engagement is something that we struggle to keep in line with what we’re doing as educators. So one of the main things that is going to shift in the education format is the focus on student engagement, but also the focus on balance—how you balance the use of technology in classrooms and the amount of resources and media and “distractions” that exist now with having a student to focus.

See also

When it comes to technology, I don’t think it’s going to be more technology. I think it’s going to be: Let’s look at what we already have. Let’s look at how we can utilize these resources to the highest potential and what we can create from what we have. Video is going to be a huge part of that, for students to be able to show what they know in more unique and creative ways.

You’re going to look at other ways that you can engage—even learning management systems and using different ways for students to turn in assignments. You’re going to have some non-traditional classrooms.

I think it’s going to be more of a customized way of providing education for our students because I do think we have different kids now, so we have to meet their needs.

What are the biggest tech challenges that schools are facing right now?

One of the biggest tech challenges that most schools are facing is still struggling with providing the resources for students and for teachers.

What we’re suffering from now is virtual burnout. I’m actually doing a study and working on my doctorate, so one of the things I wanted to know is: Teachers’ and educators’ experience in COVID, did it build confidence in their use of technology? And are they using technology more efficiently and more frequently in our classrooms because of COVID?

The answer is yes and no.

Yes, there is more confidence in their use of technology. I think teachers are more willing to take some risks. [But there’s] a certain group of teachers where they’re like, “I don’t want anything to do with that because these last two years were hard, so I want to take a break from technology and I really just want to go back to basics.”

So I think the challenge for education is going to be to find that balance: How do we know when to use technology and how do we know when we need to go back to basics?

How do you address tech burnout among teachers?

It’s been a challenge because as a tech person, a tech coordinator, to now a tech director, of course, technology is always at the forefront of my mind and it’s my job. However, I am very connected with my human side as well, as a teacher, as an educator, as a parent, and I always look at perspectives and different lenses. I get down to the why. Not “oh, they just don’t use technology,” and leave it at that. What is the root of the problem? Is it because they’re burnt out because everything they’ve tried to use doesn’t work that day, and it’s just frustrating? Or is it that they’ve been using this tool nonstop and want to do something different but don’t know what to do? Just asking those right questions, asking those whys.

Of course, you’re always going to have some people who are absolutely anti-tech. But in general, getting to the root of the why is always helpful for me because then I can say, “OK, I have a recommendation. Let’s try this.”

Professional learning is so important. I’m a proponent of having unique ways that teachers receive professional learning. I love to do lunch and learn, where I just invite teachers in for a 15-minute or 20-minute drop-in where I’m going to teach them something new, but they’re bringing their lunch and they’re chit-chatting or talking and asking questions, and it’s just an informal way. Playdates: I’ve had teachers go to the Apple Store and just kind of play around with the technology and learn that way. Kids like to learn through play. Teachers do, too.

See also

Classroom Technology Q&A How to Make Tech Use in Schools Easier on Teachers
Arianna Prothero, March 8, 2022
5 min read

What should quality technology use look like? And what should it not look like?

I’ll start with what it doesn’t look like. It doesn’t look like kids sitting on their devices, not interacting with each other at all; working on a drilling practice app, where they’re practicing their math skills, and that’s pretty much all they do; or they’re using their technology for testing purposes only and the only time they bring out the technology is when they’re getting ready to take a test or they need to do an assignment that’s independent.

What it looks like is looking at the curriculum and finding natural ways to integrate technology. Not taking the technology and then trying to fit the curriculum in, but instead taking that curriculum and looking at a different way that I could instruct my students—I’m going to use the technology to create a really engaging slide deck to engage my kids. I’m going to embed some videos. I want to embed some GIFs into my slide deck. I want to add Nearpod. I’m going to add some interactive components as I’m instructing or lecturing my students.

[Quality technology use] doesn't look like kids sitting on their devices, not interacting with each other at all.

Once the students are instructed and they get the information that they need from you as an instructor, how do they apply that knowledge? Are they able to take that knowledge and create a video? Are they working collaboratively with a partner or group in designing a STEM challenge that integrates with what they’re learning in science? Are they going on an array hunt because they’re learning about arrays in math class, so they’re walking around their school with their iPads taking pictures of natural arrays that they see around the building? Are they creating a stop-motion video of the change of states of matter?

How do they apply [the learning]? Are they creating, producing, developing things? Are they able to take the knowledge that they have and use it in a natural way?

How should ed-tech leaders determine which tech tools stay and which ones go?

It really depends on the demographics of your students, your budget, what you have available. It really comes down to what works for you, what works for your district, what are the challenges that you have, and what technology resources and tools can be that solution for you.

I do think it is very important to be proactive in making sure that you’re staying abreast with the new things that are created that are helping to make learning more accessible and feasible.

We in our district have Apple devices, which I absolutely love, but we also have Chromebooks that we also love, and they fit our purpose and our needs. So I just really think it comes down to evaluating what your needs are in the district, looking at your budget.

[When it comes to the budget] sometimes districts allow their budgets to dictate the type of resources and technology that they have, when in fact I think it should be more of: Let’s evaluate what’s the best tool and the best resource for our district, and then let’s find a way to pay for it.

I think that it’s important to continue to use resources that are going to open up opportunities for our students to collaborate, to connect, to create, and share. So whatever that tool looks like for you, I say, use it.

What are your biggest priorities this school year?

One is data privacy and security, making sure that all of our data is secure. There are a lot of things going on in the world right now and not-so-honest people who are targeting different districts, so that’s number one priority.

The other priorities I have are making sure there are systems and processes in place for the use of technology throughout the district. One cool thing is, taking on this role, I had the opportunity to join in the curriculum and instruction department. Technology is now a part of curriculum and instruction, which is a perfect marriage to me because it allows [technology] to be a part of the conversations that happen in curriculum, and curriculum to be a part of the conversations that happen in tech. We’re working collaboratively for the same goal, and we’re making sure that our students and our teachers are knowledgeable about the resources that are available. So my priority is making sure that this process and the seamlessness of the marriage between curriculum and technology happen as best as they can.

Innovation is also another priority, making sure that we’re pushing the needle and pushing our students and our teachers to be future ready; making sure that the training and the resources and the technology that we’re using is state of the art, up to date, available, and ready for all of our students and our teachers.

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In the 21st century, the concept of the Luddite has been revived to characterize individuals or groups who resist new technologies—particularly artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and digital platforms—due to a complex array of economic, social, ethical, and psychological concerns .

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How can companies address consumers who are averse to products using a novel technology?

Researchers from IE Business School and Indian Institute of Management Shillong have published a new study that examines why certain consumers are averse to products using a novel technology and what strategies marketers can use to remedy this aversion.

The study, which appears in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Adoption of New Technology Vaccines" and is authored by Laura Zimmermann, Jeeva Somasundaram, and Barsha Saha.

In October 2023, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency-use authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Novavax. This was the third coronavirus vaccine available to Americans, but the only one not made with messenger RNA (mRNA) technology. The shot was marketed as an alternative for those who were skeptical of vaccines made with mRNA technology.

The COVID-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna introduce a piece of mRNA that corresponds to a viral protein, usually one found on the outer membrane of the coronavirus. The recognizes this foreign protein and produces antibodies to fight it. These antibodies remain in the body even after the pathogen has been destroyed. If exposed to the virus after receiving an mRNA-based vaccine, antibodies can quickly recognize and fight it before it causes serious illness.

The skepticism about mRNA centers around claims that it could spread itself throughout the body and alter the basic DNA of those vaccinated. This belief persists despite several leading scientists and policymakers assuring the public that the mRNA is broken down shortly after vaccination and does not stay in the body.

This new study finds that certain consumers are surprisingly averse to products described as employing a , like vaccines based on mRNA technology. The researchers investigate how consumers react to technological innovations that have the following specific features:

  • When consumers cannot test and trial the new product to reduce uncertainty
  • When the new product might lead to a health loss
  • When other consumers' adoption of the might undermine the importance of the new technology

Examples of such innovations are mRNA vaccines and other pharmaceutical products, and also products such as nanoparticle pesticides, lithium-ion battery technology, and hydrogen energy.

Zimmermann explains, "We find that consumers demand higher vaccine efficacy to offset the higher perceived uncertainty that surrounds a new technology compared to a traditional vaccine. On average, our participants required a 19% higher vaccine efficacy to adopt a new technology vaccine."

This aversion was more pronounced among certain consumer segments, such as people who have little trust in their government. Consumers less inclined to embrace new technology in general were also more likely to avoid a vaccine employing new technology. Finally, consumers who are risk-averse, especially regarding small probabilities of losses, tended to show a stronger aversion to adopting a new technology vaccine.

Nudges to 'follow the herd'

One way to reduce this aversion is with a social proof nudge: to communicate that other consumers have adopted the new technology.

"When we communicated that a higher percentage of the population had adopted the new technology, people saw it as a proxy trial experience, which reduced their uncertainty. They were therefore more likely to 'follow the herd' and adopt the new technology," says Somasundaram.

But this strategy can be a double-edged sword: When people know that a high percentage of the population has taken up a vaccine, they might be less likely to vaccinate because they believe they are protected due to herd immunity.

Saha says, "Our research indicates, however, that a social proof nudge has an overall net positive effect in this context and reduces aversion to new technology vaccines." The same pattern applies to other domains such as novel energy-efficient technology (i.e., hydrogen energy heating, lithium-battery cars), nanoparticle pesticides, and other pharmaceutical products.

Lessons for marketers and policymakers

  • Marketers can identify consumers with low trust in government, low technology readiness, and high aversion to risk based on their willingness to pay for , past purchases of high-tech products, and their age and education level.
  • Companies can adjust their communication strategies to better connect with different groups of consumers by predicting how each would respond to the introduction of new technologies.
  • Consumers can make more informed choices about new technology by understanding how their personal beliefs and attitudes, such as trust in government and risk preferences, as well as social proof nudges influence their choices.
  • Policymakers and marketers must carefully consider the potential (long-term) risks of new technology and respect the autonomy of decision makers. This is because social proof nudges might bias information processing in ways that lead consumers to overlook uncertainty when they should not.
  • When a technology's greatest need lies in communities prone to distrust (e.g., new technology pesticides for farmers in ), marketers should understand the root causes of distrust, seek feedback, and focus on reducing the perceived uncertainty in a transparent fashion because exaggerated claims may contribute to further distrust.

More information: Laura Zimmermann et al, Adoption of New Technology Vaccines, Journal of Marketing (2023). DOI: 10.1177/00222429231220295

Journal information: Journal of Marketing

Citation: How can companies address consumers who are averse to products using a novel technology? (2024, April 16) retrieved 16 April 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2024-04-companies-consumers-averse-products-technology.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

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**Economic Fears and Job Security** A primary driver of 21st-century Luddite resistance is the fear of job displacement.

**Economic Fears and Job Security** A primary driver of 21st-century Luddite resistance is the fear of job displacement.

**Economic Fears and Job Security** A primary driver of 21st-century Luddite resistance is the fear of job displacement.

The rapid adoption of AI and automation in the workplace has led to widespread anxiety about employment stability.

The rapid adoption of AI and automation in the workplace has led to widespread anxiety about employment stability.

The rapid adoption of AI and automation in the workplace has led to widespread anxiety about employment stability.

For every 1% increase in AI adoption, firms reduce hiring by about 1%, directly fueling concerns about future job prospects .

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Content: Society’s refusal to have enough babies is what will save it from the existential threat of A.I., Eric Schmidt says

May 24, 2023, 9:26 PM UTC
Former Google CEO and executive chairman Eric Schmidt, at the 2016 Startup Fest in the Netherlands.
Michel Porro/Getty Images

Advocates of stronger regulation of artificial intelligence have a long list of concerns and possible dangers backing up their argument, from short-term threats such as spreading believable misinformation to more existential far-off risks of superintelligent A.I. taking over humanity (or “going Terminator,” in Elon Musk’s words). A more medium-term fear is that A.I. will be one of the biggest job disrupters in recent history, with Goldman Sachs calculating in March the technology could soon replace the equivalent of 300 million jobs in the U.S. and Europe. But the peril of losing our jobs to A.I. could be undermined by another existential risk afflicting society, says former Google CEO and executive chairman Eric Schmidt: the developed world’s rapidly declining birth rate.

“Here are the facts. We are not having enough children, and we have not been having enough children for long enough that there is a demographic crisis where people who are my age are going to be taken care of by younger generations,” Schmidt said at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London Wednesday.

Schmidt pushed back against the “narrative” that new technologies are inevitably going to cause disruption and lead to widespread job loss, saying that when it comes to A.I., the net benefit will likely be positive because of enhanced efficiency and the technology’s ability to replace professions that are already getting harder to fill in a shrinking labor market.

In the U.S., a historically tight labor market could become even tighter in the coming decades as a result of fewer children being born. Aside from a pandemic-induced “baby bump” in 2021, U.S. fertility rates—the number of children each woman would be expected to have in her lifetime—has been on a mostly steady decline since the mid-2000s, including a record-breaking 4% drop in 2020.

Couples’ concerns about their finances, crushing student loan and credit card debt, and a greater focus on career are some of the reasons Americans are having fewer kids (another is that in more developed countries, the birth rate seems to be lower just out of choice alone). Similar shifts are happening in developed economies in Europe and East Asia, but the trend might have serious economic consequences in the years ahead. With baby boomers retiring in higher numbers every year, the dearth of young people to replace an aging workforce could lead to a demographic and labor crisis within the next few decades.

“In aggregate, all the demographics say there’s going to be a shortage of humans for jobs. Literally too many jobs and not enough people for at least the next 30 years,” Schmidt said.

Countries have proposed a number of policies to stave off the worst effects of a demographic crisis. China recently announced sweeping measures and incentives to reverse its population decline, including enhancing maternal health care services, granting 30 days of paid marriage leave in some provinces, and even discouraging abortions. Many countries are also looking overseas for workers, such as Japan—historically opposed to mixing up its labor force with too many foreign staff—which has in recent years loosened its entry requirements.

In the U.S., the population grew last year after almost flatlining in 2021, largely because of increased immigration. Several business leaders—including Google and Alphabet’s current CEO, India-born Sundar Pichai—have long argued that the U.S. should welcome more migrants to fill out its labor ranks.

A.I. might also have a crucial part to play in the country’s labor force struggles, especially for jobs that workers were already walking away from during the early pandemic’s Great Resignation owing to burnout and unsafe working conditions. History shows that technology tends to automatically fill the gaps created by worker shortages. A 2021 MIT study found that aging accounted for 35% of the adoption of robots and automation in different countries. The authors also argued that fast-aging countries that also invested heavily in their robotics industries such as Germany, South Korea, and Japan were seeing better labor market outcomes than the U.S.

Companies started tapping A.I. and automation technology years ago for jobs like truck driving and bartending, professions that many workers willingly walked away from during the pandemic. However, the recent pace of A.I. growth threatens to be far more immediate and pervasive, as a March study by ChatGPT creator OpenAI found that 80% of U.S. workers could have at least 10% of their jobs impacted by A.I. The risk A.I. poses to jobs was one of the reasons OpenAI CEO Sam Altman urged Congress to regulate A.I. during his testimony earlier this month.

Schmidt argued that A.I. would eventually become a tool for efficiency in the workforce, but while it may end up as a net-positive for the labor force, job losses in the near term might be inevitable.

“What really happens is that people like yourselves, in the business community and so forth, you’re about efficiency. Ultimately there will be lots of job conflagration, right? Some jobs are created, some jobs are lost.”

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Large-scale studies estimate that up to 300 million jobs globally could be affected by generative AI, with two-thirds of jobs in the U.S.

Large-scale studies estimate that up to 300 million jobs globally could be affected by generative AI, with two-thirds of jobs in the U.S.

Large-scale studies estimate that up to 300 million jobs globally could be affected by generative AI, with two-thirds of jobs in the U.S.

and Europe at risk of some degree of automation .

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The Importance Of Ethical Leadership In Tech: A Call To Action

Ed Wallen is the CEO of C&R Software, whose mission is to humanize collections via their world renowned cloud-native, end-to-end platform.

Today’s consumers are at the mercy of an array of technologies. This is a long way from the earliest versions of protecting one’s personal data or identity that consisted of trustworthy signatures and handshakes. Now the cost of most goods or services is the collection of personal information.

As a result, “ethics in tech” enters the conversation. With technology advancing at a speed beyond comprehension and human existence operating almost exclusively online, those developing, managing and utilizing said technology have a moral responsibility to establish and maintain boundaries to prioritize the human experience over technological gain.

How does one navigate this ever-evolving and expanding issue? And whose responsibility is this to carry?

If we aren’t careful, curiosities and concerns regarding data privacy may turn into another iteration of the bystander effect. All levels of the organizational hierarchy could very well operate under the premise that there’s no imminent danger, and certainly, someone, somewhere, is working to ensure that. Technology has increased efficiency in nearly every aspect of human life. Engineers are developing technological tools with the goal of increasing revenue or cutting costs, an irresistible goal for many corporations.

But the technology remains just that—tools in an obscure Mary Poppins-esque toolbox. It’s up to the organization to acknowledge its values—ideally for the customer and employee—and see past short-term gains when they come at the expense of brand integrity and employee or customer retention.

In what ways are principles of ethics enforced in this space? At the risk of oversimplification, it starts with the culture of the organization, and the culture must be emblematic of the entire roster. Is there trust in the leadership? Are employees presented with the opportunity to practice work-life balance? Are companies weighing the importance of the customer relationship? Is senior leadership setting the example for the rest of the employees by exhibiting the characteristics representative of company culture?

As our day-to-day lives home in around a screen and our personal interactions turn virtual, more privacy is at risk. Headlines have inundated our senses with controversial, vague or even nonexistent security policies, widespread misinformation and data breaches from top dogs like Facebook and Twitter.

Keeping in mind that the customer and employee are any organization’s most valuable assets, with every missed opportunity to practice ethical use of technology, the relationship between the customer and the brand, or the employee and the employer, is now tarnished. As human behavior has demonstrated time and time again, trust takes a lifetime to build but only an instant to break.

How can leadership and developers continue to embody ethical practices in order to build customer and employee trust?

The advancement of technology isn’t slowing down. As soldiers returned home from World War I, there was no attempt made to shut down mass production and mechanization because of a nostalgic desire to recreate jobs and reinstate manual labor. A 2019 report from Oxford Economics predicts automation could replace nearly 9% of the global manufacturing workforce, displacing upward of 20 million jobs as early as 2030 (pg. 4).

This isn’t just a demand for ethical technology practices and policies; it’s a call for ethical leadership. Even if your company is not developing software or isn’t distinctly a technology company, it undoubtedly relies on the use of technology, so no governing leadership is off the hook.

The good news: Implementing new technologies does not have to imply an infringement of ethics. Establish and secure proper protections as the company evolves and advances. Appoint personnel and leadership to be responsible for upholding the protections and do so in the best interest of the customer and employee. Anticipate areas for potential risk or consequence. Too often, a new technology offers convenience and excitement so prominent that it overpowers any hint of vulnerability or danger, and, therefore, the effort to enforce ethical practices becomes reactive as opposed to preventative.

Ultimately, it comes down to responsibility and accountability. Business leaders must do their due diligence to always put the customer experience and employee relationship first. It’s the old-fashioned trickle-down effect. If industry giants set the example, if C-suite executives follow suit and if leaders of all organizations put forth the effort to implement new technology without completely removing humanity from the equation, culturally, we stand a fighting chance at not only embracing new and efficient technologies but doing so with confidence and trust—in your brand and each other.

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Content: We need to learn that if it's on the internet, it doesn't have to be true

Children use ChatGPT in school, February 2023 Copyright AP Photo/Euronews
By Yoan Blanc, Co-director, C'est vrai ça?
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

Investing in education and the development of critical thinking is more important than ever, as it will help to limit the risks of disinformation posed by the advent of technologies such as the internet and AI, Yoan Blanc writes.

In its new report on education and technology, published on 26 July 2023, UNESCO's Global Education Monitoring Report discusses the risks and opportunities that new technologies hold for the future of education.

The report points out that only around half of 15-year-olds in OECD countries are able to tell facts from opinions.

With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), more than ever, educators play a vital role in teaching the critical thinking and autonomy needed to navigate new technologies.

As we have observed in recent years, disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories have gained ground.

While it is worrying to see the often-morbid impact of fake news, we also need to consider how susceptible people are to these theories, and the lack of education about technology, which leads some people to think that “if it's on the Internet, it must be true”.

Pre-existing issues, a smouldering fire that just needed oxygen

A pre-existing situation has made it easier for people to buy into the idea.

Disinformation campaigns haven't enjoyed the success they have based solely on a particular set of circumstances.

The COVID-19 crisis merely acted as a catalyst, stoking a fire that had been smouldering for quite some time due to a number of factors that slowly came to light.

The media has become polarised in recent years, favouring ideology and punchlines over in-depth debates on social issues.

As the latest RSF report shows, freedom of the press is under threat in many countries, including those that were once regarded as democratic.

Public confidence in the press has rarely been so low, and the work of journalists is often denigrated, even though they are the foundation of a healthy democratic system.

The media has become polarised in recent years, favouring ideology and punchlines over in-depth debates on social issues.

The lack of digital literacy and critical thinking

It's hard to properly account for the surge in fake news. The general public has very little understanding of how social media work and sometimes takes falsely sourced or openly conspiracy-themed publications at face value.

Acquiring easily implemented methodological tools would undoubtedly help to avoid these pitfalls.

The main reason fake news goes viral is a lack of critical thinking. Part of the population doesn't know how to think critically and doesn't analyse the information they are given.

Social media is the favourite channel for spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation.

There is also the question of social media moderation, which is at best inadequate, at worst non-existent, and essentially based on user reports, with the impending risk of a 'militia' effect.

It allows for swift and massive dissemination thanks to its sharing functions and algorithms that highlight the sort of “divisive” content that generates reactions (the more intense the emotion, the more viral the information).

There is also the question of social media moderation, which is at best inadequate, at worst non-existent, and essentially based on user reports, with the impending risk of a "militia" effect.

The reports they make are processed by people who often don't speak French, leading to bizarre situations where overtly racist content can be allowed to remain online.

Worse still, as content deletion is sometimes based on the number of reports received, journalists' or fact-checkers' accounts or publications are regularly deleted or suspended as a result of massive reporting campaigns.

How can we fix this?

Citizens' initiatives that complement the work of the press need to take shape to counter fake news on social media.

Because while disinformation's main weapon is virality, it is still possible to mitigate the viral impact of a publication by reacting quickly to provide simple, accessible, and well-sourced explanations.

C’est vrai, ça?, for instance, has over twenty volunteers working on a citizens' initiative to check LinkedIn posts.

With an average of 10 fact-checking operations a day and 70,000 followers, they help prevent the spread of fake news or at least encourage critical thinking by providing sourced commentary.

This is where education comes in

To stem the tide of disinformation upstream, there is a solution that is both simple on paper and yet terribly difficult to implement in practice: education.

Training teachers to work with and use new technologies so that they can pass on critical thinking methods to their pupils, whether it be social media or content-generating artificial intelligence tools accessible to the general public (ChatGPT, Midjourney, etc.).

Whereas in the past, the challenge for the public was to gain access to the knowledge needed to contradict dogma, today, the challenge is to sort through the mass of information.

Here too, partnerships could be devised between schools and community associations to train students in the use of new technologies, to encourage them to question what they consult and to use the tools at their disposal to reflect rather than just consume.

The Internet and artificial intelligence are formidable instruments, providing access to information that was previously unavailable.

But like any other tool, they need to be properly mastered. Access to knowledge and education has always been a means of empowering people.

Whereas in the past, the challenge for the public was to gain access to the knowledge needed to contradict dogma, today, the challenge is to sort through the mass of information.

We have to invest in knowledge to solve this once and for all

Learning the basic techniques of OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) — how to detect texts or images generated by artificial intelligence or how to analyse a source of information — are all skills that are accessible from a very young age and help protect the human mind against manipulation.

Investing in education and the development of critical thinking is more important than ever, as it will help to limit the risks of disinformation posed by the advent of technologies such as the internet and AI.

To achieve this, we need genuine political commitment and enlightened governance to analyse the risks and work together to develop effective standards that protect us all from fake news.

Yoan Blanc is the co-director of C'est vrai ça?, an independent civic initiative that brings together private citizens who want to fight back against fake news.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at view@euronews.com to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

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Content: Many sci-fi movies have painted artificial intelligence (AI) to be an omen of humanity’s demise. The first cinematic appearance of AI was in a 1927 silent German film, “Metropolis.” Throughout the entire film, a humanlike robot had the sole intention of wreaking havoc throughout the city. Despite this initial negative depiction of AI, technology has been racing toward the development of advanced artificial intelligence. According to Forbes, “AI-focused companies raised $12 billion in 2017 alone.” In August of 2021, Elon Musk revealed that he has an aspiration to create a humanoid robot called the Tesla Bot to eliminate mundane tasks and to make the bots accessible to the public by next year. He went as far to say that the Tesla Bot could displace the labor force, rendering physical work a matter of choice. Twitter ran wild after hearing about Musk’s announcement, with many people drawing comparisons to “I, Robot,” “The Terminator” and other apocalyptic movies.

Humans have a tendency to be wary and fearful of new technology, as seen in the 19th-century Luddite movement when artisans destroyed textile machines to protect their own jobs. The fear of AI seems to be widespread, as people are unsure of what AI is capable of and the repercussions of implementing it. The reality is that AI is already implemented in multiple parts of our daily life — the introduction of the Tesla Bot is just a newer way. The threat of AI might not be the climactic, action-packed threat that we see in films. Instead, it could be a dependence on AI that threatens to lull us into complacency.

Elon Musk acknowledges that the creation of the Tesla Bot will have far-reaching impacts on the economy — an implication that is attached with all emerging AI technology. Currently, most AI can only complete the tasks they are programmed for, and since this doesn’t require true reasoning, they have earned the name of Narrow AI. The dream of AI is to transcend the limitations of Narrow AI and reach a state of autonomy where it can continuously adapt on its own with all the abilities of a human brain. This uncontrollable and irreversible state would be revered as AI “singularity.” Daron Acemoglu, an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that “firms that increase their AI adoption by 1 percent reduce their hiring by approximately 1 percent.” As industries try to find more ways to implement AI technology, there will be more and more displacement of workers. Amazon’s implementation of AI into grocery stores demonstrates their ability to completely eradicate cashiers while creating a more efficient way to go grocery shopping.

Acemoglu writes, “Some economists think fears of automation and AI displacing workers are overblown. They argue that as work becomes more AI-automated, the resulting productivity gains will spearhead labor demand in other parts of the economy … even in the same firms doing AI-driven automation.” The problem is the creation of AI itself — the automation economy drives labor demands down without any hope of reviving it. Even further, software developers GitHub and OpenAI have recently unveiled an AI pair programmer named Copilot to help provide coding suggestions based on what the programmer prompts the system. Even though the software is “still a work in progress” according to TechTalks, it will continue to become more reliable and efficient as more people use the technology. The unveiling of this particular AI shows that even the jobs of programming AI are not secure. AI is able to infiltrate every industry, and if AI is able to achieve singularity, even careers such as being an author or an artist are at risk of being replaced.

Attempting to prevent the rapid implementation of AI is almost impossible at this point. Many countries in the world are racing against each other in an attempt for AI dominance, trying to cultivate an environment for these companies to grow and flourish. The reason countries are invested in the evolution of AI is because it is revered as a strategic technology that could help countries get a tactical advantage over other countries and help strengthen governance. China is a great example of this, as it invested heavily into the AI industry while simultaneously implementing it into their infrastructure. Following the release of China’s three-step program to become a world leader in AI by 2030, they have planned to create a “$2.1 billion AI-focused technology research park,” according to Forbes. We can already see China implementing AI into the military and smart cities — during the Hong Kong protests, for example, the government implemented AI surveillance to identify citizens and subsequently curb protests.

Due to the importance of AI to government entities and many other industries, AI has cemented itself as an important factor to the success of new emerging firms. Trying to eradicate AI currently would actually impede the advancement of society as a whole. Though AI does pose a lot of threats such as the displacement of workers, built-in programmer biases and implications of AI in our political and economic system, the ability of an AI outweighs the risks. Its pure speed in utilizing huge reserves of information and executing action could change the way we live. It is dependent on developers and users as a whole to protect in the manner of how AI is utilized, perhaps through legislation or creating open source AI that is accessible to everyone. Then we could all access even a simple version of an AI that would also help our personal life.

One of the methods Elon Musk proposed in combating the displacement of workers would be to introduce a universal basic income. With the introduction of a universal basic income, we could lessen the strife of structural unemployment and shift toward a different type of societal model — one that bases itself less on a capitalistic work life and more of an emphasis on the humanities and the arts. Perhaps by allowing people to have more free time and less worries about their financial security, we could spur a new renaissance. We could fear AI and allow it to control our lives, or we could act before it becomes too powerful, using AI to benefit us as a society.

Akshay Ma Kumar is a senior majoring in economics.

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Content: Corporate AI leaders have met with President Joe Biden to discuss AI safety as part of a voluntary agreement.

In a Friday meeting with President Biden, the leaders of America’s biggest AI-focused companies, including Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, Inflection AI, and OpenAI, pledged to continue their efforts in ensuring the safety of AI.

However, there are concerns that the voluntary agreement between the Biden administration and leading AI companies may be more of a symbolic gesture rather than aggressive regulation.

Many tech billionaires have become fixated on hypothetical doomsday scenarios in which AI becomes fixated on a specific goal and triggers human extinction in its pursuit, Forbes’s Johanna Costigan wrote.

She claimed their fascination with these stories is interconnected with their belief in longtermism, a philosophy that urges the making of short-term trade-offs for the sake of humanity’s long-term well-being, adding:

“Conveniently, this concept allows them to continue developing profitable technological applications while claiming paternalistic, karmic excellence: they are not only bestowing life-optimizing tech to the masses, they are also single handedly ensuring the tech they make doesn’t go rogue and kill us all.”

President Biden’s acknowledgment that these executives are critical for making sure AI develops “with responsibility and safety by design” also demonstrates that the White House reflects this narrative.

Costigan claimed that by adhering to the ideals of “AI safety” as defined by tech companies, issues such as copyright infringement and the presence of sexist and racist algorithms are being ignored.

These immediate challenges posed by AI are dismissed as mere risks, overshadowed by grandiose hypothetical threats, she wrote.

The term “AI safety” is deliberately vague, allowing different stakeholders to interpret it in their own ways.

It can refer to job security, trust in algorithms, or the confidence that facial recognition won’t be abused.

However, the focus on creating “safety” in AI neglects the fact that the data on which AI relies remains entirely unregulated in the United States. This lack of regulation has given AI companies the freedom to design safety standards that align with their own moral and financial interests.

Competition From China Prompts US Government to Avoid Stiff Regulation

China’s domestic development of AI has further intensified the US government’s inclination to step aside in order to allow perceived innovation to thrive, Costigan said.

She noted that while China may have stricter regulations on technology, the average US citizen is more vulnerable to encountering unmarked deepfakes.

In democratic countries, where information shapes public opinion and dictates election outcomes, synthetic images and text generated by AI pose a significant threat.

The recent meeting between the White House and tech CEOs shows a shared commitment to secure AI development, but without data privacy regulations, attempts to make AI safe are akin to “regulate the drinking of wine in restaurants—but not the commercial process of turning grapes into wine.”

Voluntary measures and general commitments are a step in the right direction, but more concrete guidelines and specific plans need to be implemented.

Companies such as Anthropic have announced their intention to share more specific cybersecurity measures and responsible scaling plans.

All in all, while the efforts of AI industry leaders to address safety concerns are commendable, there is a need for greater scrutiny and accountability.

The dominance of these companies in shaping the narrative around AI risks and safety has allowed them to evade immediate challenges such as data privacy and algorithmic biases.

AI Regulation Finds Momentum Amid Growing Adoption

Last month, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the US introduced the National AI Commission Act, which aims to create a blue-ribbon commission to explore the regulation of AI.

The proposal would establish a 20-member commission to study AI regulation, including how responsibility for regulation is divided between agencies, the capacity of such agencies to regulate, and ensuring that enforcement actions are aligned.

Members of the commission will come from civil society, government, industry, and labor and will not be dominated by one sector.

The move came as the skyrocketing popularity of AI tools has led to increasing calls for regulations.

As reported, the European Union and the US announced collaborating to develop a voluntary code of conduct for AI. Officials will seek feedback from industry players and invite parties to sign up to curate a proposal for the industry to commit to voluntarily.

Likewise, the EU has been working on its Artificial Intelligence Act, a sprawling document in the works, for around two years. The legislation aims to classify and regulate AI applications based on their risk.

These attempts to regulate AI come as the technology is well on the path to finding mainstream adoption.

According to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center, 27% of Americans interact with AI on a daily basis.

The survey found that another 28% of individuals encounter AI about once a day or several times a week.

Furthermore, almost all businesses (97%) expect to use AI to improve their efficiencies and cut costs.

Many businesses see promise in the usefulness of AI, such as streamlining email communications with colleagues (46%), generating website copy (30%), fixing coding errors (41%), translating information (47%), and summarizing information (53%).

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Administrative support, legal work, and engineering are particularly vulnerable, with up to 46% of administrative tasks potentially automated .

Low-wage and lower-skilled workers are 14 times more likely to lose their jobs to automation than higher-wage workers, exacerbating economic inequality and threatening the middle class .

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Content: Seyfarth synopsis: President Biden's Executive Order on artificial intelligence sets forth his vision for America to continue leading in AI innovation while also addressing risks associated with the use of AI. While much of the document delves into cutting-edge safety issues with national security implications, there are many provisions in the EO that have broad ramifications for companies generally, and employers specifically. The Order mandates greater coordination by civil-rights agencies on AI issues, emphasizes worker protections, and instructs the Department of Labor to guide federal contractors regarding AI-driven hiring practices. It marks the strategic emphasis on the government's internal standards for AI governance and AI risk management, and towards articulating and implementing "required minimum risk-management practices" for AI applications that "impact people's rights or safety." The Executive Order's emphasis on security assessments of AI systems are also set to influence AI risk management and safety dialogues across various sectors, all with significant implications in the labor and employment domain.

On October 30, 2023, President Biden signed a lengthy and far-reaching Executive Order regarding artificial intelligence that outlines the Administration's vision for the federal government's AI regulation and enforcement activities in the years to come. While some early media coverage of the EO has focused on what the EO says about identifying and managing AI risks related to national security, national public health and safety, and steps to develop watermarking standards to identify and label AI-generated content, the EO represents a comprehensive government-wide approach to addressing AI. The EO sets in motion action from multiple Departments and independent agencies, with the aim towards harnessing the benefits of AI and maintaining American leadership in innovation, while addressing risks associated with the use of AI.

While some of today's EO targets cutting-edge AI models developed by leading American AI companies, and delves into national security and national safety issues with global geopolitical implications, companies across multiple industries should pay close attention to some of the specific actions initiated by President Biden in today's Executive Order. Many of these actions will be shaping discussions regarding AI safety and bias for the foreseeable future.

In the upcoming days, Seyfarth will continue to provide updates on various areas targeted for Executive Branch action in AI, which may include, for example, intellectual property, privacy, cybersecurity, health care, labor relations, and other areas. Please continue to join us as we help companies better understand both risks associated with AI and, as President Biden put it on Monday, the "incredible opportunities" from the "most consequential technology" of our time.

Our update today focuses on issues we have identified as being of particular interest to employers.

1. Employers Should Expect Ongoing Coordination on AI Enforcement From Civil-Rights Agencies.

In the statement made today before signing the Executive Order, President Biden emphasized how AI is "all around us" and that AI presented an "incredible opportunity". President Biden also spoke of the risks of AI. This theme – that AI presents both opportunities and risks – is present throughout the Executive Order.

On the risk side of things, President Biden's Executive Order on AI is clear in its mandate to agencies charged with enforcing civil rights laws, directing them to make "comprehensive use of their respective authorities" to address potential civil-rights harms arising out of the use of AI, including "issues related to AI and algorithmic discrimination". The Executive Order further directs the Attorney General to "coordinate with and support agencies in their implementation and enforcement of existing Federal laws to address civil rights and civil liberties violations and discrimination related to AI" and directs agencies to coordinate "on best practices for investigating and prosecuting civil rights violations related to AI" and to provide further inter-agency training and technical assistance.

While some of these efforts are undoubtedly targeted at developing enforcement capacity at the various civil-rights enforcement agencies, the focus and ongoing coordination between federal enforcement agencies regarding the civil-rights implications of AI is not new, and the Executive Order builds on existing initiatives at the EEOC, OFCCP and other agencies.

In April 2023, the leaders of the EEOC, Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, the CFPB, and the FTC issued a "Joint Statement on Enforcement Efforts Against Discrimination and Bias in Automated Systems," emphasizing that their existing legal authorities applied to the use of AI. More recently, in the EEOC's Strategic Enforcement Plan for FY24-28, released in September 2023, the Commission expressed its intent to continue prioritizing its enforcement efforts on discriminatory recruitment and hiring practices, with a special emphasis on employers' use of AI. Likewise, OFCCP has also increased its focus on the use of artificial intelligence technologies. In August 2023, the Agency released its expanded supply and service audit scheduling letter to include a request for "information and documentation of policies, practices, or systems used to recruit, screen, and hire, including the use of artificial intelligence, algorithms, automated systems or other technology-based selection procedures."

Section 8 of the Executive Order discusses protecting consumers, patients, passengers, and students. It encourages independent regulatory agencies responsible for laws and federal programs relating to those stakeholders "to consider using their full range of authorities" to address AI risks.

For employers, the implications are indirect but noteworthy. In its directives in Section 8 of the Executive Order, the Biden Administration encourages agencies to consider rulemaking as well as guidance "clarifying the responsibility of regulated entities to conduct due diligence on and monitor any third-party AI services they use, and emphasizing or clarifying requirements and expectations related to the transparency of AI models and regulated entities' ability to explain their use of AI models."

The need to monitor third-party AI services and concepts of transparency and explainability are common themes in AI risk management discussions. While the EEOC did not receive a direct mandate to incorporate these concepts, the overarching themes in AI regulation will very well shape the discourse and future expectations in employment contexts.

2. The Biden Administration Remains Focused on Worker Protections

President Biden's Executive Order on AI further emphasizes his administration's focus on labor issues, and it contains multiple provisions regarding the responsible development and use of AI in order to support American workers. Specifically, the Executive Order states that AI "should not be deployed in ways that undermine rights, worsen job quality, encourage undue worker surveillance, lessen market competition, introduce new health and safety risks, or cause harmful labor-force disruptions," but instead be developed to improve the lives of workers through such innovative technology.

The Order also focuses on labor-market disruptions from AI, and directs the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to prepare and submit a report to the President on the labor-market effects of AI, by April 2024. Among other things, the report is to identify ways to strengthen and expand education and training opportunities for pathways to occupations related to AI.

Relatedly, by April 2024, the Secretary of Labor is tasked with consulting with labor unions, workers, and other outside entities, to "develop and publish principles and best practices for employers that could be used to mitigate AI's potential harms to employees' well-being and maximize its potential benefits."

One of the harms to workers that the Biden Administration has highlighted is the potential harm from automated systems that monitor workers. The Executive Order asserts, "AI should not be deployed in ways that undermine rights, worsen job quality, [or] encourage undue worker surveillance". The White House's fact sheet discussing the Executive Order cites "the dangers of increased workplace surveillance, bias, and job displacement," and the Executive Order itself also directs the Secretary of Labor to issue guidance "to make clear that employers that deploy AI to monitor or augment employees' work must continue to comply with" the requirements of the FLSA.

In the context of disabilities, including in the workplace, the Executive Order mentions specific technology often associated with automated monitoring. It specifically identifies the risk of unequal treatment of people with disabilities "from the use of biometric data like gaze direction, eye tracking, gait analysis, and hand motions" and encourages the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board to issue technical assistance and recommendations on the risks and benefits of AI in using biometric data as an input.

3. OFCCP and Federal Contractors' Use of AI

The EO directs that within a year, the Secretary of Labor "shall" publish guidance to federal contractors regarding "nondiscrimination in hiring involving AI and other technology-based hiring systems." Accordingly, Federal contractors in particular should expect additional guidance from OFCCP clarifying how it will be applying existing guidance, such as the 1978 Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures, to cutting-edge hiring technology. The guidance to date has been limited and simply provides that the Uniform Guidelines apply to even the most sophisticated technologies.

Employers not directly subject to OFCCP's audits should still pay close attention to what the Department of Labor does here, because there is always the potential for the Department of Labor's guidance to be held out as a broader standard that employers everywhere might incorporate in their practices.

4. The way the Federal government thinks about AI risk will influence the way private companies think about AI risk.

Employers should pay close attention to what the federal government does with respect to its own use of artificial intelligence, and the way that federal agencies will be directed to think about AI risk as they continue their own AI journeys. These steps include straightforward risk-management practices such as directing agencies to appoint a "Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer" who is responsible for both promoting AI innovation in their agency as well as managing risks from their agency's use of AI, and things like directing the Office of Personnel Management to develop guidelines on the use of generative AI for work by the Federal workforce.

With respect to generative AI, generally, employers should also pay attention to how the Executive Order takes a balanced approach to the use of generative AI within the federal workforce. It "discourages" agencies from imposing bans, or wholesale blocking the use, of generative AI. The executive order also encourages agencies to put "appropriate safeguards in place" and to "employ risk-management practices, such as training ... staff on proper use, protection, dissemination, and disposition of Federal information; negotiating appropriate terms of service with vendors; implementing measures designed to ensure compliance with record-keeping, cybersecurity, privacy, and data protection requirements; and deploying other measures to prevent misuse of Federal Government information in generative AI." As federal agencies begin operationalizing these concepts further, private-sector employers should examine how their own practices align with (or may vary from) these practices.

And with respect to the federal government's own use of AI, President Biden's Executive Order also directs the Office of Management and Budget to issue guidance to federal agencies regarding "required minimum risk-management practices" for AI applications that "impact people's rights or safety." This guidance is to include key concepts from the AI Risk Management Framework by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), such as "conducting public consultation; assessing data quality; assessing and mitigating disparate impacts and algorithmic discrimination; providing notice of the use of AI; continuously monitoring and evaluating deployed AI; and granting human consideration and remedies for adverse decisions made using AI." As the federal government intensifies its internal focus on these risk-management principles – both in its own operations and as a buyer of AI – we anticipate a corresponding rise in their significance within the private sector. This will especially hold true for companies leveraging AI in HR decision-making processes.

Speaking of NIST, the Executive Order places a lot of responsibility on NIST. Employers should pay special attention to the directive that NIST draft "guidelines and best practices, aiming to promote consensus industry standards, for the development and deployment of AI systems that are safe, secure, and trustworthy." This directive is important for employers who are either currently utilizing AI in their HR operations or contemplating its integration. Notably, NIST is tasked with establishing guidelines and benchmarks for the evaluation and auditing of AI capabilities, emphasizing areas where AI might pose potential hazards. While some of the risks mentioned by the Executive address national security and biosecurity concerns, we believe that working towards creating standards to evaluate risks related to unlawful bias and employment-discrimination is firmly within the responsibilities assigned to NIST by the Executive Order.

5. Security testing and "red teaming" of AI will become more-relevant for employers.

Some of the headline-grabbing portions of President Biden's Executive Order involve President Biden's invocation of the Defense Production Act to require American tech giants developing the largest and most-sophisticated AI models to disclose the results of certain "red teaming" security testing exercises. While some of the test subjects may sound like they were drawn from science fiction –the Executive Order refers to testing whether AI models might have "the possibility for self-replication or propagation" – even employers who aren't developing cutting-edge AI models should still pay attention to the broad scope of the "red teaming" of AI models.

Crucially for employers, the Executive Order's definition of "AI red-teaming" explicitly includes tests for potentially discriminatory output from an AI system. The Executive Order's full definition of "AI red-teaming" is

a structured testing effort to find flaws and vulnerabilities in an AI system, often in a controlled environment and in collaboration with developers of AI. Artificial Intelligence red-teaming is most often performed by dedicated "red teams" that adopt adversarial methods to identify flaws and vulnerabilities, such as harmful or discriminatory outputs from an AI system, unforeseen or undesirable system behaviors, limitations, or potential risks associated with the misuse of the system.

Earlier this summer, President Biden's chief AI advisor, OSTP Director Arti Prabhakar, addressed the DEF CON security conference, where OSTP and other federal agencies sponsored a wide-scale "generative AI red teaming" exercise. In this exercise, thousands of volunteers engaged in the adversarial testing of large language models, seeking, among other things, to induce the language models to generate outputs revealing explicit or implicit bias, misinformation, or directions for illegal activities. Director Prabhakar encouraged the security researchers, noting that it was important for developers and the government to "understanding how these systems break so [they] can keep getting better." Given its prominent place in President Biden's Executive Order, the concept of "AI red-teaming" will gain further attention. It will be an important concept for many AI applications, and not just the most advanced ones, so employers should evaluate all of their AI safety and security practices, including testing and validation, in light of this heightened emphasis.

Conclusion

President Biden's far-reaching Executive Order on AI will dominate discussion about AI regulation and enforcement for some time to come. We plan to provide additional updates as we dive more deeply in this comprehensive EO.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

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Content: Connect with us

Social

Check your soul at the door when entering the metaverse

This meat is burnt. Send it back.

Image: KnowTechie

There’s a scene in the middling but prophetic movie Surrogates when Bruce Willis’ character awakens from his session as an android version of himself. His muscles are slightly atrophied, his face is worn and long, his personal hygiene leaves much to be desired.

Watching the film, one wonders how he uses the bathroom while being plugged in all day. In this scenario, the metaverse is the real world, the meta part being the physical way we interact with it. This is just one of many parallels between science fiction stories and our perception of the coming metaverse.

The other, more reality-adjacent parallel is every single instance of racism, misogyny, and antisemitism experienced within the Clubhouse app since its release. The metaverse, as pictured within the mind of the ultimate Silicon Valley bro humanoid over at Meta, will be another playground for rich tech bois to behave like absolute pieces of fetid excrement.

To think that the metaverse will be some great thing where we can all come together and live in harmony is naïve. It’s naïve in the sense of the world we live in today, and it’s naïve as it pertains to the technology and operational knowledge and access needed to enter the metaverse.

The metaverse will be another festering boil filled with the pus of humanity; from the aforementioned tech bros being absolute jags, to a meeting place for white supremacist terrorist cells, to your idiot boss forcing meetings out of the board room and into the virtual board room.

Meta is launching a virtual world but can’t get a handle on harassment in its current VR products. Meta is betting on our collective ignorance when it comes to the fact that everything that is terrible about Facebook will now be materialized in a persistent 3-D virtual world.

And all of it is going to be led by a humanoid so detached from actual humanity that he’s become an expert in exploiting it for business gain.

Why would we think the metaverse is anything other than another manipulative money grab from a constantly churning parade of suckers?

What about humanity over the years in shared online environments gives us the impression that the metaverse will be different? There has been a fair bit of skepticism for sure, but the tech bros really, really want the metaverse to happen and are willing once again, to push for its existence without any consideration for the users along the way.

After all, we are simply meat bags filled with dollars, ready to be advertised to in any way possible. It’ll be much harder to scroll past virtual advertisements than it is static, 2D ones.

Everything will be an advertisement, sandwiched in between loot-boxes, awkward virtual chats, lame games, and a constant stream of harassment of various degrees. But hell, at least we can choose our skin.

The reason the metaverse will succeed regardless of the dregs of humanity dragging themselves into another online hellscape reminiscent of the worst parts of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and every other social network, is because the mega-rich, male tech executives will want it to. They want it to succeed so very badly.

They have been trying to build this virtual world to rule within like tiny little kings for a long, long time. That’s who the metaverse is for, them and the put-upon serfs who choose to populate their world.

The pros and cons of the metaverse are the same pros and cons we are facing now with social media, except in an always-online virtual world. Sure, there will be some fun aspects to it, but the negative aspects tend to affect humanity with much more ferocity than the positive ones.

There is plenty of research to support this. Sure, you can find a job on Twitter and make “friends”, but you can also drown in a sea of misogyny and hate, and become depressed and disillusioned with this connected world much quicker and easier than spending your life offline.

It’s difficult at this point to fully comprehend the scope and effectiveness of the metaverse as it pertains to shaping the future of our online world. Naturally, there is the standard exclusionary feature of this advance in communicative social technology, as a great deal of the United States alone doesn’t have internet or still uses dial-up.

It’s clear that this is not whom the metaverse is for, and that shines a very bright light on whom it is for. Once again, something that is being purported as the future of the internet isn’t something that will serve to bring the internet to those without it.

The metaverse is being marketed as the next iteration of the internet, as an escape (à la Ready Player One), and as a marketing opportunity for brands, crypto bulls, and NFT hawks. It’ll be all those things, but not for everyone. That’s something that’s being lost in all this.

There is a lot of excitement around its existence, but to most of us, it’ll be something someone else spends their time playing with. We have enough problems functioning in this reality, to think we will cleanly function in another while excluding a large part of the population is delusional.

Of course, it’s terribly easy to be a cynical luddite about the metaverse. Those of us who are always online have had no problem either embracing and utilizing new tools for communication or shitting on them while doing the former. The metaverse might offer us something new, with a heavy dose of more of the same. And that’s what’s so damn unnerving about it.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Title:

Content: Online scams and the elderly

By: Randy David - @inquirerdotnet - Columnist/Philippine Daily Inquirer | September 04,2022 - 08:00 AM

We who were born in the age of passbooks and real bank tellers will never feel at home in the world of digital banking and automated teller machines (ATMs). This is not a Luddite resistance to all labor-saving machinery. It proceeds rather from a general insecurity we feel when navigating the virtual space created by computers, smartphones, and the internet.

Those who venture into cyberspace for the chance to reconnect with long-lost friends, relatives, and classmates tend to confine their presence in that space to a Facebook account. In all other things, especially where it concerns their lifetime savings, they prefer to deal in person with their bank manager or favorite teller.

But, alas, transactions essential to everyday life have become increasingly automated and/or conducted online—and there we easily lose our bearings.

It is difficult to describe the distress we experience when, in the middle of a task, we no longer know what to do next. In that state of utter frustration, we gladly surrender ourselves to the gracious offer of assistance by another human, albeit a stranger. In doing so, we unwittingly enter uncharted space in which most scams take place. We find ourselves being led into performing online actions whose full meaning we barely understand.

“It’s as if I was hypnotized, and all my critical faculties were put to sleep,” a close relative told me after her two bank accounts were emptied by a woman purporting to be a customer relations officer of the bank in which she had kept her hard-earned savings. “I was just so happy to find somebody who was willing to stay with me for hours on the phone to guide me through the maze of digital banking.”

It all started with a phone call from that “nice” lady supposedly from the bank. “She said that as a preferred client of the bank, I could redeem my accumulated credit card reward points by converting them into cash, to be transferred to my GCash account, if I had one, or to my existing bank accounts.”

The lady then offered to guide her prey, a senior citizen in her late 60s, through the process. This would entail, she told her, opening a digital bank account through which the client could access all her accounts with the bank. For this, the lady caller, supposedly a representative from the bank, needed to get the client’s account numbers, user IDs, and passwords, and, later, the system-generated OTP or one-time passwords that would be sent to the client’s mobile phone to confirm the transaction.

It is true that banks have issued advisories telling their clients not to share such information, particularly passwords, with anyone. They warn them against clicking links embedded in emails and text messages purporting to be from the bank. When in doubt, clients are advised to call the manager or visit the bank in person. At the height of the pandemic, however, it wasn’t always easy to do that.

Online scammers have so methodically mapped out the process involved in a typical digital banking transaction that they can pinpoint exactly where an intervention by an outside party can plausibly be made. For people who are familiar with the way the digital world works, it may be hard to imagine how anyone could be so trusting as to share sensitive data like usernames and passwords with a total stranger.

They have no idea of the kinds of challenges the elderly face when they find themselves in virtual space. I have used personal computers and smartphones since these were first introduced. The complex ways of the virtual world fascinate me as a sociologist. Yet not being a digital native, I cannot presume to know to what possible uses information shared online can be put. With every passing year, I find myself painfully taking more time to complete online transactions, such as buying an airline ticket or booking a hotel room.

I have realized that the kind of alertness one develops in the physical world is not always adequate for the less familiar cues one encounters in digital space. As a defense mechanism, I have learned to automatically delete any text or email I get that advertises anything or calls my attention to a purchase order I don’t remember having made. Quite often, I get a text or an email telling me that my bank account has been blocked because of suspicious transactions, and to unblock it, I must report it to a customer relations officer at a given mobile number. With the swipe of a finger, I consign such messages to the virtual dustbin.

But scammers are getting better at their malevolent craft. As Supreme Court Justice Marvic Leonen recently warned, a growing number of these unsolicited messages are now personally addressed to their recipients, attesting to the existence of a widespread data leak somewhere. The inclusion of one’s name adds a touch of authenticity to these messages and, whether one likes it or not, draws one’s attention.

Like my relative who never recovered the money that scammers took out of her bank accounts, another friend, a senior citizen in her 80s, also fell victim a few months earlier to another online “hypnotist” who offered to help her restore access to her supposedly blocked accounts. She, too, lost hundreds of thousands in precious savings. But after reporting the crime to the bank, the police, and the NBI, both would rather forget that it happened to them. The thieves have not only stolen their savings; they have clearly also taken away a huge chunk of their self-confidence.

——————

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TAGS: automated teller machines, Cebu Daily News, cebu news, confidence, digital banking, digital space, elderly, labor-saving machines, luddite resistance, online scammers, online scams, senior citizen

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These fears are not unfounded, as actual job losses attributed to AI have been reported, including over 80,000 jobs cut in a single month, with 3,900 specifically due to AI .

Title:

Content: NewsNational NewsScripps News

Actions

The entertainment industry is pushing to protect itself from AI

Artificial intelligence is becoming more and more advanced, and there's a very real fear of workers being replaced, especially in entertainment.
Posted at 8:51 PM, May 11, 2023
and last updated 2023-05-11 20:51:29-04

There's a Russian cell phone commercial featuring Bruce Willis next to Fedha, a presenter with the Kuwait News and Kuwait Times. And like Bruce Willis in that cell phone commercial, Fedha isn't real.

Both figures were created through artificial intelligence, and proponents of the technology say it can help actors be in multiple places at once or cut down on labor costs for media companies and studios.

For workers and artists, however, that isn't something to celebrate.

"We are more than ever before being confronted with the reality of having to think about what protections need to be created, either through legislation or by court-made law, to allow people to feel safe in putting their image out there on these platforms, knowing that it's possible that they could then by grabbed and used by others," said Allen Secretov, an entertainment attorney.

AI, with its ability to recreate voices based on the work of professional voice actors, is already worrying those whose lives center around voicing audiobooks, animated series, games and commercials.

Earlier this year, an investigation from Scripps News' series "Next Level" found AI companies were also taking the work of real artists to build their datasets to generate work in the artists' styles.

That's worrying for the people who create storyboards and concept art for video games, films and television series.

"We're seeing a huge displacement of newer artists or entry-level artists being displaced because a lot of companies are more than willing to jump on these programs," said Jon Lam, a storyboard artist at Riot Games.

"All creative industries are probably going to hit this issue in one way or another," said Rachel Meinerding, producer and co-founder of Concept Art Association.

SEE MORE: Chasing the dream: One writer puts down her pen and picks up a sign

Entertainment labor organizations like the Writers Guild of America — which is currently on strike — and the Screen Actors Guild, are advocating for legal protections for their members, including those that would stop AI developers from exploiting "creative works ... without permission or compensation."

"With all the new technology, you know, you can bring Marilyn Monroe back from the grave, or Gary Cooper or Judy Garland, but of course, it's not that. It's a synthetic version of them, and a synthetic version of writing or acting is never going to be alive or unexpected," said actress Cynthia Nixon.

Negotiators for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said the best stories come from the human experience, but also signaled its interest in using the technology, saying in a recent statement, "AI raises hard, important creative and legal questions for everyone."

"This is why SAG is so involved in this, because they can foresee a future where some of their members are at a loss or have not been able to commercially monetize their image and likeness because they gave that away earlier on in their career, and nobody wants that to happen," Secretov said.

This isn't to say that all artists are anti-AI, but they're simply concerned about the ways it can be used against them without legal and ethical boundaries.

"We're not anti-tech. This is not about humans vs. robots," Meinerding said."This is about doing it ethically."

AI educators like Molly Mahoney note that AI can be a valuable tool that can be used by writers and artists, but not as a replacement for them.

"There are people who are really, legitimately worried that they're going to be AI'ed out of their career or out of a job or something like that, right?" Mahoney said. "But what really is the possibility here is the way that we can use these tools in order to increase our productivity in order to give us more time for creation."

SEE MORE: What does Hollywood have to fear with deepfakes?

Trending stories at Scrippsnews.com

**Skill Gaps and Adaptation Challenges** The transition to a technology-driven workplace requires significant upskilling and reskilling, which many workers find daunting.

**Skill Gaps and Adaptation Challenges** The transition to a technology-driven workplace requires significant upskilling and reskilling, which many workers find daunting.

**Skill Gaps and Adaptation Challenges** The transition to a technology-driven workplace requires significant upskilling and reskilling, which many workers find daunting.

Only 55% of students aged 16-18 feel confident in their digital abilities, highlighting a substantial skills gap that can foster resistance due to lack of competence or confidence .

Title:

Content: The landscape of leadership has undergone a significant transformation in recent years, shifting away from the traditional authoritarian model towards a more coaching-oriented approach.

The emphasis now lies on empowering employees to realise their full potential and supporting their personal growth journeys.

Today, employees seek leaders who prioritise creating a collaborative culture and embrace flexible, remote work options. However, the evolution of leadership is not solely driven by employee preferences. Technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), plays a pivotal role in reshaping the leadership landscape.

AI is undeniably reshaping the terrain of business leadership, prompting a profound shift in how organisations operate and thrive. Whether hailed as a beacon of progress or viewed with apprehension, the influence of AI on humanity and the workplace is a topic of heated debate.

For some, the emergence of the AI era heralds a promising future characterised by enhanced productivity, employee satisfaction and profitability. But alongside the optimism, there exists a palpable sense of caution - understandably so - as leaders grapple with the implications of integrating AI into their organisational frameworks.

One thing is certain: AI has firmly entrenched itself in our collective consciousness and is poised to become an indispensable tool for forward-thinking leaders. Rather than displacing traditional skills, the imperative for leaders is to adapt and evolve alongside this transformative technology.

According to a 2022 Deloitte report, 94% of business leaders recognise the critical role of AI in driving success. Yet, mere acknowledgment is not enough; true leadership in the AI era demands a sophisticated understanding of when to leverage it and when to rely on human judgment.

AI is here to stay. And for leaders at the helm of business, the imperative is not to supplant existing skills, but rather to adapt and evolve alongside this transformative technology.

Gone are the days of unfounded fears about AI replacing human jobs; instead, a more nuanced discourse has emerged, emphasising the symbiotic relationship between humans and technology. Senior leaders must cultivate their interpersonal skills and harness the power of human intuition to complement AI's analytical capabilities.

Embracing a culture of bold decision making and experimentation is essential for leaders seeking to harness the full potential of AI. By challenging conventional decision-making paradigms and leveraging data-driven insights, leaders can navigate uncharted territory with confidence and agility.

PwC's 2023 Trust survey underscores the importance of governance, interpretability, performance monitoring, and cybersecurity in fostering confidence in AI-driven decision-making processes.

Yet, amid the technological advancements, leaders must not lose sight of the human dimension of AI adoption. Transparency, empathy and proactive communication are essential in allaying workforce concerns and fostering a culture of trust and collaboration.

The era of AI leadership beckons us to chart a course guided by innovation, resilience, and ethical stewardship. By embracing AI as a powerful ally in our quest for organisational excellence, leaders can inspire teams, delight customers and propel their organisations toward a future defined by limitless possibilities.

Gavin Bryce is the chief executive of Constant Progression and group chair of Vistage UK

The need for continuous learning and adaptability is emphasized by organizations like the World Economic Forum, but the pace of change can overwhelm workers, leading to anxiety and reluctance to embrace new tools .

Title:

Content: Artificial Intelligence ("AI") is causing angst amongst employers and employees alike. As highlighted in a recent Providence Business News article, concerns range from workers being replaced by technology, to subpar work product being created by AI platforms, to overall uncertainty and lack of understanding as to what the technology can do.

As a labor and employment Partner at PSH, Alicia Samolis is in the trenches with businesses in sorting out the best way to manage employee use of AI. The number of client calls regarding the legal risks of using specific technologies, as well as clients seeking the best policies and practices to guide employees as to how to use AI, is increasing every day.

As Samolis explained to PBN in her recent interview, businesses cannot afford to avoid AI due to anxiety. "Whether you like it or not, if you're a business, you need to learn how to have it help your business and adapt to it," Samolis said, "because your competitors absolutely will."

However, Samolis also advises that businesses cannot throw caution to the wind and let employees use AI platforms without parameters. Businesses need to understand legal risks that AI can present and mitigate those risks.

One risk Samolis highlighted in her interview is that when information is entered into many popular AI platforms, the information will be used in future machine learning and can become public. Samolis stated "[p]rofessions that do not have highly sensitive information may not take issue with that, but you really can't do it [with industries with highly sensitive proprietary or protected information]." Samolis also explained to PBN that inputs can be discoverable, meaning that an opposing party in litigation may be able seek the information and questions users input into certain AI platforms. Intellectual property issues also are a landmine. Some AI platforms take ownership of works created through the technology, while others may generate pictures, music, text, and other works that are owned by others and would be illegal to use.

Again, Samolis urges companies not to hide from these risks by avoiding AI use. Rather, she advises companies to get in front of these issues by adopting guidelines for AI use in employee handbooks and consulting with counsel to understand the evolving risks from AI use.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

Title:

Content: Technology has become the double-edged sword of Asia's protests

  • Published

It began with a simple call - come and mourn the dead.

On 27 November, many in China were reeling from the news of a deadly apartment fire. After nearly three years of strict zero-Covid lockdowns, the incident struck a deep, angry chord.

Across Chinese social media and messaging apps, calls to hold candlelight vigils began spreading spontaneously. Thousands responded. Holding up blank sheets of paper, chanting slogans denouncing their leaders, they transformed the vigils into mass demonstrations.

China's White Paper protests were far from an anomaly in the region. From Sri Lanka to Thailand, Asia has in recent years seen a rash of protests that erupted seemingly out of nowhere: some ebbed as they lost traction, and others were silenced in swift crackdowns. In Myanmar, pockets of resistance continue despite a descent into civil war.

This is no coincidence. Scholars point to a larger, worldwide phenomenon: as mass protests become increasingly common, they're also more likely to fail.

What's more, the tool that's proven crucial in powering these demonstrations - technology - has also hobbled them.

Data gathered by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace since 2017 shows that anti-government protests have been steadily increasing around the world, peaking in 2022.

But last year was also the least successful year for protests, according to Carnegie's definition, with the lowest percentage of movements that resulted in an immediate change in policy or leadership.

On a much broader scale, but using narrower definitions, academics at Harvard University have been tracking demonstrations and civil resistance since 1900. Counting non-violent "maximalist" campaigns - movements that aim to topple a government, expel a military occupation, or secede - they found a huge spike in the last two decades, but also a concurrent drop in the success rate.

One theory for why this is happening is the rise of social media and messaging apps.

In the past, protests would be organised via community networks built on years of activism, which made them harder to stamp out, experts say. But with unprecedented connectivity, it's never been easier to spontaneously mobilise people - and also to track them down.

"It's a double-edged sword," said Ho-fung Hung, a Johns Hopkins University professor specialising in political economy and protests.

"Individuals need to find their grievances are not, in fact, individual - that others share their sentiments and there's a sense of community. So they mobilise. But if you rely too much on social media to organise, authoritarian regimes can also use it to censor and employ techniques of surveillance. The whole thing can be shut down quite easily."

Governments are relying increasingly on what Professor Erica Chenoweth, one of the academics behind the Harvard study, calls "digital authoritarianism". And it goes beyond mere surveillance.

During the protests against the Myanmar coup in 2021, authorities shut down the internet entirely to cut off demonstrators from communicating with one another.

In Hong Kong and mainland China, police have attempted to track down protesters by searching phones and encrypted messaging apps. Chinese activists recently said they were approached by users of fake social media accounts posing as reporters, raising fears that this was yet another way to for authorities to gather information on them.

Another tactic is counter-attacking protesters to discredit them and their movement's legitimacy. This often plays out on social media where disinformation spreads quickly, fuelled by well-coordinated trolling and smear campaigns.

Blaming "foreign forces" for instigating protesters is one example - seen in the Indian authorities' response to the 2020 farmer demonstrations, and also a common refrain in Chinese state media that is echoed online by nationalist bloggers.

But digital authoritarianism is also just one of the many ways regimes have gotten better at shutting down protest movements, observers say.

Other methods include launching stealth or pre-emptive crackdowns; shoring up internal support to prevent dissatisfied sections of the establishment from joining protesters (a key factor of the success of any movement); and using emergency powers during the Covid pandemic to quash dissent.

With democracy on the backpedal particularly in Asia, authoritarian governments can increasingly get away with this despite international criticism. "Now there is a solidarity of authoritarian and autocratic regimes, they are supporting each other… they crack down hard, and when there are international sanctions imposed on them, they can help each other out," Prof Hung said.

Seeding a legacy

But what if there was more than one way to think about the success of a protest?

Getting masses of people out on the streets could already be considered an achievement, especially in authoritarian countries where people have been politically disengaged, argues Diana Fu, an associate professor of political science from the University of Toronto.

The White Paper protests, for example, marked a political awakening "in so far as many Chinese citizens dared to say 'no' to their government for the first time in their lives. The protests were a turning point from compliance to dissidence, especially among the younger generation," Dr Fu said, adding that the protests spurred authorities to roll back Covid restrictions.

It's for these reasons that some Chinese activists view the protests as a success in the end, despite the crackdown.

"None of us could have foreseen that there would be such resistance in today's China," a spokesman for activist group CitizensDailyCN said. "The most important thing is that the protests made many 'deeply closeted' rebels realise there are actually many people travelling the same path, that they are not alone."

Pointing to other demonstrations that have flared up in China since the White Paper protests, they said: "If the White Paper protests had not come first, they would not have happened... or would not have attracted the same level of attention."

The success of a protest, some argue, could be measured not just by whether it achieves its immediate goals but also its long-term impact.

Protests, even so-called failed ones, could lay the groundwork for future demonstrations. They not only seed the idea that people-power can lead to change, but could also provide practice for something bigger and more successful down the line.

"When you have musicians that have played together, the next time they gather they can play together more effectively," said Jeff Wasserstrom, a history professor with the University of California Irvine.

Most social movements "get small concessions at best" before they fizzle out, he noted. "But that doesn't mean there isn't anything left for people to build on... even a failed movement can have a legacy in terms of providing templates and scripts."

The Milk Tea Alliance, a loose coalition of pro-democracy protesters across Asia, is one such example.

Some of the 2019 Hong Kong protesters' tactics - hand signals, flashmobs, the use of umbrellas and traffic cones to combat tear gas - were later adopted by demonstrators in Thailand and Sri Lanka. It showed how as authoritarian regimes build alliances, so too can protesters from different countries and social movements cement solidarity.

It was also evident in China, where anti-government and anti-Xi Jinping slogans which emerged from the Bridge Man protest flourished again in the White Paper protests weeks later. Many of these slogans and ideas were "kept alive" by overseas Chinese who, unfettered by censorship, continued to repeat them online and in protests abroad, Prof Wasserstrom noted.

CitizensDailyCN was instrumental in this. Leveraging social media, it has acted as an information hub by disseminating protest details and political memes, becoming a key player in Chinese dissent online.

"The White Paper movement has come to an end, but resistance itself has not," said their representative, who wished to remain anonymous for their safety.

"The ideal situation is that there continues to be voices of rebellion within the country, leading the resistance, and overseas solidarity maintains the enthusiasm. But at this stage… we can only wait for the next opportunity. I still think there will be a next time.

"The next rebellion may not be called the Bridge Man or White Paper Protest - but it will have a new symbol."

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Title:

Content: Marking 20 years
of bold journalism,
reader supported.
Analysis
Alberta
Housing
Municipal Politics

Calgary Has Big Housing Plans. Residents Would Like a Word

When cities stifle citizen engagement, it’s not just bad for democracy. It can backfire.

Ximena Gonzalez 23 Apr 2024The Tyee

Ximena González is a freelance writer and editor based in Calgary. Her work has appeared in the Globe and Mail and Jacobin.

At a moment when many Canadian cities face big challenges and changes, some city halls are slow to involve citizens in serious discussions about what actions to take.

That can drive polarization and distrust, and erode democracy.

“It’s really important for municipalities to engage with their residents on a regular basis, because the decisions made by municipalities are often the ones that affect us the most,” says Elodie Jacquet, a public engagement specialist and PhD student at Simon Fraser University.

For a sense of what is lost when citizen engagement erodes, consider Calgary.

“There’s this deep anger about the dwindling role of community associations in consultations,” says Leslie Evans, executive director at the Federation of Calgary Communities, a non-profit organization and a civic partner of the City of Calgary. “This has been happening for at least a decade now, where the city has been leaving residents out of the conversation.”

A recent proposal to rezone the entire city has brought this discontent to the forefront. Citizens’ desire to participate has been so pent up for so long that a public hearing scheduled for April 22 has had to be stretched to last up to seven days.

In January, the City of Calgary launched a campaign to inform Calgarians on the changes that would be brought about by its plan to increase the minimum density in residential areas by allowing property owners to build up to four dwellings, plus basement suites, on land formerly zoned to allow just one or two. This new level of zoning is known as R-CG.

The move has been lauded by politicians, city planners and affordable housing advocates for its potential to transform Calgary into a more sustainable, affordable and equitable city.

The materials distributed by the city lead with two important data points: 84,600 Calgary households whose earnings fall below $60,000 are currently struggling to afford their homes; and 87 per cent of low-density residential properties don’t allow for more than two dwellings per parcel.

Allowing for more density across the city, the information materials explain, would boost the supply of housing and increase the chances more Calgarians can choose to live close to schools, grocery stores, restaurants and workplaces, and forgo the need to own a car.

This would not only help reduce greenhouse gas emissions; in theory, more density would also reverse the exclusionary effects of low-density zoning and promote spatial justice by facilitating housing affordability across the city.

Pertinent questions

For all the positives the proposal’s boosters put forth, some Calgarians find the claims too rosily simplistic. In fact, it’s reasonable to worry the proposed policy will continue to reproduce the shortcomings of an inequitable system, as planning policies have tended to do. And steamrolling such concerns with a public relations campaign is no substitute for robust public engagement with such thorny issues.

“There is this overwhelming notion that it’s in the public interest to have higher density, and to change the rules to make things easier for development to happen,” says Jill Grant, a professor emeritus of planning at Dalhousie University. “All the while, planners are ignoring some of the real problems, which are about the concentration of property ownership and the inability of the development industry to provide affordable housing, no matter what the density.”

According to Grant, the failure of planners to grasp the root causes of social issues has led them to implement “fads” such as the urban renewal schemes of the 1950s and 1960s, whose scars have left barren plots of land and torn neighbourhoods apart in the name of the public interest — even as communities pushed back against these initiatives at the time.

“Planning, in many ways, reproduces the values of the time,” Grant says. “If it’s occurring in a place where racism is an issue, or where injustice is justified in some way, then planning is likely to show that as well.”

If done well, however, public participation can influence the creation of more equitable planning policies, Grant says. “The challenge is how difficult it is to get meaningful public engagement.”

Keys to effective engagement

The goal of public engagement can be to inform, consult, collaborate or empower. Of these aims, the one that gives citizens the least amount of influence is a purely informative process.

To be considered meaningful, public engagement should meet four general conditions: timeliness, representativeness, transparency and thoroughness, researchers say.

“Citizens need to know what is happening and have accurate information in order to provide feedback,” says Kimberly Jones, a research co-ordinator of urban policy at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. “There’s a responsibility by the city government to ensure that they’re giving accurate and transparent information.”

Jones notes that while Calgary’s engagement with its citizens on this important issue hasn’t been perfect, no one should have been taken by surprise that big changes are afoot.

“This work is following along after other policies and strategies which had their own communication, engagement and council processes,” she says, pointing to Calgary’s Municipal Development Plan, which was implemented after a process that engaged more than 18,000 Calgarians in 2005. “That plan envisions a huge rebalance to growth from the outskirts to the already developed community.”

But lack of transparency frustrates some observers of Calgary’s process.

“There’s a certain assumption being made about how many properties will actually turn over and be rebuilt as R-CG,” says Byron Miller, a professor of geography and co-ordinator of the urban studies program at the University of Calgary, about the changes introduced by the rezoning proposal.

“People need to know what the assumptions are,” says Miller. “I don’t have a good handle on that, and I’ve certainly tried to watch this pretty closely.”

Calgary’s city administrators have provided scant information on the expected impact the construction of 1,000 additional dwellings per year will have on house prices or on rental rates, which keeps in the dark the 84,600 lower-income households already struggling to make rent.

Knocking down older single-family housing and replacing it with denser developments may seem like a logical way to bring down housing prices. But Miller isn’t convinced.

“The sorts of bungalows built in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s,” he explains, are a known commodity that could “provide inexpensive housing for lower-income households in the market context” as their former owners with more money move to pricier options. “But what we’re doing now is basically redeveloping that very housing and replacing it with expensive fourplexes.”

So there’s an important public conversation to be had about whether streamlining the construction of row houses and fourplexes across the city will really drive down their costs significantly, as council’s planning commission has been assured by the city’s administration. That promise disclosed no specific percentage price drop.

Beyond one-way communication

Instead of hashing out such nuances via back-and-forth exchanges with citizens over many months, the city’s communication about its rezoning proposal has been largely one-way and purely informational.

In a statement, city administration told The Tyee that the content of the informational materials is meant to answer three questions: why council directed planners to propose citywide rezoning; how this change would affect Calgarians, if implemented; and how citizens could participate in the April 22 public hearing.

This week, three months after the city unveiled its big plans to change zoning, Calgarians finally have been afforded a chance to speak about the city’s sweeping plans in person — and nearly 700 signed up to do just that.

The public hearing currently underway follows the feedback brought forward by 1,050 citizens, which has been synthesized and passed on to city councillors via a “What We Heard” report; and 4,300 unique written submissions that have been attached to the hearing’s agenda.

Adding pressure to the process are incentives created far away in Ottawa. In November, the federal government announced the allocation of $228.5 million in funding to Calgary via the Housing Accelerator Fund, with the condition that the city meet a housing supply growth target of 41,858 permitted units by 2026; approving the proposed rezoning policy is paramount to achieve this goal.

A failure to meet this target would create a $57.1-million dent in this funding and jeopardize the construction of 741 affordable housing units. Building those units is one of the seven initiatives supported by the fund alongside upgrades to neighbourhood infrastructure to accommodate additional density, as well as transit-oriented development, an essential component of affordability.

Calgarians have been given an opportunity to let city councillors know their thoughts on the rezoning proposal, but voicing an opinion is not the same as having a thorough discussion with decision-makers. Ideally, citizens feel their perspectives not only have been heard but have influenced a process that feels clear and fair.

“Transparency is very important for public trust,” Jacquet says, emphasizing that if citizens believe the information provided is one-sided, “they are not going to trust it.”

For this reason, all levels of government should strive to implement meaningful participation processes that empower citizens and foster community buy-in, even when consensus seems unlikely.

“You can never go wrong with empowering people,” Jacquet says. “Because as you go through a really meaningful participatory engagement process, you’re building people’s capacity to advocate for themselves.”

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**Cultural and Social Implications** Technological integration has transformed social interactions, often making them more solitary.

**Cultural and Social Implications** Technological integration has transformed social interactions, often making them more solitary.

**Cultural and Social Implications** Technological integration has transformed social interactions, often making them more solitary.

AI’s role in creative fields, for example, enables individuals to produce content without collaboration, potentially diminishing communal creativity and leading to feelings of isolation .

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A.I. Can And Will Rescue Us From … A.

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We’ve seen this movie before. A civilization-changing technology shows up, immediately takes over, and in the process, scares the life out of masses of people who think it will eliminate their jobs and their ability to support themselves – now and forever – and that doomsday has arrived.

Then the opposite occurs, but not without a lot of kicking and scratching, and – in the cases of the most stubborn – the completion of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the process of all this, most people get it, get with the program, and get over it.

The last of these perceived monsters that would devour everyone’s job was the personal computer, the IBM 5150 that was introduced in August 1981. Now, hindsight may be 20-20, but it’s a good thing it is, as we know that the PC – and the age it ushered in – not only didn’t cost jobs, but in time changed jobs. It did not cost jobs.

Now we have artificial intelligence, which looms to the pessimists among us as a bigger monster than the PC. And right it should, as it is exponentially bigger than the PC or anything else that’s ever come by. But as gigantic as A.I. will be (and already is becoming), it also, to the optimists and opportunists among us, has that much bigger of a positive effect on our lives.

The flames of the pessimists’ fear were fanned last year when a Goldman Sachs report, for example, concluded that generative A.I. could automate as many as 300 million full-time jobs globally. Without pausing to recognize that the verb used was ‘automate’ and not ‘eliminate,’ the panic once again set in. We humans are good at that.

Now, however, the tone seems to be changing. Steve Lohr, writing in the New York Times on April 2, refers to MIT labor economist David Autor as an “unlikely A.I. optimist.” Autor’s previous research had shown how technology eroded the income of millions of worker over the years, but Autor is now making the case that generative A.I. can – and most likely will – reverse that trend.

They could have just asked me. I’ve been saying precisely that ever since the first drop of sweat poured off the brow of the first Chicken Little. A.I., as I’ve said in nearly 50 published articles, is the biggest transformation in history – bigger than tools, alphabets, agriculture, machines, electricity, the internet – bigger than all of them. But its fate, and the fate of us who use it, will depend solely on how we view it and use it.

Let’s look at the bell-shaped curve of innovation adoption. Of every six people, one jumps in early, four come in with the masses, and one either comes in way too late or not at all. With A.I. we’re clearly in the early stages, and those of us who get with the program now will be somewhere between 12 and 18 months ahead of the masses. Perhaps even 24 months. They are the ones who will prove Autor right. Said he, “A.I., when used well, can assist with restoring the middle skill, middle-class heart of the U.S. labor market that has been hollowed out by automation and globalization.” As a job market observer, I don’t particularly like the ‘hollowed out’ characterization, but I surely like the start of Autor’s premise.

The purpose of this essay is not to delve into the ethics or morality of A.I., which is consuming much of our attention as well as our fervent passion. I, myself, have done and will continue to do that, but for now, we’ll leave it for another day or another’s pen.

The purpose today is, as I insist with everyone whom I’m coaching through their careers or executive duties, to grab onto A.I. with both hands and not let go. It is a strategic imperative, that’sq uickly becoming an operational advantage. In fact, I’ve never seen anything transform from strategy to tactical operation so fast. That’s how much of an irresistible force A.I. is.

Think of that bell-shaped curve. The farther to the right we go, the less of an advantage you will have, but the sooner you jump on, the more time you will have in the advantage column.

And that’s where A.I. will rescue us from A.I.

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The shift from community-oriented values to a consumer-driven culture has contributed to a sense of alienation, with individuals feeling like mere consumers rather than active participants in their communities .

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Content: For water and energy providers, consistent customer engagement has become a critical aspect of daily operations and overall success. Why? Modern convenience and technology have dramatically altered the expectations of today’s consumers. The silent energy provider is an antiquated concept, and modern customers expect more from their utility companies. They demand the same speed and information when engaging in any digital activity—from shopping online to viewing their energy bills.

Energy providers—whether they’re coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, wind, or solar—can utilize tactics similar to those deployed by the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA), which found that strong public and stakeholder engagement has a substantial impact on the success of infrastructure projects. Transparent communication and the proper tools can mitigate backlash or resistance from the community when implementing updates or overhauls. The following are a few ways that energy utility providers can deploy the right customer engagement tools when carrying out infrastructure initiatives.

Target the Right Audience

Before launching an infrastructure update or change, develop a clearly defined process to reach out to the individuals, households, and communities involved. The PWSA serves approximately 500,000 residents and businesses in the city and surrounding region. When PWSA decided to launch a $1.4 billion water, stormwater infrastructure, and sewage improvement program, we made sure to make the impacted communities part of the conversation. Using analytics and customer data, we adhered to the following steps:

  • Deployed a geographic information system (GIS) to outline the project area.
  • Identified the residents and businesses located within the region.
  • Held community meetings that encouraged residents to ask questions.
  • Used emails, automated phone calls, door hangers, and letters to provide residents with consistent updates during different stages of the infrastructure project.
  • Created a dedicated project page on our website, updating it with detailed information on current project status metrics, such as construction impact and estimated length of time to completion.
  • Harnessed the power of social media to expand project awareness during each stage of the project.
  • Encouraged two-way communication with the involved communities both on social media and during in-person meetings.

When the focus was more educational and a more personal touch was needed—as was the case in the development of our Stormwater Strategic Plan—we recruited and engaged community ambassadors who lived in specific neighborhoods and communities. The ambassadors were encouraged to reach out to people who resided in these areas by hosting small tabling activities, conducting surveys, and joining PWSA staff at community events. This added a more neighborly element to the conversation, which helped the utility and the community.

Stay Adaptable and Remain Open to Feedback

Accepting feedback—whether positive or negative—can be intimidating. Whether you’re holding an in-person community meeting or receiving comments via your social media channels, it’s vital to encourage and accept input and feedback from the community during various stages of design. Remain transparent about how any upcoming changes and implementations will impact the community and be open to hearing suggestions for improvement.

The PWSA has also had success with developing advisory groups that include community stakeholders and partners. When launching new programs likely to impact many customers, it’s helpful to create a diverse group of community representatives.

This can help energy providers identify any challenges before an initiative’s implementation and encourage an honest, two-way conversation that focuses on awareness and understanding, allowing anyone directly impacted by an expanded service or new program to express their concerns or questions.

Harness the Power of Technology

Having face-to-face interactions with the communities we serve is important, but digital customer engagement also plays a vital role in developing an effective infrastructure plan. A digital customer engagement solution benefits utility customers. It also helps organizations like the PWSA improve operational efficiencies and allocate resources properly.

Remember that people are busy. If a customer has a question about an ongoing infrastructure project and can’t attend a community meeting, they can visit the project webpage for the latest information or email the project manager directly.

Keep Learning

The Four Mile Run Stormwater project is an initiative that will focus on the construction of a stormwater-only pipeline that traverses through a low-lying neighborhood known as “The Run,” located at the bottom of the Four Mile Run Watershed. After completing a detailed review process with Pennsylvania state regulators, we had to rethink the original design and will advance the redesign of this project throughout 2023. This project will redirect stormwater from The Run to the Monongahela River, which runs through the city’s downtown area and joins the Allegheny River to form the Ohio River, and eventually flows to West Virginia.

Outreach to residents in the watershed started early in the design phase. We explained the details of the stormwater initiative to residents and business owners, illustrating how it would positively impact their neighborhoods. The first phase—constructing the stormwater pipeline—will help alleviate issues such as basement flooding and water backups during heavy rainfall, which residents in The Run have endured for years. Throughout construction, we will maintain an open line of communication with residents to minimize impacts. Once complete, the new pipe will provide long-term benefits and address many public health concerns.

As projects evolve and move through different phases of design and construction, residents will have many questions. So, don’t hesitate to make yourself available to answer questions, meet with residents, and—if necessary—adapt your strategy.

Customer Engagement and the Utility

Transparency, awareness, adaptability, and ongoing communication are vital for infrastructure projects initiated by the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority. Using similar strategies—along with community partnerships and available technology—can help other utilities successfully execute projects and benefit the communities they serve.

Rebecca Zito is the senior manager of Public Affairs for the Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority.

This transformation is perceived as a loss of agency, echoing the original Luddites’ desire to preserve human skills and social cohesion .

**Distrust in Institutions and Technology** Skepticism toward new technologies is fueled by distrust in the motives of large corporations and governments.

**Distrust in Institutions and Technology** Skepticism toward new technologies is fueled by distrust in the motives of large corporations and governments.

Many critics argue that innovations like the metaverse and AI primarily serve the interests of wealthy tech executives, leaving ordinary people disenfranchised .

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Why Technology With A Human Touch Is Crucial For Businesses In 2022

CEO at BrightHR and COO at the Peninsula Group, responsible for the global rollout of HR tech supporting over 44,000 organizations.

The last two-plus years have highlighted just how much we rely on technology. After all, where would we have been without Zoom calls or online shopping throughout lockdown? Thanks to recent strides in digital technology, we’ve all been able to live our lives with relative ease without leaving the comfort of our homes.

The world stopped for a long time, but technology kept things going as best it could. From online learning to 3-D printing, we were still able to access the goods and services we’ve become reliant on—and we got used to it. Now the technologies we thought we would only rely on in the short term are a part of our everyday lives. If companies wish to stay relevant, they need to adapt their ways of working.

Technology isn’t going anywhere, and as it continues down the unending path of innovation, it’s only going to become a bigger part of our daily lives.

Chief among the many benefits of technology is the ability to save precious time on repetitive tasks, boost productivity, track employee performance, and allow for swifter and easier communication. The downsides have also been well-documented, particularly the risk of making us feel more isolated, putting cybersecurity and privacy at greater risk and throwing the work-life balance slightly off-kilter.

Technology has eliminated much of the need for face-to-face human interaction, both between employees as well as between businesses and customers. In some ways, this has made things more efficient, but it’s also left many of us feeling lonely. Striking up friendships between co-workers has become harder due to the lack of face-to-face interaction. If employees get too used to working alone and feel isolated, it can have an obvious impact on their mental health and could potentially lead to them leaving the company.

The rise of instant messaging tools like Teams and WhatsApp can also strain relationships between co-workers. It’s easy to misinterpret someone’s intentions and meaning when you can’t see their face. Plus, it can make life pretty isolating especially if you’re working at home, doing a job that doesn’t require much human communication.

Because many of us have work phones, there’s a sense that we take the office home with us and never fully "switch off." And because many of us still work from home at least part of the time, the lines between work and home can often become blurred. It is easy to feel guilty for not responding immediately to work texts and emails, even out of hours. Because of this, many people report feeling that they constantly need to be on it as they still receive work-related emails and notifications well into the evening and night.

Never has the human touch been so important. HR leaders need to find a way to use technology to enhance their employees' work lives and make things easier while facilitating growth, social interaction and collaboration. It might take time to get this balance right, so you need flexibility and patience.

The key to understanding where the balance lies is in finding out which tasks and activities employees prefer to be digitized and which ones they would rather do in person. Statistics suggest that 40-45% of employees prefer meeting face-to-face for certain tasks like "performance reviews, getting help with difficult problems and asking questions of their Human Resources (HR) team." However, the same percentage of employees indicated that they would prefer these tasks to be partially or fully digitized. We should be grateful that automation has taken over some of these more mundane tasks, freeing up time to spend on tasks that require creativity and innovation.

Many companies are striking a technology-human balance by arranging group social events and more face-to-face meetings. This is certainly a good start. Not only does it help maintain morale and stop everyone from feeling atomized like islands, but it can also normalize socializing more often with colleagues. This is where technology is your friend. Platforms such as Teams that have team schedules, polls and calendars make it easy to find out who wants to do what and when people are available.

Implementing technology with a human touch is vital for your internal staff. When employees (and clients for that matter) engage with your company (leadership, co-workers, etc.) they want the respect and empathy they can only get from another human being. They want employers who can respond to their concerns in real time and demonstrate emotional intelligence. They see a human voice as more trustworthy, which could lead to an overall more positive experience. This shows that your company sees employees as individuals.

Every manager knows the benefits of technology when it comes to handling metrics and data to measure employee performance, social media reach and revenue. But managers still require people skills. There is no substitute for sitting down with an employee who may be underperforming and asking if everything is OK.

Technology has improved our lives in more ways than we ever could have imagined, but HR leaders should never neglect the human touch.

Through generous use of in-person meetings and social events and understanding the limitations of technology, you can keep a healthy people-first culture that builds strong relationships, both within the company and beyond. Not only can this help the company in the long run, but it could make everyone in it much happier.

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This distrust extends to health-related technologies, such as mRNA vaccines, where aversion is rooted in fears about safety and efficacy, often exacerbated by a lack of trust in institutions .

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Content: Ethical AI is Pivotal to the Maximization of the Future Growth Potential of the Global AI Market

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming organizations, industries, and the technology landscape. The world is moving to the increased adoption of AI-powered smart applications/systems, and this trend will increase exponentially over the next few years.

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New York, Nov. 11, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Ethical AI is Pivotal to the Maximization of the Future Growth Potential of the Global AI Market" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06183708/?utm_source=GNW

AI technologies are maturing, and the need to leverage their capabilities is becoming a CXO priority.As businesses make AI part of their core strategy, the transformation of business functions, measures, and controls to ensure ethical best practices will gain importance. The implementation and the governance of ethical AI practices will become a priority and a board-level concern. The deployment of AI solutions that are ethical (from a regulatory and a legal standpoint), transparent, and without bias will become essential.As governments and industry bodies across the world articulate AI regulations, AI companies must establish their ethical frameworks until roadmaps are clearly defined. The operationalization of ethical AI principles is challenging for enterprises, given the large volumes of user-centric data that need to be processed, the breadth of use-cases, the regulatory variations in operating markets, and the diverse stakeholder priorities. This also opens up opportunities for technology vendors and service providers. To effectively partner with enterprises and monetize these opportunities, ICT providers need to assess potential areas impacting AI ethics and evaluate opportunities across the people-process-technology spectrum.Forward-thinking technology and service companies, including large ICT providers and start-ups, are working with enterprises and industry stakeholders to leverage potential opportunities. Ethical challenges will continue to be discovered and remediated to create sustained growth in potential advisory services. As enterprises define goals, values, strategic outcomes, and key performance metrics, the time is right for technology companies to strategically partner with enterprises in the detection and the mitigation of ethical AI concerns.
Author: Nishchal Khorana
Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06183708/?utm_source=GNW

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Past experiences where technologies promised benefits but resulted in negative outcomes for workers or the environment have bred skepticism and resistance .

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The One Person, One Computer AI Revolution

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I happened to watch Pitch Perfect (2012) the other night with my wife. Now, that’s a funny movie. And Adam Devine is a comedy treasure.

Jokes aside, there’s a part of the film when aspiring musician Beca (Anna Kendrick) volunteers at the campus radio station. There she works alongside Jesse (Skylar Astin), another student with big musical aspirations. They mostly hang out amongst stacks of LPs, serving as college DJs.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a dramatized version of a school radio station. “Saved By the Bell” offered a similar storyline when Zack Morris and the gang took over Bayside High School’s Tiger Beat.

Why are we talking about this?

For one simple reason. Late at night, laughing along to Pitch Perfect’s one-liners (“Look, just so you know, I’m not a total nerd. I also happen to be super-into close-up magic.”) I had an epiphany: Tech doesn’t just disrupt whole sectors, making “indispensable” products obsolete. (Most phones now come with cameras and calculators once sold as stand-alone items.) No, tech changes how we relate to one another. Specifically, tech transforms activities we once did collectively (DJing together in a sound booth) and makes them solitary endeavors.

Here’s another example: I grew up loving The Doors. I must have seen Oliver Stones’ 1991 eponymous biopic a hundred times. Val Kilmer playing Jim Morrison is just that good. He even sings all The Lizard King’s songs.

Here’s the point: Several iconic scenes from The Doors feature the band, the engineers, session players, and groupies hanging in the studio as they produce iconic tracks such as “The Soft Parade.” Likewise, there are many scenes of groups of people collectively making music in other recent biopics, like Love & Mercy and Elvis.

In a word, these scenes make the creative act seem fun.

Now along comes AI and all that is going out the window. You don’t need a bunch of people to create music anymore. You can do it all by yourself.

All you need is a computer.

With a computer, one human can leverage AI to appropriate the musical stylings of Drake and The Weeknd to produce “Heart on My Sleeve,” the pop song “created” by Ghostwriter and submitted for Grammy consideration. One person armed with a computer can also use AI to mash up Hank Williams singing N.W.A’s “Straight Outta Compton”—producing what’s being called “Hanksta Rap.”

More than that, one person using AI can sound musically gifted.

How? According to BBC News, through the 2018 app Boomy, “You choose from a number of genres, click on ‘create song’, and the AI will compose one for you in less than 30 seconds. It swiftly picks the track’s key, chords, and melody. And from there you can then finesse your song. You can do things such as add or strip-out instruments, change the tempo, adjust the volumes, add echoes, make everything sound brighter or softer, and lay down some vocals.”

Admittedly, the article makes it clear the output quality can be subpar. It often sounds “computer generated.” But remember: We are talking about software that’s five years old—pre ChatGPT. Heck, we might as well be talking about the “Mad Men” era—it feels that long ago, in tech years.

The point is that Boomy, and many other AI music-generating apps like Splice, Trymusicflow, and Jamahook, now put regular people in the creative driver’s seat. They give us unprecedented abilities. (Just imagine telling Jim Morrison back in 1966 at the Whiskey a Go Go that there will come a day when, through tech, anyone can sound like him singing any song they choose.)

To even start to grok the powers we now possess we would do well to consult Marshall McLuhan. Like us, McLuhan lived through a time of tremendous technological upheaval. Back in the mid-20th century, the Canadian philosopher struggled to comprehend the rise of global mass media transmitted electronically via emerging TV sets, phones, and video cameras.

Frankly, he often felt overwhelmed by such tech.

There seemed to be no precedent to enable people to meet the moment. Then he recalled a short story by Edgar Allan Poe called “A Descent into the Maelstrom.” The tale features three fishermen suddenly sucked into a whirlpool while at sea. This vortex nearly defies words it’s so terrifying. And though the narrator is a competent seaman, he finds himself at a loss to save himself.

This situation, thought McLuhan, was analogous to the world he found himself in. All around him were people unable to process so much change so quickly. It upended everything that had come before, demolishing reality.

Yet McLuhan did find a way to meet his moment. He suggested we could take something from the narrator’s survival approach. After watching his companions perish, the seaman decides to learn from their mistakes.

In “Footprints in the Sands of Crime” (1946), McLuhan writes: “The sailor in his story The Maelstrom is at first paralyzed with horror. But in his very paralysis there is another fascination which emerges, a power of detached observation which becomes a scientific interest in the action of the strom. And this provides the means of escape.”

McLuhan elaborates further in “The Mechanical Bride” (1951): “Poe’s sailor saved himself by studying the action of the whirlpool and by co-operating with it. The present book likewise makes few attempts to attack the very considerable currents and pressures set up around us today by the mechanical agencies of the press, radio, movies, and advertising. It does attempt to set the reader at the center of the revolving picture created by these affairs where he may observe the action that is in progress and in which everybody is involved.”

Interpreting McLuhan’s observations written almost 75 years ago allows us a fighting chance to face our own unparalleled moment. Like the mass media sage, we find ourselves adrift at sea contemplating deep fakes, generative AI, virtual influencers, AI companions, chatbots, and so many extant cultural artifacts that would have been mere gibberish back when our biggest fear was a Y2K meltdown.

But as another 1960s vocal impresario once sang, “the beat goes on.” Post-COVID, here we are in 2023 ensconced in our home offices surrounded by our endless screens and so many newfangled gizmos and applications. Whether we’re building a website or taking a new product to market, we can do what it once took entire organizations—alone.

But what if we still need the human touch to thrive?

In that case, we may still turn to tech—but with a twist. Consider how Ashley Schaer empowers her clients. A “fractional COO,” she gives small businesses an edge inaccessible only a few years ago—before collaborative software enabled solopreneurs to go it alone.

“The C-suite arrangement exists in part, so the CEO needn’t be an expert on every topic,” says Schaer. “They hold responsibility for the entire organization, yet rely on a COO and other top execs to handle areas where they are weak. Today’s solopreneurs can achieve the same results without massive offices or a cadre of highly paid executives. It all comes down to finding one expert partner.”

COOs are notoriously left-brained thinkers—number crunchers, practical, detail oriented—and Schaer is no exception. “Think of me as Roy Disney to his brother Walt Disney DIS ,” says Schaer. “Or Jack Antonoff to Taylor Swift. I complement my clients’ right-brain creativity, turning their business dreams into practical, profitable realities.”

Zooming out, the inner luddite in so many of us is sometimes tempted to throw up our hands in disgust at our brave new world in which teens spend hour after hour on TikTok—or at the very idea of OnlyFans, a porn subscription site that often feels like little more than a mashup of 20th century sex hotlines, mixed in with a video component and a sprinkling of social media interactivity.

But like with so many things—even lethal maelstroms—there’s a silver lining to be found. Sans our technological tools I wouldn’t be banging out this article on my laptop in a Seattle airport before my flight boards. Neither could I upload it for you, dear reader, to enjoy the content wherever you happen to be.

Despite such net positives, I find myself coming back to this idea of how tech breeds loneliness. Coworking conduits such as WeWork were meant to assuage these concerns. Ditto for networking mixers at which the laptop class can get out from behind its keyboards for some good old fashioned face time.

But is it enough?

That remains to be seen. For now, I won’t stop rewatching old films recalling how we used to come together with wonder. Time’s arrow is forever set in one direction. We cannot change that. Nor can we halt tech’s inexorable march. Still, my hope is that in the midst of enjoying our newfound powers and productivity we may remember what makes it all worthwhile: each other.

You and me.

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**Ethical and Moral Concerns** Ethical considerations are central to modern Luddite resistance.

**Ethical and Moral Concerns** Ethical considerations are central to modern Luddite resistance.

The rapid pace of technological advancement raises questions about transparency, accountability, and bias mitigation, especially in AI systems .

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Content: Techno miracles don’t impress our kids | Bill Cotterell

Bill Cotterell
Capital Curmudgeon
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Going through some old notes and photos from Christmases past, I ran across a Facebook post by my daughter-in-law that brought to mind something that strikes me frequently about young people.

My granddaughter, then 5, asked, “How does Santa know if everybody in the house is sleeping?”

“Well, he’s magic,” her mom theorized.

“No,” Chloe mused, “I think he’s got an app for that.”

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that kindergartners are so blasé about apps. If you can accept the concept of Santa, it’s not such a stretch to think folks in Cupertino, Ca., can design a way to let him know if you are sleeping.

Aside from an amusing memory of my grandchildren (whom friends will tell you I kind of like), the tale illustrates that technology more than ever before caused generations to live in vastly different worlds. When Chloe’s father was a kid, one of the few parenting rules I imposed on myself was to never start a sentence with, “When I was your age…”

We might as well say, “Well, on the far side of the moon,” or, “If we were aardvarks…” The world he grew up in bore no resemblance to the America of my youth or to the world his five children take for granted today.

When I was that age, there were 48 states and three TV networks. Not only was your phone anchored to the wall, your number started with PLaza or OXford, followed by five numerals. Sometimes, someone who shared your “party line” would be on it when you tried to make a call.

And we all had little vaccination marks on our shoulders. Nobody accused Dr. Jonas Salk of trying to deprive us of our civil liberties or demanded that President Eisenhower and his family publicly take the shots.

Of course, a lot of things were wrong and we’re still trying to get recovered. Things like segregation, legal and accepted discrimination against women, fear of gay people, plundering the environment — and, of course, that whole Red Scare thing that marked politics of the post-war era.

But those things weren’t caused by lack of technological gadgets.

Not that I’m complaining. Science and technology advances are as beneficial as they are inevitable. Nobody wishes to go back to the good old days (although I’d like to have my first job again at a Phillips 66 station in Miami, asking customers if they wanted the regular gas at 19 cents a gallon or premium for 23 cents.)

Kids today wouldn’t believe such prices — or that filling stations employed people to pump it for you.

What continues to surprise me is the ease with which young people not only know about modern marvels, but how casually they accept it in their daily lives — like my granddaughter when she was 5, seeing nothing remarkable about Santa’s app. It was not only the easiest thing to imagine, an app was the first explanation that made sense to today’s kids.

More from Bill Cotterell:

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The first time I noticed kids casually accepting things that completely blew me away was over 50 years ago, when the Apollo missions put astronauts to the moon. I ran out and bought Life, Look and other big-picture magazines that are long gone now. I marveled at the photos but my nieces and nephews, in elementary school at the time, just gave it all a polite glance and shrugged.

Yeah, it’s a moon rocket. It went to the moon. What did I expect it to do?

I’m not among those grumpy old guys who think everything was better back in our day. It was different, not better. Reporters today are not only more educated and (with worrisome gaps) better informed about the world, they have tools for finding out things that would have taken us several news cycles to learn.

And I’m not a complete Luddite technologically.

I’ve got a gadget not much bigger than a cigarette pack in my pocket. It makes phone calls, sends messages, gives me street directions, and takes photos — and that’s all I use it for, not nearly all it is capable of doing. My little grandchildren have slates for playing games and learning.

What impresses me about it is, they’re so unimpressed by it.

Bill Cotterell is a retired Tallahassee Democrat capitol reporter who writes a twice-weekly column. He can be reached at bcotterell@tallahassee.com

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There is significant concern that AI and automated systems can perpetuate or exacerbate societal biases and discrimination, particularly in hiring and lending decisions .

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Content: Using AI For Work? It's Bad For Quality Of Life, Finds Study

IT News Desk
Updated on Mar 18, 2024, 12:41 IST

The clamour around Artificial Intelligence continues as humans try to navigate the impacts of this technology. While concerns often focus on AI replacing human jobs, a recent survey has shed light on more concerning effects, notably the negative impact of AI usage at work on overall quality of life.

Interaction with AI led to lower wellbeing

A recent study by the Institute for the Future of Work, which surveyed 6,000 individuals, looked into the effects of various technologies on wellbeing.

They examined four types of technologies commonly used across different sectors: AI-based software, wearable trackers, surveillance devices, and robotics.

IT

The findings revealed that the more workers interacted with these technologies, the lower their overall health and wellbeing tended to be.

On the other hand, the use of traditional information and communication technologies (ICTs) like laptops, tablets, and instant messaging in the workplace generally had a more favorable impact on wellbeing.

Why is health & well being impacted by AI?

Their discoveries rehashed previous studies indicating that such technologies may worsen job insecurity, increase workload, standardise tasks, diminish work significance, disempower workers, and reduce autonomy, all of which diminish overall employee wellness.

indiatoday

It's not necessarily the technologies themselves that pose a problem, but rather how they are implemented, said the study lead author Dr Magdalena Soffia, as quoted by The Guardian.

"... it really depends on the context: on lots of structural factors, on environmental conditions, how it is designed and how it is deployed. So lots of human decisions," she said.

Mary Towers, the TUC's lead on AI, expressed concern, stating that these findings should alarm us all.

Unsplash

They indicate that "without robust new regulation, AI could make the world of work an oppressive and unhealthy place for many."

Professor Sir Christopher Pissarides, the economist leading the review, thus emphasis the importance of understanding how our engagement with new technologies affects our overall quality of life as these innovations increasingly permeate our work environments.

For more news and current affairs from around the world, please visit Indiatimes News.

Data privacy and security are also major issues, as individuals worry about how their personal information is managed and protected .

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Content: Home > Brand Media News > Responsible education will spur the transition to greener carbon neutral education according to Virendra Rawat Green Mentor

Responsible education will spur the transition to greener, carbon neutral education, according to Virendra Rawat, Green Mentor.

Updated on: 12 July,2022 12:29 PM IST  |  Mumbai
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Green Mentors founded the Indo-American Green University Network at the City University of New York in April 2022 in an effort to improve the world via education.

The Indo-American Green University Network is transforming universities into the green economy's driving force. It brings together colleges in India and the United States that embrace responsibility for the future of their students and the globe. Members of IAGUN exchange and analyse best practises that demonstrate progress toward green policies, curricula, teacher development, evaluation, learning environments, pedagogy, etc. IAGUN also evaluates global, regional, and national green projects. It establishes potential benchmarks and indicators for the nation's progress toward sustainable schooling. University teaching-learning practises are inspired by the power of being environmentally conscious. Sharing sustainability practises with the member universities, the Network will address climate action in higher education institutions.

The keynote speaker during the inaugural ceremony was the Executive Director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, Meghan Fay Zahniser (AASHE). Dr. Michal Mlynár, Ambassador of the Permanent Mission of Slovakia to the United Nations in New York, was the Chief Guest. During the IAGUN inaugural event, Nalanda University in the Indian state of Bihar signed a memorandum of understanding with the City University of New York, BCC. A delegation of Indian higher education leaders led by Virendra Rawat met with career diplomats from over twenty-five countries based in New York and Washington, D.C., and informed them of the power of responsible education in India, which can assist their great nations in achieving sustainable development goals by 2030.

In our contemporary world, education is expected to instil learners with the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes they need to thrive in societies that are becoming increasingly diverse and rapidly changing; to provide them with a moral compass, purpose, and meaning; and to contribute to their individual and collective well-being. In light of contemporary issues such as climate change, violent and hateful ideologies, conflicts, and the risk of global pandemics, education should equip students with the knowledge, awareness, and action skills they need to become agents of change and contribute to making the world a better place. Nature influences how pupils learn and how teachers instruct. This helps the school reduce its environmental impact. Green practises help enhance the intellectual, social, and civic development of the student. A "green university" is a school that satisfies its own demands for natural resources, such as electricity, water, and materials, without making it more difficult for people and future generations to meet their own needs. It implements environmental ideals on campus by investing in clean air, clean water, green energy, green transportation, green uniforms, safe waste management and recycling, and local food sources.

Together with Gopal Goswami, Ambrish Parajiya, and Bhavesh Shah, Virendra Rawat co-founded Green Mentors, a global sustainable education organisation based in Gujarat, India. They have been successful in various businesses and believe that the transition to a carbon-neutral global economy would make green technologies extremely lucrative. They conclude that the transition to a greener lifestyle begins with responsible education and involves "transversal" skills such as critical thinking, creativity, empathy, collaborative problem-solving, and system thinking. Modern education should instil in students a sense of global citizenship and responsibility for people and the environment. It also enables students to learn about the world's knowledge and mould who they are and what they wish to become, to relate to their ancestry, be open to alternative ways of being, and be willing to continue learning throughout their lives.

On September 24, 2022, in New York City, IAGUN will have its next roundtable meeting with a few Indian-American institutions at the 6th NYC Green School Conference 2022. Mr. Rawat observes that the Green Universities will become the green engine of the new paradigm of the "green economy" and contribute to the global sustainability.

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The absence of inclusive public dialogue about the ethical implications of technology adoption further contributes to resistance .

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Content: Is the Future of Work a Utopia or a Dystopia? Here's What You Should Know. Let's discuss the trends in managing distributed teams and what the future of work may look like.

By Cory Hymel

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Distributed team management is increasingly relying on data-driven decision-making, automation and much more granular performance tracking. What will be the eventual result of this trend in the future of work?

Will employees be treated as replaceable numbers as their every waking moment is monitored? Or will the ability to track and quantify more soft skills allow for a more fair and objective way to recognize and develop global talent?

Let's take a look at the recent trends in managing distributed teams and predict how these trends could lead in both good and bad directions.

Related: What Is the Real Future of Work?

The elephant in the room

The technological, cultural and workplace changes driving the future of work promise a better world. Automation and digital manufacturing technologies offer the promise of shorter working hours and more time for leisure — but those promises haven't been directly delivered.

Still, a titanic, nerve-wracking question mark provokes utopian and dystopian future visions.

Utopians see a future where technology enables and facilitates a global workforce that is able to interact seamlessly — where opportunity is no longer bound by borders, and anyone has access to highly skilled work. Without this future, innovation ability at a global level will stall and put humanity at risk of extinction. If, or when, our planet is ever faced with an existential crisis, being able to leverage the entire human race efficiently to solve it is our only hope.

Dystopians see automation and global talent access as a way for money-hungry leaders to further cut costs while maximizing profits at the expense of their workers. The profit maximization theory introduced by Milton Friedman in the '70s saw the death of the stable middle class and has caused the income gap to rise exponentially ever since. Unless mediated and executed responsibly, AI and distributed workforce could cause further separation as fortunes are concentrated at the top of the pyramid. The rise of contract workers will create a race to the bottom as employees are forced to underbid each other for the limited "human work" available.

The elephant in the room then is predicting which reality will unfold.

Trends in managing distributed teams

Most of us have used products and services from companies like Stack Overflow, Zapier, Stripe, Automattic, InVision, Gigster and GitHub that successfully operate distributed teams. These enterprises have succeeded at remote management minus physical face-to-face communication. Among the trending approaches used in managing co-located workers that can yield results when applied to distributed teams include:

  • Data-driven decision-making: This involves using facts, insights and metrics to make strategic business decisions that align with a company's goals, strategies and initiatives. Instead of making assumptions, the technique leverages accurate, verified data to understand a business's needs. The process comprises collecting and analyzing data through research and drawing insights that benefit the company.

  • Automation: Companies are future-proofing by building cross-platform automation infrastructure that facilitates asynchronous work and reduces human capital expenses and latency while enhancing productivity and team experiences. This helps to address the most significant challenges facing remote teams, like loneliness, unplugging after work and communication/collaboration across teams.

  • Performance tracking: Companies are accurately monitoring productivity and performance levels among remote teams by implementing data-driven performance evaluations to assess each staffer's progress within their role. The assessments that are performed using various tools like Asana, Jira, 15five and Impraise, etc., also allow the employer to align the company's objectives with daily tasks and actions.

  • Collaboration tools: During the pandemic, we saw massive spikes in use and stock prices of remote tooling such as Zoom, Atlassian and others. While there are a few tools (Microsoft Teams, GSuite) that own a large portion of market share, we are seeing insurgents move into the space that "unbundle" these platforms. These new tools offer hyper-focused capabilities that often outperform the incumbents. Using remote work-first tools is imperative to success. Trying to shoehorn tools made for IRL work for distributed teams will fail.

Related: Will Artificial Intelligence Lead Us to a Utopian Future? Elon Musk & Jack Ma Discuss Its Prospects

The future of work's potential dystopian outcome

What can we expect in the event of a dystopian outcome? Most jobs we reckon as "safe" will become candidates for AI takeover, with displacements only comparable to the industrial revolution. "Data-driven decision-making" will cause the increasingly rare human employee to be seen as just another cog in the machine — easily expended and replaced. "Low-skill" work that cannot be automated will be outsourced to low-cost regions, effectively building a Mariana Trench in the U.S. class gap.

Amazon has been criticized for ceding tasks like human-resource operations to bots that use software to manage and oversee contract workers. A contract driver recently lamented after being terminated by an algorithm that tracked him and decided "he wasn't doing his job properly."

The gig economy, where workers don't receive statutory benefits, will become the order of the day and probably plant the seeds of radicalism as workers become a permanent underclass with no prospect of advancement. Companies will turn to cost-cutting arrangements that favor them regarding salaries and only pay as and when they need work done.

The book Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future draws the most vivid picture:

"There's an old joke that the factory of the future will have two employees: a human and a dog. The human's job will be to feed the dog, and the dog's job will be to keep the human from touching any of the machines. Is that actually what the company of tomorrow will look like?"

The future of work's potential utopian outcome

On the other hand, there's great potential for a utopian outcome as AI and data seamlessly integrate into all aspects of life to deliver greater efficiency. The wave of automation will increase efficiency as machines perform repetitive tasks cheaper and better than humans. The emerging AI-powered distributed teams will decimate the traditional 9-to-5 jobs, and companies will repackage the existing work into part-time and contract jobs or outsource on a need basis.

We see the future workforce taking a "portfolio" approach in which they're able to pick and choose what work they want to do and when they want to do it. This ability to opt-in will create a workforce that feels more fulfilled and stable than what we have today.

By leveraging the wealth of democratization of business intelligence software and available digital insights, managers will make data-driven decisions based on accurate trends and tangible visualizations. This will remove many of the biases and prejudices that cause many good employees to go undervalued. We have seen from internal studies that distributed workers are supportive of algorithmic performance tracking if they know how they are being measured. However, when not told how they are being measured, we saw immediate backlash.

The result will be a proper work-life balance that will eliminate stress and burnout while boosting clarity of mind and creativity.

Related: 3 Elements at the Forefront of Global Team Success

What is the future of work?

What's important to understand is that when we think about a "utopian" or "dystopian" future, we're looking 30 to 50 years down the road. You have to imagine how differently future generations will perceive "work." Millennials have a drastically different work philosophy than Baby Boomers, which only represents an 18-year difference. It is our job to see this future and lay the groundwork to enable it.

The trends in managing distributed teams we mentioned aren't based on future predictions, though. They are happening right now. How will your company use them to build and manage successful teams that help lead us toward the utopian side of things?

Cory Hymel

Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor

Vice President of Product & Research at Gigster

Cory Hymel serves as the Vice President of Product & Research at Gigster, a company democratizing access to great software development. With over 800 engineers, Gigster helps startups to Fortune 500 companies unleash human cloud-driven innovation at a global scale.

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**Surveillance, Control, and Digital Authoritarianism** AI is often described as a "surveillance derivative," intensifying privacy concerns and fears of exploitation [25f118cf-5b3d-418d-8874-79d21f77d6d4_798933008_1].

**Surveillance, Control, and Digital Authoritarianism** AI is often described as a "surveillance derivative," intensifying privacy concerns and fears of exploitation [25f118cf-5b3d-418d-8874-79d21f77d6d4_798933008_1].

**Surveillance, Control, and Digital Authoritarianism** AI is often described as a "surveillance derivative," intensifying privacy concerns and fears of exploitation [25f118cf-5b3d-418d-8874-79d21f77d6d4_798933008_1].

The use of technology for monitoring and suppressing dissent, especially by authoritarian regimes, has led to resistance among those who value privacy and freedom of expression .

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How Education Technology Can Prepare Younger Adults For STEM Careers

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The landscape of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) careers is evolving rapidly, demanding a new approach to education that prepares younger adults for future challenges and opportunities. At the heart of this transformation lies education technology (EdTech), which has become a vital tool in equipping students with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed.

One of the critical ways EdTech impacts STEM education is by bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application. Traditional education methods often struggle to keep pace with the rapid advancements in STEM fields. However, EdTech tools, such as interactive simulations, virtual labs, and online coding platforms, enable students to engage with complex concepts in a hands-on manner. These technologies make abstract ideas tangible, allowing students to experiment and learn through doing, which is crucial for grasping STEM subjects.

Moreover, EdTech promotes critical thinking, problem-solving, and adaptability—skills that are indispensable in STEM careers. Through gamified learning experiences and project-based assignments, students are encouraged to approach problems creatively and collaboratively. This shift from rote memorization to active learning helps students develop a deeper understanding of STEM concepts and prepares them for real-world challenges. EdTech platforms also provide personalized learning experiences, catering to individual learning styles and paces, ensuring that no student is left behind.

In addition to enhancing academic achievement, EdTech plays a significant role in making STEM education more accessible and inclusive. Online courses and digital resources can reach students in remote or underserved areas, providing them with opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable. This democratization of education helps to level the playing field, allowing a more diverse group of students to pursue STEM careers. Additionally, EdTech can support students with different learning needs by offering adaptive learning technologies that tailor content to individual requirements.

I recently came across Jeffrey Harvey PE’s work. Harvey is a seasoned professional engineer and author, who brings invaluable insights into the intersection of EdTech and STEM education, particularly through his recent work in the K-12 space. His research highlights the pivotal role EdTech plays in shaping the next generation of STEM professionals.

Harvey's work in EdTech underscores the importance of early and continuous exposure to STEM concepts. By integrating innovative learning tools into K-12 education, students are not only prepared for higher education but are also inspired to pursue careers in STEM fields. His approach emphasizes the need for educators and policymakers to invest in EdTech solutions that foster a lifelong love of learning and curiosity in STEM subjects.

Harvey, with over 30 years of experience in the STEM fields, has dedicated his career to guiding young professionals. Having held leadership roles in Fortune 500 companies, he possesses a deep understanding of the technical and soft skills required in the industry. His latest book, STEM Secrets for Interviewing: 4 Secret Mindsets Essentials to Conquer Interviews Including the Top 71 Interview Questions, offers practical strategies for mastering STEM job interviews.

One of the challenges in integrating EdTech into STEM education is ensuring that teachers are adequately trained to use these tools effectively. Professional development programs and ongoing support are essential for educators to maximize the potential of EdTech in their classrooms. Schools and districts must prioritize teacher training and provide the necessary resources to help educators stay abreast of the latest technological advancements.

Furthermore, the implementation of EdTech must be accompanied by a thoughtful curriculum that aligns with industry needs. Collaboration between educational institutions and industry leaders can ensure that the skills being taught are relevant and up-to-date. Harvey's career, which spans both educational and industrial spheres, illustrates the importance of such partnerships in creating a robust STEM education ecosystem.

Looking ahead, the role of EdTech in preparing younger adults for STEM careers will only become more critical. As technological advancements continue to accelerate, the demand for skilled STEM professionals will grow. By embracing EdTech, we can equip students with the tools they need to thrive in this dynamic field. Jeffrey Harvey's insights and experiences serve as a testament to the transformative power of EdTech in shaping the future of STEM education.

Dr. Katie Bouman, Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), played a key role in developing the algorithm that created the first-ever image of a black hole, showcasing the power of interdisciplinary STEM research. While Dr. Katie Bouman is primarily known for her groundbreaking work in imaging black holes, she has indeed emphasized the importance of education and inspiring the next generation of scientists.

The integration of EdTech into STEM education is essential for preparing the next generation of professionals. By providing interactive, personalized, and accessible learning experiences, EdTech empowers students to develop the critical skills needed for success in STEM careers. Jeffrey Harvey's work highlights the importance of early exposure, effective teacher training, and industry collaboration in maximizing the impact of EdTech. As we look to the future, investing in EdTech will be crucial in ensuring that students are equipped to meet the challenges and opportunities of the evolving STEM landscape.

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This phenomenon, known as digital authoritarianism, is particularly pronounced in regions where governments use technology to stifle protests and dissent .

**Environmental and Sustainability Concerns** Many modern Luddites resist technology due to its environmental impact.

**Environmental and Sustainability Concerns** Many modern Luddites resist technology due to its environmental impact.

**Environmental and Sustainability Concerns** Many modern Luddites resist technology due to its environmental impact.

The relentless pursuit of speed and efficiency in technological advancements often leads to significant ecological degradation, with critics arguing that the costs of progress are frequently overlooked in favor of immediate comforts and conveniences .

This critique challenges the ideology of progress that prioritizes rapid consumption and production at the expense of planetary health .

**Psychological and Workplace Impacts** The fear of being replaced by machines can cause anxiety and resistance, with the narrative around automation often emphasizing job loss without adequately addressing potential job transformation or enhancement .

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Content: How Modern Progress Defined by Speed, Efficiency Is Killing the Planet — And Us

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Feb 10, 2022

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Image credit: iStock/ Hitesh Sonar for The Swaddle

The “lightbulb” moment symbolises humanity’s ticket to greatness, signifying a paradigm shift in innovation and progress, akin to the moment of discovering fire.

What’s left unsaid is that the humble light bulb sparked an avalanche of change in our cultural imagination. Electricity allowed us the gift of sight in the dark at the flick of a switch, no longer requiring the tedious and long-winded process of manually breathing life into a fire. This logic has pervaded our sense of progress ever since. How fast can we think? How fast can we move? How soon can we consume? Produce? Live?

The dominant frame of thought would have us believe that whatever costs – most notably, environmental – are being incurred due to progress are worth it due to the comforts we have acquired along the way and the rapidness with which we can keep expecting to acquire them.

This thinking culminated most recently in India in the form of a new, shiny little scheme from the 2022 Union Budget. The ‘Gati Shakti’ scheme, its crowning jewel, aims to increase connectivity, the efficiency of logistics, by building more ports, more roads, more highways. “The Gati Shakti scheme is targeted at aiding economic growth and sustainable development,” the finance minister said. “Development” is the keyword that keeps everyone happy, even as the powers that be constantly raze down the Earth to build more ways for us to travel faster, for goods and services to be delivered more speedily, in the name of progress and development. Our clothes, grocery deliveries, e-commerce carts and travel will reach us faster under this “development” and we can have a good life much faster too, just the way we like it.

The pandemic, for instance, has seen a deluge of innovation – not around public health, which is slow and requires patience, but around public convenience, which is faster. Delivery apps now promise 10-minute wait times for non-essential goods that you can buy in a flash however many times a day.

The emphasis on speed for trivial commodities has innumerable, longer-lasting costs. “In the name of comfort, we are creating more discomfort. The fast and furious rush of the world in the name of development is disastrous,” says Goldy M. George, Dalit rights activist and scholar.

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To Keep Our Coastal Cities From Drowning in Floods, We Have to Reimagine Land Use

Meanwhile, deep in the Atacama desert in Chile, a strange blight was to be beheld late last year. Heaps and heaps of unused and unsold fast-fashion clothing replaced the rolling sand dunes, with price tags still attached. It took an unspeakable amount of water, land, and labor to make all of it, only for it to return to the elements – never having been seen, touched, or felt by a single consumer. All this while e-commerce continues to support the fast-fashion industry’s need to rapidly cycling through outfit trends that die out faster than we’ve had time to process them.

The same applies to most other industries. In the 21st century – change is good. The faster it happens, the better we can say our lives are.

In other words, our lifestyle trends, the norms we’ve come to associate with a good life, are less agentic than they seem. It is less the case that communities drive demands for faster production of the commodities they use, and more that industries producing these things coerce demand from us.

Avantika Goswami, from the Centre for Science and Environment, too points out that this demand hardly comes from consumers first – it is manufactured by industries. Because when we give in to this manufactured need for speed and efficiency, it lines the pockets of those who make it. Take the fact that soon after the Gati Shakti announcement, steel, construction and logistics companies saw the highest gains in stock value.

And yet, this is precisely what is framed as “growth.”  And “we associate growth in our minds with something that is good,” says Nityanand Jayaraman, environmental activist and journalist.  But the discourse obscures whose growth, exactly, is at hand. And critiquing growth would be to imply that people don’t deserve, or shouldn’t want, a good life of convenience.

But the corpse of this model of comfort and development lies in the Atacama desert. Clearly, we don’t actually want or need so many new things; the rate at which they’re produced far exceeds our demand.

“We don’t need anything that is super fast, we need to shift back to methods that exist in the age of taking things slow. A lot of why we want speed could also have something to do with social media and reduced attention spans… Quickness feels like an advance when it’s not really the case,” says Disha Ravi, 23-year-old environmental activist from Fridays for Future.

Ravi’s words cut to the heart of why the ideology of speed is not to our betterment. The Internet revolution promised a lot, most notably faster, instantaneous communication. This is a good thing, to an extent. But the easy access to other people and information has turned it into a toxic heap of crossed wires where communication often breaks down, leading to misinformation and hate that threatens entire democracies, fuels conflict, and notably, fuels climate denialism. It epitomizes an age of alienation, keeping individuals in pursuit of faster goods and services instead of giving and receiving care as communities.

Somewhere along the way, we crossed over from being citizens to consumers, where we don’t owe anyone anything. We are reassured that it is okay to abdicate responsibility towards the community: individual comfort is the priority above all else. And the ability to make things happen with nothing more than a flick of the finger endows us with a sense of luxury, a sign of having made it. Time itself is optimized under this regime of lifestyle citizenship; and the cost is our very future on this planet.

For instance, the only thing we, as consumers, gain from more roads is perhaps a few hours saved in travel. But so much more is lost – and the costs of convenience are hidden from view. Even when they’re not, however, the notion that some must make sacrifices for the good of society overall persists, without questioning what “good” is. Right now, fast equals good and good equals more goods. Within this paradigm, making decisions as individuals to consume items at a slower rate does not fundamentally challenge what it means to live a comfortable or a good life.

***

Most notably, indigenous systems of knowledge – many of which value slowness and reject the hyper-individualistic focus on speed and efficiency oriented growth – are kept out in these industrialized processes, even as indigenous populations suffer the most. George talks about how indigenous values have been “swept under the carpet of capitalism and casteism.”

“This [idea of growth] is not representative of the indigenous people who have a different worldview, the trade unions, the transgender groups, they have extremely different ways of looking at the same problem,” Jayaraman adds.

For one, our relationship with nature itself has become one centered around treating it as a “resource” for constructing the pace and standard of life that we are currently accustomed to. “This isn’t to say we must go back to horses and bullock carts, but not to dismiss their importance. If the cost of a lightbulb is the displacement and death of thousands, it is better to live by the candle,” he says.

The long-term environmental effects of thinking about comfort in this way, however, will soon catch up with us. “We need to look at the inverse. Is it comfortable to live without oxygen? Without water?” asks George.

Reducing consumption and slowing down is touted as a “sacrifice.” But the sooner we recognize it as necessary, the more we can start to see “the overproducers, the fossil fuel industries and their associates, as attacking the real heart of our world: we see them not as purveyors of beneficial products, but as death-bearing destroyers,” notes Julia Steinberger, ecological economist at the University of Lausanne.

Related on The Swaddle:

Mumbai Fish Workers Escalate Protest Against Displacement, Loss of Livelihood

However, these mechanics are hidden from view in the name of comfort, progress, and an inexorable rush away from what we’ve come to see as “primitive” or “slow.” A few steps behind the material comforts we’ve become more than accustomed to lie “other” people are sacrificed for these comforts. A few steps ahead, our own people are sacrificed for the comforts of elites above us. And on and on it goes until humanity extinguishes itself – all in service of a quality life that never felt that good or comfortable to begin with.

5G and bullet trains, when they properly arrive, will once again reset the normal for what the pace of life should be, as opposed to what it needs to be. But what’s so good about speed? Other alternatives exist. “[These alternatives] don’t valorize simplicity – they valorize health, time, community, land, these are all slow,” says Jayaraman.

What do we do about all this? One framework to think through it is that of survival versus luxury emissions. Enter the “degrowth” school of thought. Proponents argue that changing the paradigm of growth to decenter the economy and slow down how we live to just what consuming and emitting what we need, would reduce the chasm between the global North and South.

There is also another model of governance itself, that doesn’t look for the big changes we need from the state or from corporations. Radical ecological democracy, as Ashish Kothari explains, “puts collectives and communities at the center of governance and the economy.”

Techno-optimists would have us believe that it is possible and desirable to maintain the current pace of life, while also being sustainable. However, emerging research suggests otherwise: “unless we tackle the ‘root causes of vulnerability’ (i.e. the systemic and historically laden inequities based on extraction, colonialism, anthropocentricism etc.) through social and behavioural approaches, these tech fixes are, at best, bandages,” notes Chandni Singh, senior research consultant at the Indian Institute of Human Settlements. “Transformational change, the type needed for grave problems, requires a complete reimagination of human-nature relationships, societal functioning, and changes in our financial systems.”

Slowing down, therefore, doesn’t mean renouncement. Clearly, speed – defined even scientifically as the rate of displacement – leaves people behind. On the other hand, nobody is likely to suffer from slowness. Think about it: slower workdays. A slower pace of life. More rest and relaxation. In an economy designed to churn out maximum labor for minimum returns in the name of efficiency, rest can be resistance in more ways than one. It allows, simultaneously, for bodies and the planet to heal.

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Written By Rohitha Naraharisetty

Rohitha Naraharisetty is an Associate Editor at The Swaddle. Previously, she was a freelance writer and independent researcher working in the intersection of gender, social movements, and international relations. She can be found on Instagram at @rohitha_97 or on Twitter at @romimacaronii.

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The latest in health, gender & culture in India -- and why it matters. Delivered to your inbox weekly.

Automation can also negatively affect workers’ health and wellbeing by increasing workloads, standardizing tasks, and diminishing the meaningfulness and autonomy of work .

Title:

Content: Sustainability & digital skills: Education can change world

Capgemini’s Subrahmanyam Kanakadandi and Jean-Baptiste Perrin discuss the link between digital skills among the youth and the advancement of sustainability

Today’s world is facing a twin challenge: recovering from the pandemic, and struggling to become more sustainable. As we shift from the pandemic, a big realisation across companies and governments alike is the role that education plays in ensuring an analytical and scientific response to the challenges we face.

In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of terms such as digital natives associated with the younger generation. However, the ability to use digital devices and consume digital content does not necessarily translate well to enhancing employment prospects for all. Today’s digital world, with its massive amounts of information and misinformation, requires an unprecedented level of fluidity from students. They must be able to distinguish fact from opinion, objectivity from bias, and honesty from insincerity in an online setting.

They must understand the risks of technology and the internet, and how to mitigate those risks. At the same time, the digital world requires them to have the soft skills of an adapter, a creator, a problem solver, and a critical thinker. Are students ready?

Why we need to understand digital skills

The worrying answer is that not all students may be ready for a digital future. In a new comprehensive report from the Capgemini Research Institute titled Future-Ready Education, we found that across all students aged 16–18, only 55% say they have the digital skills necessary to be successful in today’s workforce.

More worryingly, there also appears to be a perception gap between teachers and parents when it comes to the abilities of students, and their perception of students. The usage of digital media is often conflated with digital skills, leading teachers and parents to overestimate their students’ abilities and knowledge of digital technologies.

Digital skills as a competency include four categories: digital literacy (understanding how computers, the internet and mobile devices work), digital citizenship (engaging in appropriate and responsible behaviours online), data literacy (understanding how to work with data and how to analyse and interpret it) and media literacy (understanding how to determine which online sources are credible, with the ability to evaluate content online).

The growing importance of soft and green skills

The digital world requires students to have the soft skills of an adapter, creator, problem solver and critical thinker. Creative thinking and analytical thinking are the most important skills for workers in 2023 and are the top two fastest-growing skills per the latest Future of Jobs Report from the World Economic Forum. Our research found that a large share of students lack key soft skills for employment.

At the same time, green skills have gained prominence in recent years.  Green skills enable students to live sustainably and manage their carbon footprint in a more effective manner. These skills can empower students to become changemakers in their own communities. One of the significant benefits of green skills is that they unlock new opportunities in emerging fields related to sustainability, providing a competitive edge in the job market. While nearly 80% of students globally say in our survey they are knowledgeable about recycling and waste reduction, only about half say they are knowledgeable about environmental policy (54%) and climate change (58%).

The rise of Generative AI

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a key skill for future jobs and has the potential to disrupt education. Nearly 60% of secondary school teachers globally believe interacting with AI systems will be a skill required for jobs in the future. A majority of teachers have experimented with ChatGPT already and while they are worried about its impact on learning, many can also see its potential.

Globally, 52% of secondary school teachers in our survey believe AI tools like ChatGPT will change the teaching profession for the better. However, this would require adapting curriculums and assessments to account for student use of AI-generated content, which over half (56%) of secondary school teachers globally agree with.

Education as a driver of progress

In today’s interconnected world the future success of students depends on their digital literacy. Teaching digital skills to young children and teenagers in secondary education is crucial, particularly in a world that is rapidly shaped and transformed by AI. It allows them to engage with technology safely and responsibly, and equips them with the tools they need to succeed in a changing world.

Despite growing up surrounded by technology, not all of today’s students have the digital skills required to use technology effectively and confidently for their education, or for their future role in the workforce. The digital divide is not just about access to the internet and devices, but about the proficiency gap between students who have the digital skills to succeed and those who do not.

Addressing these gaps can help support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Goal #4 (providing equitable access to quality education) and Goal #8 (enabling decent work and economic growth). Digital skills enable digitisation, internet penetration, and accessible technology and are therefore the key to improving the existing structural flaws. While strengthening education systems will help mobilise new streams of progress and boost productivity and quality of work, innovation in education is the key to making sure our future workforce is positively transformed by AI and technology.

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Employees may feel like replaceable numbers in a data-driven environment, fostering alienation and a sense that their work is undervalued .

Title:

Content: AI still far more expensive than humans in most jobs: MIT study

AI could overtake humans if the costs of its deployment come down or if it is deployed via AI-as-a-service platforms that have greater scale than individual firms.

Countering several recent reports that suggest AI will take away millions of jobs, researchers at MIT have found that it is still a lot cheaper to use humans for most jobs in the US.

In a paper titled “Beyond AI Exposure,” MIT FutureTech, along with The Productivity Institute and IBM’s Institute for Business Value offers a detailed evaluation of tasks viable for automation, specifically in the realm of computer vision.

“We find that at today’s costs, US businesses would choose not to automate most vision tasks that have ‘AI Exposure,’ and that only 23% of worker wages being paid for vision tasks would be attractive to automate,” researchers said in the paper.

This report arrives amidst growing assertions from various agencies and companies about the potential of AI to supplant human roles. The IMF analysis said that AI could affect up to 40% of jobs worldwide, with the figure potentially rising to 60% in more developed economies.

A World Economic Forum survey indicated that nearly 75% of companies anticipate adopting generative AI, ranking it just behind humanoid and industrial robots in terms of expected job displacement.

AI impact is gradual but substantial

However, this does not rule out AI eventually taking over human jobs. The MIT paper pointed out that AI could overtake humans if the costs of its deployment come down or if it is deployed via AI-as-a-service platforms that have greater scale than individual firms. The overall conclusion of the paper is that AI job displacement would be slower than expected.

“The economics of AI can be made more attractive, either through decreases in the

cost of deployments or by increasing the scale at which deployments are made, for example by rolling-out AI-as-a-service platforms, which we also explore,” the researchers said in the paper. “Overall, our model shows that the job loss from AI computer vision, even just within the set of vision tasks, will be smaller than the existing job churn seen in the market, suggesting that labor replacement will be more gradual than abrupt.”

The paper also observed that the majority of earlier reports on this topic lack clarity on the specific timeline and scale of automation. This ambiguity stems from the fact that such predictions often fail to address the direct technical feasibility or economic practicality of AI systems. Instead, they rely on a comparative analysis of tasks against AI capabilities to suggest a potential for automation.

A grounded estimate of automation

The MIT study is significant because researchers followed an approach that took several important factors into play. They address three important shortcomings of AI exposure models to construct a more economically grounded estimate of task automation.

Initially, they conducted surveys with workers knowledgeable about the tasks to gauge the performance needed from an automated system. Then, they developed a model to calculate the costs associated with constructing AI systems capable of achieving such performance, a crucial step given that highly precise systems can incur significant expenses. Finally, they assessed the economic appeal of adopting AI.

“Consider a small bakery evaluating whether to automate with computer vision,” the paper said. “One task that bakers do is to visually check their ingredients to ensure they are of sufficient quality (e.g., unspoiled). This task could theoretically be replaced with a computer vision system by adding a camera and training the system to detect food that has gone bad.”

For a small bakery employing five bakers with typical annual salaries of $48,000 each, the potential labor savings from automation amount to $14,000 yearly. Given that this sum falls short of the expenses associated with developing, deploying, and maintaining a computer vision system, it is economically unfeasible for this bakery to replace human labor with AI.

Copyright © 2024 IDG Communications, Inc.

It’s time to break the ChatGPT habit
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The reduction in face-to-face interactions due to automation can lead to feelings of isolation and negatively affect team dynamics and morale .

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Content: Latest Thoughtworks Looking Glass Brings Into Focus the Ethical Implications of Technology

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Thoughtworks today released Looking Glass, a guide to the critical technology-driven shifts set to shape business in 2022 and beyond.

CHICAGO--()--Thoughtworks (NASDAQ: TWKS), a global technology consultancy that integrates strategy, design and engineering to drive digital innovation, today released Looking Glass, a guide to the critical technology-driven shifts set to shape business in 2022 and beyond. Based on Thoughtworks’ unique approach to delivering cutting-edge innovation to businesses before new technologies reach mass adoption, this report offers industry leaders recommendations on how to best compete and become disruptors themselves.

Metaverse promises endless possibilities for consumers and businesses to work, live, play and learn in this new medium of extended reality (XR) technology. When XR is combined with artificial intelligence (AI) and devices, there are many inventive ways to play to human strengths and produce good outcomes that benefit society. Yet, it’s important to bear in mind that these technologies change the user experience and people represent themselves differently in virtual worlds, which can have moral and ethical implications.

As AI-supported techniques become more mainstream, they can touch on more areas of our lives and their impacts need to be considered from an ethical perspective,” said Dr. Rebecca Parsons, chief technology officer at Thoughtworks. “Thus, it will be important for businesses to develop balanced and productive partnerships between their people and AI to extract maximum value from emerging technologies such as extended reality solutions, while also remaining mindful of the potential ethical implications. Understanding how AI systems work is key to perceiving and mitigating against unintended consequences.”

The five lenses in today’s Looking Glass report are:

  • Evolving the human-machine experience: In moving with some inevitability toward the metaverse, the physical and digital worlds will further converge in a way that will open new possibilities for businesses.
  • Partnering with AI: Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) continue to gain traction across industries. We are seeing rapid adoption in use cases that range from automating everyday operational processes, to augmenting strategic decision-making.
  • Accelerating towards sustainability: As consumers, governments and investors demand greater environmental accountability from companies, going green has gone from being optional to a business imperative.
  • Expanding impact of hostile tech: ‘Hostile’ technology is commonly associated with criminal activity such as ransomware, breaking into a system to steal data or creating computer viruses — but this misses the complete picture. The landscape is evolving in a way that the definition of hostile tech should be broadened to include legal, even widely accepted, acts that ultimately threaten societal well-being.
  • Realizing the potential of platforms: Platform building is core to modern business strategy - yet also an area that’s fraught with ambiguities. We see a new focus on resolving the uncertainties around platforms and connecting platform building to clearly defined business goals.

Thoughtworks’ Looking Glass is updated on an annual basis, to keep pace with the constant shifts in technology priorities and applications for businesses. Visit thoughtworks.com/insights/business to stay up to date with the latest business and industry insights for digital leaders.

Supporting resources:

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About Thoughtworks

Thoughtworks is a global technology consultancy that integrates strategy, design and engineering to drive digital innovation. We are 10,000+ people strong across 48 offices in 17 countries. Over the last 25+ years, we’ve delivered extraordinary impact together with our clients by helping them solve complex business problems with technology as the differentiator.

Contacts

Media:
Linda Horiuchi, global head of public relations
Email: linda.horiuchi@thoughtworks.com
Phone: +1 (646) 581-2568

Release Summary

Thoughtworks today released Looking Glass, a guide to the critical technology-driven shifts set to shape business in 2022 and beyond.

Contacts

Media:
Linda Horiuchi, global head of public relations
Email: linda.horiuchi@thoughtworks.com
Phone: +1 (646) 581-2568

Title:

Content: What Is Co-Creation in the Context of Architecture and Urban Planning?

What Is Co-Creation in the Context of Architecture and Urban Planning?

In recent years, the term “co-creation,” a buzzword in the business and management sector, has made its way into the architecture and urban planning discourse. The term is used to define a large concept that describes working intentionally with others to create something jointly. But architecture is already the result of a collaboration between multiple actors, architects, clients, investors, developers, and local administration, to name a few. Can the term still apply to this field, can it bring forth new forms of knowledge, and does it differ from the concept of participatory design?

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The term appears to have originated in the business sector, with some mentions in the early 1990s and its popularization in the 2000s, with C.K. Prahalad and Venkatram Ramaswamy’s article in the Harvard Business Review. The article describes a paradigm shift as globalization and technology developments challenge the traditional role of the expert. The new marketplace is beginning to understand that consumers have become a new source of competence, a source that can be tapped into to increase the value of the product. Now a similar shift is taking place in the world of design.

Since the onset of Modernism, and maybe even before, the image of the architect has been mystified as a strong-willed, free-thinking, and uncompromising figure. In stories such as Ayn Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead,” this romanticized heroic character is caught in a struggle between his own creative vision and the external collective opposition, an image reminiscent of Modernist architects such as Mies van der Rohe or Le Corbusier that has leaked into contemporary renditions of the starchitect. The image of a collective process of design stands in stark contrast to this. As architectural problems are growing in complexity, the necessity to find new methods of communicating and collaborating efficiently increases. Involving not just the typical actors but also the end-users in the design process promises to offer multiple advantages by deepening the understanding of the larger context, empowering communities, and generating long-lasting change.

Related Article

The Expert Citizen: A Change of Perspectives in Participatory Design

A Citywide People’s Network: The Example of Jhenaidah

Jhenaidah is a city in southwest Bangladesh built along the Nobogonga River. Despite being an important resource for the city, throughout the years, the river has become neglected, polluted, and even dangerous. A self-initiated local organization set out to change this and return the river to the inhabitants. The resulting project developed through an intensive dialogue between the architects at Co.Creation.Architects, the local municipality, and the local community. Small and accessible interventions along the riverfront transformed it into an accessible, open, and vibrant public space.

One of the keys to this success is the design process that stood behind it. The architects worked closely with the residents, especially the vulnerable groups such as women, children, the elderly, and the disabled. By implementing their inputs, like installing changing cabins or slip-safe paving, the architects ensured that the solutions provided an answer to their specific needs. The architects are also talking about the act of co-creating not just with humans but also with the surrounding natural context. According to them, the process of adapting to the environment is naturally occurring in communities. Thus, the role of the architect is to facilitate communication and bridge the gap between local communities and the authorities and professionals.

Although the project is ongoing, the effects on the quality of urban spaces are visible and felt by the local communities and the city at large. The people are bringing a deeper understanding of their environment while also changing their perspective on it. Once they can affect change in their spaces, they feel more connected to them. This also has a snowballing effect. Once local organizations see that change is possible, more and more initiatives are born, further developing well-adapted and site-specific solutions.

Is Co-Creation Reserved for Public Projects?

Most user-centered design initiatives focus on public spaces and larger communities, making it easy to dismiss the idea when it comes to smaller or privately-owned projects. Here communication with the client is often more straightforward. But the client and the user are not always the same entity. Taking into consideration all those affected by the project and involving them in the process ensures the projects are better fitted to the reals needs and, thus, more profitable for the client or developer.

A housing development in Amsterdam proves the contrary, demonstrating the advantages of involving future residents in the process and giving them the freedom to define their needs, both in terms of individual homes and collective spaces. The EnBloc project by Marc Koehler Architects developed a method for working with future residents in a cohesive and productive way. It uses a Tetris game approach, creating a system of units of 30 or 50 square meters. The units can be linked both vertically and horizontally, allowing the residents to vary the size of their homes according to their needs and budgets. The units were also empty, so the residents worked with the architects to create personalized solutions and create the rooms and spaces they needed. The project looks and feels coherent because f the framework developed by the architects, yet it empowers the residents, who were involved from the start, to create the spaces and communities they wished for.

And something else I find important: you move somewhere where you have known your neighbors for five years. This co-creation element in the design process creates social cohesion. As far as I’m concerned, it should be mandatory in new construction projects. – Iwan, one of the residents of EnBloc

Co-Creation: Beyond Participatory Design

Both terms, co-creation and participatory design, refer to aspects of Human or User-Centered Design, an attitude based on the belief that everybody can meaningfully participate in the act of design. Participatory design is often centered on the involvement factor, aiming to create a design that is centered on the users’ involvement in it. While there are some successful renditions of this concept, it often takes the form of token participation, mimicking involvement but avoiding to enact real change. Participatory design is also interpreted as consulting the community at one stage of the process, picking up the ideas suggested, and moving forward with the process.

On the other hand, Co-design refers to a collective creativity that is applied across the whole span of a design process. The concept understands the users and other parties as sources of competence, exploiting their knowledge about their own needs. The concept is also aligned with Jeremy Till’s idea of the expert citizen, viewing residents as experts in their environment and their needs. The result is a design process based on a collaboration between experts in different fields. Therefore, the users become part of knowledge gathering, idea generation, and concept development. The architect or designer retains responsibility for the design, acts as a moderator between experts and creates the structure of the process of collaboration.

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Cite: Maria-Cristina Florian. "What Is Co-Creation in the Context of Architecture and Urban Planning?" 17 Nov 2022. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/992363/what-is-co-creation-in-the-context-of-architecture-and-urban-planning> ISSN 0719-8884

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**Generational and Demographic Differences** Older generations often exhibit insecurity in navigating digital technologies, preferring traditional methods due to unfamiliarity and lack of confidence .

Title:

Content: The Future of Work: How Automation and AI Are Redefining Jobs

It is no secret that automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are rapidly reshaping the traditional outlook of the workplace. The evolution unfolding before our eyes is a sight to behold as humanity embraces technological advances.
Artificial intelligence enhances human capabilities by allowing professionals to use new tools and data-driven insights. (Unsplash)

By : Marius Ilgauskas

It is no secret that automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are rapidly reshaping the traditional outlook of the workplace. The evolution unfolding before our eyes is a sight to behold as humanity embraces technological advances. The idea of what the future workplace could look like takes center stage. In truth, there's no stopping this cannonball. AI is redefining industries and transforming job responsibilities, from self-driving cars to automated customer service chatbots.

In reality, the rapid advancement of automation and AI presents a dual prospect: promising convenience and efficiency while raising concerns about job displacement and the necessity of skill upgrades. In this article, we delve into the profound impact of automation and AI on the future of work, examining how they will fundamentally reshape its nature. Additionally, we discuss strategies for individuals and businesses to adapt to this evolving environment successfully.

Understanding AI

Learning about artificial intelligence is akin to diving into a huge and enigmatic ocean, where each wave unveils a new complexity. It's a delicate balancing act between human brilliance and the persistent pursuit of clever machines. AI, using neural networks and algorithms, reveals the secrets of data and converts them into usable insights. It is the unseen force that guides autonomous vehicles, forecasts market trends, and even decodes the complexities of human emotions.

However, underneath its seemingly supernatural prowess lies a never-ending search for improvement as AI learns and adapts through infinite repetitions. As we work to understand AI, we open the door to a future full of limitless possibilities and the opportunity for unparalleled advancement. It is an intellectual journey that invites us to delve into undiscovered realms of creativity and redefine the boundaries of human potential. So, how has AI redefined the performance of jobs?

The Rise of Automation

AI and robotics-driven automation is streamlining repetitive and monotonous work in various industries. Routine tasks are being handed over to machines and algorithms, allowing businesses to increase productivity and cut expenses.

Automation has advanced significantly in several industries, including manufacturing, shipping, and customer service. To be competitive in the workforce, people must develop new skills in light of this transformation.

AI: Augmenting Human Intelligence

Artificial intelligence enhances human capabilities by allowing professionals to use new tools and data-driven insights. AI-powered algorithms can evaluate massive volumes of data, resulting in more accurate decision-making and better outcomes. AI is altering processes, increasing efficiency, and allowing people to focus on higher-value jobs that demand creativity and critical thinking in industries such as healthcare, finance, and marketing.

Job Transformation and Skill Requirements

Automation and artificial intelligence are not necessarily destroying employment but rather altering them. Machines are taking over repetitive, easily automated jobs, freeing human workers to focus on tasks that require emotional intelligence, complex problem-solving, and creativity.

As a result, critical thinking, adaptability, and cooperation abilities are in high demand. Individuals must upskill and reskill to remain competitive, and enterprises must establish a workforce capable of efficiently exploiting technology.

AI-controlled drone 'kills' its human operator in simulated test in US

New Opportunities and Industries

While certain job roles may become outdated, automation and AI are also opening up new and exciting career opportunities. Emerging technologies are not only transforming existing sectors but also giving rise to entirely new industries and job categories. Autonomous vehicles, virtual reality, renewable energy, and blockchain technology are just a few examples.

Embracing these technological advancements can lead to the creation of new and rewarding careers for individuals who are willing to adapt and seize these promising prospects.

The Human-Machine Collaboration

The future of employment will involve humans collaborating with machines rather than a battle between the two. AI and human cooperation can produce exceptional outcomes. Organizations may create workflows that maximize human creativity and intuition while utilizing AI for data analysis and decision support. Increased productivity, enhanced customer experiences, and creative problem-solving may result from this collaboration.

Another interesting form of this collaboration has proved beneficial for online shoppers, especially sneakerheads. If you're one of them, you know that merchants may restrict you to a single limited-edition pair. With AI-enabled bots and reliable proxies, one can purchase additional pairs and get ahead of the game. As a renowned e-commerce automation provider, sneaker proxies by MarsProxies are popular with trendsetters.

Final Thoughts

Despite the fear sown by some experts on career losses as AI takes over, people need to see this as a new chance to discover new skills and practice continuous education. When machines and humans work together and bank on their capabilities, the future cannot be brighter.

Automation and artificial intelligence are driving substantial changes in the future of work. Individuals have the opportunity to explore new ways of earning money outside of regular employment as job roles are being redefined. They may adapt and succeed in the dynamic landscape produced by automation and AI by embracing technology breakthroughs and actively participating in the growing labor market.

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However, younger generations, while adept at using technology, are increasingly aware of its drawbacks, leading to nuanced skepticism that aligns with Luddite concerns .

Title:

Content: The Imperative of Community Ownership of Telecommunication Infrastructure

By Y. Z. Yaú

From independence to 2000, all Nigerians experienced about telecommunication infrastructure and services was public ownership. We remember the days of the P and T, the monolith, which instead of providing services, was rather contributing to enriching the English Language, such that many Nigerians believe that TOS (and even had its past tense, tosed), was a genuine English word, confusing it with the English word Toss. Few could remember that it actually stood for “temporarily out of service”. Because it was perpetually tossing the lines, resulting in them being tossed(!), and the fact that to get a phone line, you had to pay expensively for a survey to see how the cable from the exchange could come to your office or house, David Mark, then a serving military officer and Minister of Communications could declare that telephone was not for the poor.  The irony of course was lost in that here was a public institution for which those who have supervisory role on it says it should can only cater for the rich, and the poor should go and beat drums or a gong.

With the takeover of national policy making space by such front organizations as World Bank/IMF and the World Trade Organization, a new orthodoxy, of the market as the cure all solution, became dominant in the late 1980s and the new gospel became that we needed to privatize all publicly owned investment. We were told that private ownership could make life abundant and telephone could become also for the poor. And government organized an auction and gave licenses for private investors to roll out their own networks and with time NITEL become moribund and a carcass, with public officers lining up to dubiously claim to be its inheritors, the baby chameleons who had to kill their mother in order to prosper.

Once privatization became the new thinking, government-speak changed. No longer was the egregious declaration that telephone was not for the poor because now they needed poor to also have it. There is no contradiction here. The logic was the same. Investors need to make profit and the only way they could make profits was to maximize the number of users, thus driving traffic and since the rich was and is still, only a tiny drop in the population, the poor became a potential market.

But this is not to say that there is no counter logic, which is that telecommunication could be useful for the poor. It was this other logic that prompted the United Nations General Assembly to initiate the campaign for digital inclusion with the slogan of “Leave No one behind”.

There was also another logic behind the expansion of the telecommunication infrastructure. With the advent of GSM, the service providers as well as equipment manufacturers found that their home markets in Europe were already nearly saturated and had no potentials for easy profits. This was why they suddenly became the friends of Africa and the poor in Africa, that we all must have access to telephone.  They invaded the virgin markets of continent, preaching the new truth of public disinvestment, event when their own public corporations such the British Telecoms and it French counterpart (both public corporations) were going for shares in privatized similar corporations in African countries and for years, Africa was recording the fastest growth in tele-density, even as it was still lagging behind.

But growth in a linear model, can never go forever. Sooner than later, it flattens and saturation could be reached. And it did not take for this to occur with providers failing to capture the poor, and the poor remaining excluded. The mobile networks providers soon found that they have expanded to all the profitable locations and what is left are those that are not profitable: areas of low population density, communities that are too poor to spend a few minutes saying hello to each other on phone and areas that are too difficult to reach. The result is that in spite of the claim to universal GSM coverage, we found a number of communities across the country where they lacked access to mobile signals or the signals are too weak, even after climbing trees and mountains to make calls. These are the communities that government preferred to call “underserved and unserved”.  By its assessment, there are about 114 such communities with a combined population of about 50 million people.

So what are we to do for these people? Government has accepted the imperatives of addressing digital exclusion. It is important to address, not necessarily because it is good for the poor but mainly because it is also good for government. It would make government more effective, efficient and can easily police people via electronic surveillance systems and other privacy intrusion devices.

So what is to be done about these communities that are not profitable for the investors? Is government going to eat its pie and return to some public ownership? Or will it continue to bemoan the failure of the market to meet this critical national need, impotently doing nothing? Global best practice suggests a different path. Ownership is not just either public or private. There is a third layer, which is community ownership, that is distinct from both public and private ownership models. Communities have a long history of coming together to pool resources and endowments to seed and own their own infrastructures, providing services that they need by themselves. Such telecommunication infrastructure is referred to as community networks.

Community networks have proved to be veritable means of promoting digital inclusion, and addressing the many dimensions of the digital divide. They do not require government budgeting or coercing private investors through a carrot and stick strategy to address digital unprofitability. They have many advantages. One of them is that because they are community planned, implemented and managed, they allow for greater control and autonomy over telecommunication infrastructure. They give communities opportunities to unpack and remake technology, providing better conditions for learning and democratization of the expansion of the frontiers of technology. As they involve people at grassroots, they allow for experimentation and allow for people to innovate and demonstrate their creativity. Community networks make people to learn more about technology and to see technology more as social tool for problem solving than just mere antecfact.

They also add value to the major telecommunication players in that they are able to generate traffic in areas that hitherto are “trafficless” and deliver them to the networks of major players, thus mopping new revenue. In turn, they also convey and deliver traffic from the major players to their communities, adding to the revenue mopping. Community networks bring many more digital solutions such as eHealth, eLearning, ecommerce, etc to communities that are excluded.

Finally, their services are more affordable. Why is it more affordable? The reason is that they are not set up with profit as the central element. And their sustainability is assured not through monetary dividend but through the new opportunities they bring to the communities. For instance, community networks in unserved areas easily improve access to education, as members of the community could have access to e-learning platforms and online educational opportunities. They improve access to healthcare, bringing medical practitioners who are not particularly located in the communities thus bring new skills, knowledge and practices that are outside the communities. Healthcare seekers could engage with providers elsewhere via telephone and internet, guaranteeing cheaper and faster interaction between patients and healthcare providers. They also bring opportunities for new businesses, thus creating jobs that hitherto could not have been possible. In the end, community networks are not only tools for digital inclusion but also economic inclusion and for addressing poverty and educational marginalization.

So why do we not have community networks in Nigeria? The answer is simple: we do not have a national policy on community networks in the country. We do not have an interconnectivity framework for connecting these new tier of players to the MNOs and to their peers.

The technology for community networks is not as complex as that of MTN. In a number of countries, where community networks have taken roots, governments have found ways to help them provide cheap services while remaining relevant to the needs of their communities. For instance, the effective utilization of the TV white space is one particular opportunity that many countries have allowed for the use of community networks. Low-cost microwave backhaul technologies in both license-exempt and licensed frequencies have also easy cheap access by community networks to fibre optic point-of-presence. In Brazil, Mexico and India, communities use bamboo to build and erect telecommunication towers in place of steel structures that expensive, heavy to deploy and too difficult to transport in areas where transportation is poor.

Government has long stated its commitment to digital inclusion and ending the ridiculous presence of underserved and unserved topologies in our cyber map. It has understood the benefits that comes with ending the digital divide both for itself and for the citizens. It has even articulated a national digital transformation agenda in addition to the National Broadband Plan, both of whose objectives cannot be realized when nearly half of the population is digitally left behind. Is it too much to ask government to quickly come up a with a national policy on community networks so that those communities that have been organizing and wanting to set and manage their digital infrastructure could do so? It may well be the legacy that a Prof Ali Pantami leadership of the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy is being beckoned to bequeath to posterity. In his relentless search for innovation, he is sitting on one key innovation that will open up the flood gate of innovations at community level. Dare him to try and there is a whole world of innovation to win.

In creative industries, there is particular concern that AI could displace entry-level positions, prompting labor organizations to advocate for legal protections against the exploitation of creative works by AI .

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Content: Marion Art Gallery hosts student exhibition from Dec. 2 to 11

An exhibition featuring works by 10 students at SUNY Fredonia will be on display from Dec. 2 to 11 in the Cathy and Jesse Marion Art Gallery.

“Ateliesque,” the Department of Visual Arts and New Media’s fall senior show, opens with a reception on Friday, Dec. 2 from 6 to 9 pm “Ateliesque” is a play on the word “atelier” (artist’s workshop or studio) and represents the exhibition participants’ Transitional place between student and professional.

The exhibition includes artwork by 10 seniors: nine Animation and Illustration majors – Mad Armstrong (Deposit), Grace Dixon (Newfane), Ryan Ludu (Wellsville), Wyatt Malave (Jamestown), Penn Mant (Maybrook), Don Marotta (Miller Place) , Kathryn Marotta (Miller Place), MaryBeth Meier (Shrub Oak), and Isabella Read (Wilmington); and one Photography major – Derek Raymond (Malone).

Armstrong writes of her futuristic city illustrations, “Writers such as Ray Bradbury have given me perspective on the Wonders and dangers that come when technology Advances quickly beyond our comprehension of its pitfalls. I tend on the side of optimism, portraying my sci-fi futuristic worlds as places that have grown to adapt and become eco-friendlier.”

Dixon’s project includes illustration, animation, photography, music, and Merchandise designs related to her concept album “Zatrikion” which is “about maturity, self-identity, and overcoming experiences of trauma under the lens of Fantasy Visuals and a mental game of chess. “

Ludu’s graphic booklet “Hazmat Witch” is a comic about a witch Exploring the post-apocalypse. He initiated the project two years ago as a webcomic.

In two chapters from his graphic story “Cosmic Dawn,” Malave introduces us to young physicist Eliseo Cuda who is on a journey to solve a global conspiracy which eventually turns into a galactic mystery.

Mant writes of her objective, “In this day and age when climate change and regressive policies threaten our environment, we need to care about protecting what is here more than ever.” Her illustrations of Flora and fauna attest to her careful research and consideration of environmental issues.

The goal of Don Marotta’s fashion illustration series, titled “Gloat Couture,” is to introduce realistic body types to the fashion world with creative and fun designs.

Lycanthropy, the Supernatural Transformation of a person into a wolf, is the subject matter of Kathryn Marotta’s animation and movie posters. She was influenced by movies such as “The Wolfman,” “Ginger Snaps,” and “An American Werewolf in London,” as well as vintage Horror posters.

In the painting series titled “Folded,” Meier was challenged to create a series of paintings of the human form with a limited palette. The contrasting red cube in each painting symbolizes a lifelong struggle with art. The cube also represents personal evolution and growth as well as stability and confinement.

Inspired by the uncanny produced Photographs of Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958), Raymond also focuses on macro photography to explore the abstract qualities of ordinary objects. He writes of his series “The Shape of Light,” “I do not see the object as a bottle for example; I see the shape it makes, and the interaction that shape has with the others on the table, in the background, and within itself.”

Read focuses on unusual graphic t-shirts in her “BuzyInks Shirt Design” project. She describes them as “Creepy Pattern” designs that focus on spooky and surreal illustrations.

“Ateliesque” is supported by the Fredonia College Foundation’s Cathy and Jesse Marion Endowment Fund, and the Friends of Rockefeller Arts Center.

The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. The Marion Art Gallery is located on the main level of Rockefeller Arts Center on the Fredonia campus.

Gallery hours are: Tuesday through Thursday from noon to 4 pm; Friday and Saturday from noon to 6 pm; Sunday from noon to 4 pm; and by appointment. For more information or to schedule a group tour of the exhibition, contact Gallery Director Barbara Räcker at (716) 673-4897 or via email.

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Content: Artificial intelligence: capitalism’s salvation, or another bubble?

The capitalists are ploughing billions into artificial intelligence, salivating at the prospect of an AI-generated economic boost and keen to grab a slice of the new gold rush. But there is no technological solution for capitalism’s fundamental contradictions, and the investment party will inevitably be followed by a hangover.

Unlike recent tech fads around NFTs and cryptocurrencies (which are essentially worthless for anything besides speculation), there is no doubting the power of AI, which is used for many applications, from facial recognition; to fraud prevention; to organising supply chains. There are far more impressive possible applications for AI in the future, given enough time and research.

However, the anarchy of the market impedes new technologies from reaching their full potential. Moreover, capitalism is in deep crisis: the conditions do not exist for a boom, and AI cannot create them. The prevailing tendency of instability means that rather than fulfilling utopian dreams of growth and prosperity, AI will tend to enrich a tiny handful, exacerbate overproduction, and worsen the living standards of the majority.

The latest craze

With the economy still languishing, the ruling class is latching onto any hope of salvation. The impressive advancements of generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, are seen by some strategists of capital as the answer to their prayers.

Multinational strategy and management consultant McKinsey and Co. estimated AI could add $4.4tn to world GDP annually: more than the UK’s GDP in 2023. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs predicts AI could drive 7 percent growth in world GDP (almost $7tn) and lift productivity growth by 1.5 percentage points over 10 years. Given AI is still in its infancy, it’s unclear how they’ve come up with such impressive figures.

Nevertheless, AI has been hyped relentlessly in recent months, with Microsoft CEO Sundar Pichai last year describing it as on par with the discovery of fire! Given Microsoft is the biggest investor in OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT), it’s perhaps unsurprising that Pichai is posing as a modern Prometheus.

This year’s World Economic Forum was gripped by ‘AI fever’ / Image: World Economic Forum, Flickr

States are also taking a keen interest in AI, with the US battling China to maintain market supremacy; and the UK Tory government attempting to lure the big generative platforms with looser regulation than their European competitors.

Additionally, this year’s World Economic Forum was gripped by ‘AI fever’. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the conference stage, and big tech firms dominated the Davos promenade, hosting seminars with such modest titles as ‘AI: The Ultimate Invention’.

All this attention has culminated in a glut of investment, with AI and AI-adjacent companies now making up 60 percent of new unicorns (companies valued at over $1bn). In 2023, AI-related startups raised $50bn, while OpenAI abandoned its open-source pretensions, accepted a $10bn cash injection from Microsoft and opened a for-profit division.

AI company stocks are buoyant, with OpenAI seeking a valuation of $100bn (up from its present $86bn, which was already triple its worth in April 2023) and hundreds of smaller operations, awash with venture capital, also seeing their valuations spike. The AI market as a whole is valued at over $300bn (not counting essential chipmakers like Nvidia). At first glance, it seems there is no end to the AI bonanza.

Limits of the market

However, AI is already running into the limits of the market. Despite the buzz, none of the aforementioned AI companies is profitable. In fact, the immense cost of building and running AI models means companies like OpenAI are losing huge sums, and they expect to lose even more as they invest in more sophisticated models to keep ahead of the competition.

Major investors in AI such as Microsoft, Google, and Apple are banking on innovations in microchips to get around this. This has especially benefited US chipmaker Nvidia, which has a functional monopoly on processor components necessary for AI. The company saw its stock price soar by 207 percent last year and is now Wall Street’s third-most valuable company by market capitalisation.

And how are the capitalists utilising this groundbreaking (and expensive) new technology? The most common use of AI by businesses (according to Forbes) is replacing human customer service employees with chatbots (which have existed for years), followed by generating spam emails. It’s hard to see how this justifies the sky-high valuations of AI stock, especially combined with the associated expense of running LLMs. To paraphrase one frustrated executive, the situation is like using a Ferrari to deliver a pizza.

Where there is quick money to be made and plenty of gullible investors, there are plenty of swindlers producing nothing of value / Image: own work

For now at least, AI seems unable to shake the quirks and hallucinations that make it too unreliable for truly game-changing applications, like fully autonomous cars for instance. Even in areas where AI is advancing quickly, like coding and translation, it remains error-prone and requires human supervision, disappointing investors won over by promises of superhuman ‘Artificial General Intelligence’ (AGI). As this article was going to press, ChatGPT was going haywire, speaking in ‘Spanglish’ (broken English mixed with Spanish) and threatening users.

Still, just as in every speculative bubble, where there is quick money to be made and plenty of gullible investors, there are plenty of swindlers producing nothing of value.

With capitalism wracked by overproduction, there are limited opportunities to profitably invest in the real economy, so the capitalists are prone to gambling on short-term fads to enrich themselves. The tech industry was a hotbed of speculation during the pandemic, with the cryptocurrency market alone ballooning six-fold to $3tn in 2021, powered by cheap credit and stimulus money, both of which are drying up as governments try to rein in inflation and state debt. With the crypto/NFT craze dead and buried, the tech profiteers (having learned nothing) are hunting for a new bandwagon to jump on. CNBC even reported, without a hint of irony, that AI was “pushing crypto aside as the new cool kid on the block” at Davos.

A 2019 investigation into 2,830 startups in Europe, classified as AI companies, found that 40 percent of them weren't “using AI in a material way”, but simply as a buzzword to secure funding. Others are so-called ‘thin wrapper’ startups that simply slap a new interface on existing platforms like ChatGPT: putting old wine in new bottles. All these companies and their investors will all be exposed when the tide recedes.

A lack of reliability and higher running costs have contributed to the collapse of early AI success stories. For instance, Olive AI raised $1.5bn between 2020 and 2023 with a platform designed to manage and analyse patient records in the private health sector. But it has proved over-expensive and under-reliable, resulting in big losses. As Silicon Valley giants corner the market, smaller startups have begun to wither on the vine: taking billions of their investors’ dollars with them. This is a harbinger of things to come.

Then there is the growing threat posed by government regulation and legal action. The EU has passed the world’s first ‘AI regulation act’, banning some ‘high-risk’ applications and putting limits on others, which will spook investors if other governments follow suit. At the same time, a landmark plagiarism case is currently underway, with The New York Times demanding billions in damages from OpenAI for training its ChatGPT model on “millions” of NYT articles, which it can now regurgitate in barely altered form. While a deal is more likely than legal precedent, cutting off ChatGPT’s free access to training data would hobble the chatbot, and rock the entire AI landscape.

Echoes of Dot-Com

AI is here to stay, but one way or another, a painful correction is in store. The strategists of capital have drawn a comparison with the Dot-Com bubble in the early 2000s. As Business Insider writes:

“The stock market has been partying since it bottomed in October last year – and it's predominantly been tech stock shimmying up and leading the way. This has happened before: markets rode a wave of internet hype in the late 1990s only to come crashing down when the bubble popped.”

When that occurred, hundreds of firms collapsed, and $5tn went up in smoke. The companies that survived, like Google and Amazon, hoovered up the competition and ended up in dominant positions. Recently, JPMorgan also rang alarm bells about an AI bubble, calling the current situation “eerily similar” to the early 2000s.

“While we would be hesitant to refer to the current levels of the Top 10 as a bubble,” they conclude, “it would certainly appear that the Top 10 in the Dotcom era was backed by superior earnings developments”. In plain English, this means the 10 biggest companies on the stock exchange are more overvalued, and offering lower returns to their investors, than their counterparts 24 years ago.

Bubbles are not limited to speculative scrambles over inherently worthless commodities like NFTs. They are part and parcel of the anarchic nature of capitalist production. There is always an uncontrolled rush of investment into every promising new market, accompanied by a froth of fictitious capital floating above the waves of the real economy. Stocks, securities and derivatives change hands as speculators try to make a big return, hoping that they will not be the ‘greater fool’ left holding these assets when the market becomes saturated, capital is withdrawn, and the bubble bursts.

A few capitalists (either through luck, genuinely offering useful products, or some measure of the two) leave with big profits, while the majority crash on the rocks. We saw the same, not only with the Dot-Com bubble but also with the railway mania of the 1840s. As Marx described in Volume 3 of Capital, overinvestment massively inflated the value of railway shares, wiping out dozens of small companies (many of which had never laid a single piece of track) when the share prices collapsed, leaving a few dominant firms when the dust settled.

There will certainly be winners on the back of AI. Most likely, these will be the existing big tech firms, who benefit from the capital, expertise and resources to build and manage the complex and costly technology behind AI. The so-called ‘magnificent seven’ (Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, and Tesla) are already reaching the point of absolute dominance in AI, muscling out or absorbing smaller competitors, and accounting for about half of the gains in the entire S&P 500 in February.

The overall result of the AI gold rush, as with other bubbles, will be the further concentration of capital and the greater domination of the big monopolies over the economy and our lives.

However, there is a big difference with the 2000s, which was a period of relative boom. Capitalism today is in a state of organic crisis, and the world economy is on the brink of recession – a bursting AI bubble could nudge it into the abyss. A small handful of capitalists might make it out in a strong position, but the result for the system as a whole will be further chaos and instability.

Productivity puzzle

Still, a section of the ruling class is hopeful that AI will help avert recession by boosting productivity, thus stimulating growth. We note that in the 2000s, the capitalists bragged of a “new paradigm” in which digital companies would result in “breakneck” economic growth and “full employment” for the first time since the Second World War. Neither came to pass.

And we have long been promised that automation would create a productivity boom. Yet since 2012, despite all the investment into automation, growth in output per hour globally has averaged just 0.3 percent a year, compared to 2.3 percent in the previous decade. This productivity paradox calls into question the whole historical justification for capitalism.

This contradiction can be explained by the way technology is utilised within the straightjacket of the profits system. Machines do not create value: only human labour does. Capitalists invest in machinery to put more productive power at the elbow of their workers, allowing fewer to be employed more productively, at lower-skilled tasks, flooding markets further.

The most immediate impact of AI, as with automation, is likely to be the ‘deskilling’ of previously privileged layers / Image: public domain

But in so doing, the capitalists destroy the same markets by cutting into the spending power of the working class. Goldman Sachs has claimed that AI could cause the “loss or degradation of 300 million jobs” in short order.

By exacerbating overproduction, the capitalists saw away at the branch they are sitting on, meaning profits level out, and the investment itself then dries up. In some cases, it is more profitable to go backwards – replacing expensive machines with cheap, hyper-exploited labour. For instance, the number of automated car washes in the UK fell from 9,000 20 years ago to 4,200 today because it is cheaper to pay migrants below minimum wage to hand wash cars. Herein we see the results of capitalist ‘innovation’!

The main point is that, since 2008, the whole trajectory of capitalism has been in decline. New technologies cannot avert this course, and will instead tend to exacerbate the system’s underlying contradictions. Given the current state of overcapacity on the world market (i.e., a crisis of overproduction), even real investment in AI to boost productivity (as opposed to sheer speculation) will simply aggravate this crisis.

There is another side to the matter. The system cannot productively employ the millions of workers threatened by this new technology. Sensing this danger, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva urged politicians to address the "troubling trend" to "prevent the technology from further stoking social tensions".

While the capitalists are right that almighty class struggle is on the agenda, AI will probably be a secondary, exacerbating factor. So far, a relatively thin layer of the white-collar workforce has been displaced by AI, with further job losses likely to occur over a longer period.

The most immediate impact of AI, as with automation, is likely to be the ‘deskilling’ of previously privileged layers of the proletariat and the middle classes. This was a factor in last year’s Hollywood strike, for instance. OpenAI has just started advertising its new platform, Sora, which it claims can generate photorealistic videos from text prompts. Artists, actors, coders, translators and the like are faced with the prospect of seeing years of training amount to mind-numbing ‘supervision’ of generative AIs.

Instead of freeing the workers, marvellous tools such as AI in the hands of the capitalists threaten to increase drudgery. Not only that, they are being used to increasingly surveil and control workers. In some workplaces, (including Amazon warehouses) hiring and firing are already handled by unfeeling machines – more will follow. Moreover, culture is being drowned in a baffling slurry of AI-generated text and imagery. The state arms itself with AI-powered facial and voice recognition to more effectively repress us.

Machine learning and AI are indeed mighty tools. But instead of improving our existence, this technology is used to enrich a tiny handful, while debasing everyday life for billions of people, and helping to propel the system into paroxysms of speculation and slump. It needn’t be so. The productive forces are rebelling against a system that cannot utilise them rationally.

Under communism, AI could be seamlessly integrated into a planned economy to eliminate dull, dangerous tasks. Released from the constraints of private property, it truly could increase productivity to untold levels, with no detriment to the wages and conditions of the working class. A socialist society, unencumbered by the need to appease shareholders, could take a long view towards developing AI’s real potential, as a worthy investment for humanity’s betterment, rather than limiting this remarkable technology to powering robot customer care advisors and spitting out low-quality marketing copy.

AI and automation might one day free humanity from work as we know it. But none of this is possible under the current system. Only once this technology has been liberated from capitalism, and placed at the disposal of all of society can this be accomplished.

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Content: Friday, 22 September, 2023, 11:45 PM
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Is AI integration in Bangladesh’s businesses a double-edged sword?

Published : Friday, 22 September, 2023 at 12:00 AM  Count : 198
Farin Sabrina; Mohammad Shahidul Islam

The adoption of AI stands out among the many significant steps Bangladesh has taken toward a tech-driven future. When applied to business, AI can completely transform how companies are managed. We must keep sight of the potential implications this may have on our society, particularly regarding ethics, equality, and accountability, even though AI helps businesses advance with increased efficiency and smaller error margins.

Automation of laborious tasks, analysis of large data sets, and providing insightful actions are just some of the many benefits AI brings to businesses in Bangladesh. The most important thing is to figure out how much money this progress will cost. Despite our excitement about AI and its revolutionary potential, we must tread carefully as we consider the social consequences of its broad adoption.

Many obstacles must be overcome before artificial intelligence may be used ethically in business contexts. One primary source of worry is the potential for discrimination and prejudice in AI algorithms that play a crucial role in decision-making. Considering the situation of a financial institution in Bangladesh that has used a loan approval system powered by AI. Since this AI was taught using historical data, it may unwittingly reflect and perpetuate the societal prejudices present in the material it was trained on. For instance, the AI may continue to deny loans to persons from particular areas regardless of their creditworthiness if the data indicates a prejudice against granting loans to residents of these areas due to higher default rates. Even if the bias were accidental, this would still be the case. This hypothetical situation illustrates the ethical severe concern that AI can aggravate pre-existing societal inequalities.

Another instance would be a corporation in Bangladesh using AI for hiring purposes; this AI would be trained using information about open positions in the company's history. For example, the company has a history of giving preferential treatment to candidates from specific educational backgrounds or social classes. This trend could be perpetuated by AI, resulting in an unfair employment process that excludes qualified people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

These incidents underscore the need for transparency in AI decision-making, proactive approaches to reduce prejudice, and fairness in algorithmic decision-making. Bangladesh's industries are looking into the potential of AI, and as they do so, they must find a middle ground between technological progress and ethical standards. Ethical standards and policies must be established to ensure that businesses can successfully navigate the AI landscape and that societal well-being can be sustained alongside innovation.

Given AI's pervasive effect across all sectors in Bangladesh, we must look at the impacts on employment patterns. Despite AI's promise to advance humanity, it also threatens to automate away some jobs. For example, Bangladesh's textile industry employs a sizable proportion of the country's labour force. If AI-powered technology is widely adopted, it has the potential to render many of the current tasks associated with the manual production of textiles unnecessary. These sudden job losses may widen the unemployment gap and social tensions.

Furthermore, the ready-made garments (RMG) sector employs millions of individuals, many of whom have specialized skills essential to the success of the RMG industry and the economy in Bangladesh. The widespread unemployment that could emerge from introducing AI technology in this area without simultaneously launching a workforce re-skilling program will widen the gap between the skilled and unskilled labour force.

A more egalitarian transition into an AI-driven economy is possible, but only if preventative measures are taken, such as providing extensive AI literacy and skills training programs. Every segment of Bangladeshi society must stay caught up to the rest of the country during this period of technological revolution.

The need to strike a balance between stimulating innovation and retaining social responsibility is a fundamental problem posed by the integration of AI into the existing corporate ecosystem in Bangladesh. During this change, businesses must recognize that they must be ethical stewards. Chatbots and AI-assisted credit scoring are just two examples of AI-driven services that, if implemented correctly, may drastically improve the customer experience and the speed businesses carry out their daily tasks. For instance, it is crucial to the system's fairness to ensure that the AI-assisted credit scoring system does not discriminate based on location or socioeconomic status.

Businesses adopting AI should not do anything compromising customers' personal information. As AI becomes more widespread in sectors like e-commerce and telecoms, companies have a duty to their customers to protect their data and only use it in ways that align with acceptable privacy practices.

To prevent AI from further aggravating societal inequalities, it is critical to address the issue of algorithmic bias. AI employed in hiring, for instance, shouldn't discriminate based on a candidate's socioeconomic status or alma mater. Instead, it ought to be based on merit.  As a result, as more businesses in Bangladesh employ AI, the ethical framework and legislation governing its deployment need to be explicitly established. Fairness, openness, privacy, and bias should all be factored into these plans. Taking such a cautious approach would allow businesses to harness AI's promise in a way that benefits society and technology equally.

How can we retain social responsibility while fostering innovation by introducing AI into the commercial sector in Bangladesh? During this change, businesses must recognize and embrace their role as ethical guardians. For example, AI-based diagnostic technologies have the potential to revolutionize the way patients are cared for and illnesses are handled in the medical field. In a country like Bangladesh, where there is a significant disparity between the levels of healthcare resources accessible in urban and rural areas, the deployment of AI needs to be approached with the utmost prudence.

These advancements may leave behind under-resourced healthcare facilities in rural areas, widening the existing disparities in service. However, these developments could significantly benefit state-of-the-art medical facilities like Dhaka. Due to the stakes, the healthcare industry must adopt a transparent, fair, and methodical approach to deploying AI. Healthcare providers in rural areas may only benefit as much from artificial intelligence capabilities if the government and healthcare organizations prioritize improving the infrastructure in those places.

Furthermore, algorithmic bias remains a serious issue, with the potential to make AI worsen societal inequalities. For instance, AI used in hiring should be trained to favour people based on their skills and experience, not their family background or where they went to college.

This would guarantee that candidates are chosen according to their actual merits. To reach this objective, businesses must ensure that AI development teams are inclusive, perform regular bias checks, and hone their AI algorithms until they can provide a merit-based solution.

Finally, firms in Bangladesh need to approach the AI revolution with an ethical compass if they want to succeed. Concerns like fairness, transparency, privacy, and minimizing bias should all be factored into the legislation and standards regulating AI's introduction.

To this end, firms can collaborate with AI ethicists, policymakers, and other stakeholders to establish audit systems and formulate ethical guidelines for using AI.

Governments must also do their bit by laying out comprehensive guidelines for AI and enforcing them. By taking these precautions, we can steer the AI transition responsibly, fostering an environment where innovation may flourish without endangering people's lives.

Farin Sabrina, BBA Student, BRAC Business School, BRAC University and Dr. Mohammad Shahidul Islam, Assistant Professor of Marketing, BRAC Business School, BRAC University

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Opinion: What happened to our good jobs?

Over the last forty years, the rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer, and the acclaimed American middle class has shrunk in size. Incomes for the lower ninety percent of the population have either remained flat or have fallen while the wealth of the top one percent, has grown to almost fifty percent of the nation’s total income. And of that figure, four hundred families own almost half of the top one percent. That is just wrong. The rest of the people of upper income brackets have managed to stay relatively unaffected by the losses incurred by the lower ninety percent. Millions of good jobs have been lost, and workers have either become unemployed, or have obtained employment in lower paying jobs, such as in the service industry. The older a person is the less likely he or she is able to find suitable employment. Once they have lost the good job, many never return to the work force.

After the 2008 financial crisis when the country nearly fell off the cliff, and the election of President Obama, there has been increasing unrest and division in the country. The rise of the Tea Party in 2010 was the beginning. The situation has only worsened since then, culminating on January 6th with the unbelievable assault on the United States Capitol building. It is obvious that people are angry and upset, and some are even at the point of being willing to sacrifice our constitutional democracy to save and reclaim what they perceive to be their lost status.

Their blame is directed at what they believe is responsible for their loss, such as immigration, integration, elitism, and “big government,” which they believe doesn’t care about them. Many blame the Democratic Party. The situation got so serious that an unqualified demagogue got himself elected as President of the United States, and even after an unquestioned defeat for a second term, still exercises enormous influence over the Republican Party, and refuses to concede his loss.

What happened to cause the serious divide in our country that is only second to the divide that caused the Civil War in 1860? Where did the good jobs and middle class prosperity go? Who and what is to blame? Is it the fault of “others” breaking in line in front of real Americans? Is it because our morality has slipped so badly that God is no longer with us, as the Christian right would have us believe? Is it because the younger generation is on dope, lazy, and doesn’t want to work? Or is it something else that has been swept under the rug?

The facts clearly show that the primary reason for the job and income loss and the middle class decline is the result of globalization, automation, and technology, which both Parties ignored until it was too late. One local example clearly illustrates the problem. When I graduated from Lutcher Stark High School in 1957, good jobs were available at the plants on chemical row, Levingston Shipbuilding, and American Bridge. If you didn’t want to go to college and you had a clean record, employment was readily available in our local industries. A young person could go in, be an apprentice or an operator trainee, and advance to a highly skilled job. Many of my classmates who didn’t seek a higher education got those jobs, worked until they retired and got a good retirement which they still enjoy. Their children were not so lucky. In 1940, the beginning of my generation, ninety percent of the young people were going to do better economically than their parents, today that figure is less than 50 percent. What happened? First, advancing technology resulted in automation in nearly every industry. Automation means that a robot or something like it can do a job that a human being used to do. The plants on chemical row are still there doing well but the plentiful jobs there aren’t. At least half of them have been lost, and to have one of them now you have to have a two year operator certificate from Lamar Orange or Lamar in Beaumont. The jobs require skill and intelligence. Levingston and American Bridge have gone the way of the dodo. Globalization means that it is a lot less expensive to build ships and manufacture pipe in other countries where the costs are less. The same thing can be said of many other industries, but our local example is clear. Who profited? People with educations that gave them the skills that were not replaceable, big corporations that could profit by sending work abroad and laying off American workers, and the rich who could invest their profits anywhere they wanted, and American workers be damned.

Who is at fault? Both major Patties either failed or didn’t want to recognize what was happening, and millions of people fell between the cracks. The federal government and state governments could have taken measures to attenuate the problem but it didn’t happen. The fault lies at the door of my generation, and those of us who could have done something and didn’t. Too many of us that had good jobs were obsessed with enjoying our own prosperity without caring about those who were losing out. It is shameful, and history will not treat the baby boomer generation kindly. Those of us who could have done more didn’t, and now we have a mess on our hands.

The next question is, what can be done to change the situation we find ourselves in? The fact is that despite of what some people want to believe, the federal government is the only institution that can do what is needed. We need another 1932, and another New Deal. The spearhead has got to be better and more education for everybody that needs it. We need to start earlier, and go later. Pre-K and at least two years beyond high school aren’t a luxury, they are a necessity, and it needs to be affordable. Lamar State College Orange is another good local example that cannot be ignored. Two years of education there are giving thousands of young people marketable skills and the good jobs that are available whether it is in the medical field, from Lamar Orange or Lamar in Beaumont. The jobs require skill and intelligence. Levingston and American Bridge have gone the way of the dodo. Globalization means that it is a lot less expensive to build ships and manufacture pipe in other countries where the costs are less. The same thing can be said of many other industries, but our local example is clear. Who profited? People with educations that gave them the skills that were not replaceable, big corporations that could profit by sending work abroad and laying off American workers, and the rich who could invest their profits anywhere they wanted, and American workers be damned.

Who is at fault? Both major Patties either failed or didn’t want to recognize what was happening, and millions of people fell between the cracks. The federal government and state governments could have taken measures to attenuate the problem but it didn’t happen. The fault lies at the door of my generation, and those of us who could have done something and didn’t . Too many of us that had good jobs were obsessed with enjoying our own prosperity without caring about those who were losing out. It is shameful, and history will not treat the baby boomer generation kindly. Those of us who could have done more didn’t, and now we have a mess on our hands.

The next question is, what can be done to change the situation we find ourselves in? The fact is that despite of what some people want to believe, the federal government is the only institution that can do what is needed. We need another 1932, and another New Deal. The spearhead has got to be better and more education for everybody that needs it. We need to start earlier, and go later. Pre-Kand at least two years beyond high school aren’t a luxury, they are a necessity, and it needs to be affordable. Lamar State College Orange is another good local example that cannot be ignored. Two years of education there are giving thousands of young people marketable skills and the good jobs that are available whether it is in the medical field, industry, or law enforcement. Our young people need to have the opportunity to get that kind of extra education without having to go into debt to get it. The average student debt at Lamar State College Orange is $19,000 when a person graduates, and that is ridiculous. Students ought to have free public education for fourteen years not twelve. Thousands of lives can be changed by simply making education more affordable. Additionally, we need medical care for everyone, decent and affordable housing, affordable daycare so moms can work, and a decent, livable minimum wage. Those factors alone can lift people out of poverty into the middle class and make the good skilled jobs attainable. And what about those who just can’t get the education because they just can’t do it? A humane government should put a safety net under the people who just aren’t mentally capable of doing jobs that require a skill that they can never get. It’s the right thing to do, and the richest country in the world ought to be able to find a way to do it.

The major social problem of the 21st century is how are we going to remake our society to provide good jobs and a good life for those who are capable of doing it, and how to provide a good life for those who can’t. That, and global warming are staring us in the face and we are either going to fall off the cliff or rise up like Americans have always done and avert the disaster that surely awaits us if we don’t. There isn’t much time left.

One final question, Which party is trying to do something about the problem described above? And which party is sitting on its hands, causing fear and blaming the “other”? As a truly great president said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Let’s unite, and move forward. There is no other solution.

John Cash Smith, Chairman

Orange County Democratic Party

Co-creation in policy-making and urban planning, where community members are involved in decision-making, builds trust and support for technological changes .

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Content: Brian Merchant, author: “Luddites are more dangerous to the rich than Robin Hood”

The Luddites have been a great historical resource. Any showy enemy of anything that looked like technological progress has been called a Luddite. Today with generative artificial intelligence and its critics, the word has been revived. The author and journalist Brian Merchant (Iowa City, USA, 1983) saw it coming and has written a book that reviews the Luddite revolt in England at the beginning of the 19th century and its similarities with current technologies: Blood in the Machine (Blood in the Machine, currently without a planned edition in Spanish) thus explores the origins of the current revolt against big technology.

Although the book has appeared in the midst of the AI hype, Merchant began his research a decade ago: “Uber was growing and it was beginning to be seen that it was having a hard impact on taxi drivers, I heard the term Luddite from the pro-Uber sector and wrote an article titled You don't understand anything about Luddites”. Now in his book he remembers that the Luddite revolt was a labor struggle, not anti-technology, at a time when unions were prohibited. In a conversation with EL PAÍS from his residence in Los Angeles, Merchant clarifies the historical impact of the Luddites and the possible similar struggles that are being played today in Silicon Valley.

1. The Luddites were not against progress

The labor revolt over the loss of rights was more important than the destruction of textile machines: “The biggest mistake about the Luddites is to say that they were against technology and progress,” says Merchant. “They were against certain technologies because they recognized the way in which they were going to be used in their context against them as workers. It was a labor movement, against poverty, not anti-technology. The British Government began to mold them in this way almost immediately, it was keen to mock the Luddites and present the argument that they were against progress. It is very similar to how today people in positions of power in technology companies accuse those who complain about poor working conditions. It's the same story for 200 years.”

The book quotes a phrase from historian Eric Hobsbawm that explains this stage: “It was collective bargaining through riots.” According to Merchant, this tactic in a workers' struggle was very powerful for two reasons: “First, it was symbolic because everyone understood that what they were destroying was not just a machine. It was also the specific machine used to transfer wealth from the workers to the employer. Second, it was useful because they destroyed the equipment that businessmen needed.”

2. Why Robin Hood is better accepted than Ned Ludd

Ned Ludd was a legendary character. No one knows for sure if he existed. It was the legend of a teenager who would have broken the first machines at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In 1811, rebellious workers used his legendary name to sign letters and further scare: “Ludd probably never existed. But the incarnation of it would become a mascot, an organizational tool, a wink: a powerful 19th-century meme,” Merchant writes.

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Ludd lived near Nottingham (United Kingdom), like another legendary figure who has been better treated by history. There must be a reason, says Merchant: “The Luddites organized a popular and powerful rebellion. People wrote popular songs about them. They were like Robin Hood. But it is interesting that Robin Hood has endured as a positive light, while the Luddites have not. He suggests that the myth of Ned Ludd is in some ways more dangerous to the elites and the wealthy than that of Robin Hood, which is a little more nebulous and open. The Luddites say: go ahead and break the machines of your oppression. Robin Hood says: steal from the rich and give to the poor. “I think that’s a little more tolerable.”

3. How are they similar to today's problems?

The background of the book is that the history of the Luddites is similar to what happens today in Silicon Valley, where a small group of corporations dominate new technologies. “The way technologies are developed has basically not changed. You have a handful of people with access to enough capital or political influence to be able to build a factory and use automation technologies. “Back then, the most aggressive owners didn’t ask anyone how to find a way to make this a win-win.”

Merchant has received criticism for equating the great businessmen of 19th century England with 21st century America. But there are details that he does not see that far away: “The technology development process is in some ways even more undemocratic today than then. There is this immense pool of capital available to Silicon Valley innovators through venture capital. Uber wasn't profitable for 10 years, but they had access to that capital. Did anyone really like that? Did it work for workers and delivery people? Nothing mattered, they just had more money and moved on.”

See also  Just the mystery

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Content: news

Goldman Sachs Says Generative A.I. Could Impact 300 Million Jobs — Here's Which Ones

As artificial intelligence products like ChatGPT aim to become a part of our everyday lives and we learn more about how powerful they can be, there's one thing on everyone's mind: how AI could impact jobs.

"Significant disruption" could be on the horizon for the labor market, a new Goldman Sachs report dated Sunday said. The bank's analysis of jobs in the U.S. and Europe shows that two-thirds of jobs could be automated at least to some degree.

In the U.S., "of those occupations which are exposed, most have a significant — but partial — share of their workload (25-50%) that can be replaced," Goldman Sachs analysts said in the resarch paper.

Around the world, as many as 300 million jobs could be affected, the report says. Changes to labor markets are therefore likely – although historically, technological progress doesn't just make jobs redundant, it also creates new ones.

The use of AI technology could also boost labor productivity growth and boost global GDP by as much as 7% over time, Goldman Sachs' report noted.

The jobs most and least affected by A.I. automation

Certain jobs will be more impacted than others, the report explains. Jobs that require a lot of physical work are, for example, less likely to be significantly affected.

In the U.S., office and administrative support jobs have the highest proportion of tasks that could be automated with 46%, followed by 44% for legal work and 37% for tasks within architecture and engineering.

The life, physical and social sciences sector follows closely with 36%, and business and financial operations round out the top five with 35%.

On the other end of the scale, just 1% of tasks in the building and ground cleanings and maintenance sector are vulnerable to automation. Installation, maintenance, and repair work is the second least affected industry with 4% of work potentially being affected, and construction and extraction comes third from the bottom with 6%.

Data for Europe is slightly broader, but paints a similar picture with clerical support roles being most affected as 45% of their work could be automated, and just 4% of work in the crafts and related trades sector being vulnerable.

Overall, 24% of work in Europe could be automated — just below the 25% average in the U.S.

The countries most affected

These figures shift when looking at automation through AI on a global scale.

"Our estimates intuitively suggest that fewer jobs in EMs [emerging markets] are exposed to automation than in DMs [developed markets], but that 18% of work globally could be automated by AI on an employment-weighted basis," the Goldman Sachs report said.

According to the bank's analysis, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Sweden and the U.S. are likely to be the top five most affected countries. Meanwhile, employees in mainland China, Nigeria, Vietnam, Kenya and, in last place, India, are the least likely to see their work being taken over by AI technology.

But while the data shows that AI will undoubtedly impact the labor market, it's not yet clear how disruptive it will really be, the report concludes.

"The impact of AI will ultimately depend on its capability and adoption timeline," it says, adding that two key factors will be how powerful AI technology really becomes and how much it is used in practice.

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**Role of Education** Education plays a pivotal role in shaping attitudes toward technology.

**Role of Education** Education plays a pivotal role in shaping attitudes toward technology.

Emphasizing digital skills, critical thinking, and ethical reflection can reduce resistance by empowering individuals to engage thoughtfully with technology .

Teacher training, curriculum adaptation, and community involvement are essential for fostering positive attitudes and bridging educational gaps .

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Content: Alexander Larman

Dave Eggers cancels Amazon

The novelist is selling his latest only at independent bookstores, but can it work?

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Selling books through Amazon is now part and parcel of a working author’s life. It would be a brave writer who decided to refuse to allow their work to be sold through earth’s biggest retailer. But that is exactly what Dave Eggers has done with his new book, The Every, which he has decreed can only be purchased from independent bookstores.

Sorry, Jeff Bezos; this one’s not for you.

Eggers has form in this regard. His 2013 satire The Circle took aim at a monolithic social media and tech corporation run by a faux-messianic CEO (if you’re thinking Bezos meets Zuckerberg, you’re not wrong), and now its follow-up The Every continues the idea, but takes it to even more ridiculous heights. The corporation now controls online retail, social media and search engines, making it instrumental to everyone’s daily life. If you can imagine a Facebook-Google-Twitter-TikTok mélange, you’ll have some idea of Eggers’s target.

It is appropriate, therefore, that he has made a stand against the dominance of Amazon, which he refers to, dismissively, as ‘The Jungle’. Eggers confessed in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times that he is something of a tech-averse Luddite, refusing to own an iPhone and continuing to write his books on Quark Xpress, ploughing an increasingly lonely furrow. He commented, ‘The most enlightened and progressive and very aware folks that I know are still wholly participating in the aggregation of power among this handful of companies.’ Time, then, for someone to say their piece.

Although Eggers has never quite recaptured the extraordinary success of his first book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, he remains a prolific and engaged figure in the American literary firmament, with many bestselling novels and works of non-fiction to his name. Therefore it is hard to dismiss his decision to eschew Amazon as simply a quixotic act of rebellion by a washed-up has been. Instead, it places the onus on other writers to decide if they, too, wish to continue to be complicit in selling their books at a reduced rate through a global conglomerate, or if they would prefer to support their local independent bookstore through their work. If, of course, they still have one.

Arguments can be made for Amazon’s impact on the world of publishing, as well as against it. But its dominance of the industry is now so complete that it would take — no offense, Mr Eggers — one of the few mega-selling authors writing today refusing to sell their books on it to make any kind of difference. And even if James Patterson, J.K. Rowling and Stephen King all united in protest, there would still be plenty of other lesser-known writers who believe that selling their books through a mega-outlet — whatever its less savoury aspects – is a necessary evil in order to reach readers.

There is an irony in that Tom Hanks, who played the CEO in the film of The Circle, also appeared in the 1998 romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail as an entrepreneur in charge of a chain of vast bookstores. Back in the late Nineties, the greatest tension that screenwriters could imagine was between the mom ‘n’ pop independents and the corporate behemoths. But now, with Borders long gone and Barnes & Noble the last remaining major chain (and given some respectability by the British bookseller James Daunt as its CEO), the battle is now between brick and mortar institutions of any size and the faceless algorithm-based world of Amazon.

Eggers has struck a much-needed blow against homogeneity and in favor of individuality. We’ll soon see if he’s had any impact, or whether, Canute-like, he’s impotently waving his feet in the digital tide, waiting to be swallowed up by progress. For the good of the industry, let’s hope he has made a difference.

Teaching about environmental responsibility and the impact of technology on the planet can frame technological advancements as tools for positive, sustainable change .

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Content: Two-Thirds of Jobs Are at Risk: Goldman Sachs A.I. Study

The investment bank's economists estimate that 46% of administrative positions, 44% of legal positions, and 37% of engineering jobs could be replaced by artificial intelligence.

As many as 300 million full-time jobs in the world, including two-thirds of jobs in the U.S. and Europe, are at risk of being replaced in some way by generative artificial intelligence, the technology behind tools like ChatGPT, according to a Goldman Sachs study this week.

“If generative AI delivers on its promised capabilities, the labor market could face significant disruption,” the investment bank’s economists wrote in a report.

What jobs are at the most at-risk and where?

The impact of A.I. disruption will be felt most deeply in developed countries, like the U.S. and European Union nations, the study noted, because those economies support a large number of white-collar jobs that are more prone to automation than manual labor-intensive work does.

In the U.S., 46 percent of office and administrative support positions could potentially be replaced by A.I., Goldman Sachs estimates. About 44 percent of legal positions could be automated, and 37 percent of engineering jobs are at risk.

Overall, approximately two-thirds of current jobs in the U.S. and Europe are exposed to some degree of A.I. automation, and up to a quarter of all work could be replaced by machines completely, the bank said, adding that, of affected positions where humans are still needed, as much as half of their workload could be computerized.

Tech elites raise alarm on A.I.’s threat to human jobs

Bill Gates painted a similarly alarming picture recently. In a lengthy blog post last week, the Microsoft cofounder predicted using tools like ChatGPT will increasingly feel like “having a white-collar worker available to help you with various tasks.”

Gates said A.I. has the potential of outperforming human workers in job functions like sales, service and document handling, where there are a plethora of good and bad examples for an algorithm to learn from.

Earlier this week, Elon Musk and hundreds of tech entrepreneurs and academics signed a letter urging A.I. labs to pause training systems that are more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4 until the industry develops a shared set of safety protocols.

“We must ask ourselves: Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones?” said the letter, authored by nonprofit Future of Life Institute. “Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us?”

It’s not all doom-and-gloom

Goldman Sachs economists appear more optimistic. They noted technological advancement that initially displaces human workers has historically also created employment and economic growth over the long term.

“Although the impact of A.I. on the labor market is likely to be significant, most jobs and industries are only partially exposed to automation and are thus more likely to be complemented rather than substituted by A.I.,” the report said.

Widespread adoption of A.I. will greatly increase productivity and boost global economic output by 7 percent annually over a 10-year period, which is more than double the typical economic growth rate of industrialized nations, Goldman Sachs predicted.

**Policy and Regulatory Responses** Governments are increasingly responding to concerns about technological disruption by developing regulations to protect workers.

**Policy and Regulatory Responses** Governments are increasingly responding to concerns about technological disruption by developing regulations to protect workers.

**Policy and Regulatory Responses** Governments are increasingly responding to concerns about technological disruption by developing regulations to protect workers.

For example, the Biden administration issued an executive order to establish principles and best practices aimed at mitigating AI’s risks, including job displacement and algorithmic discrimination .

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Content: How to keep your job safe in a world of AI and robots

Studies show how to keep your job, as sophisticated AI tools and more affordable robots enter the workplace.
30 October 2023

Making sense of the data: when it comes to job numbers there are lessons to be learned from the introduction of electronic spreadsheets.

When people see workplace AI and robots in action for the first time, two things tend to happen. Firstly, the audience is mesmerized. Tools such as generative AI, which can turn a text prompt into a photorealistic image, are mind-blowing for new users. More so, when it’s possible to edit those visuals by simply typing natural language into a box. Robots too, are captivating to watch, and have never been more affordable for firms. And that gets to the second reaction, what are the consequences for human workers? How to keep your job secure as AI and robots enter the workplace is becoming a pressing issue for more of us as the applications for AI and robots widen.

Cobots – collaborative robots – are easy to program and well-suited to repetitive tasks, which makes them a big hit on the factory floor. Priced between US $25,000 and US $35,000, and requiring nothing but a power socket and one-off programming to boost productivity, the case for robots replacing manual jobs is a strong one. What’s more, the repetitive and physically demanding nature of the tasks that come easily to cobots, such as pallet stacking, means that workers may gain more than they lose, if they can find employment elsewhere.

Given the right training opportunities, it’s certainly possible for staff to swap manual work for less back-breaking knowledge work. Robots still require some degree of supervision – even if it’s performed remotely by monitoring analytics on a dashboard. And mechanical systems need to be maintained. But, naturally, the concern is whether there’ll be enough of these new jobs to replace the ones lost to robots and AI.

The answer – for those wondering how to keep your job safe in a world of AI and robots – is that the net impact, on both job creation and skills, of firms adopting AI and robotics is positive. However, the study – which is based on a survey of over 1000 UK firms, conducted as part of The Pissarides Review into the Future of Work and Wellbeing – emphasizes that those gains only come to organizations demonstrating what’s described as high levels of readiness.

“If we want to enhance positive outcomes, management philosophy with respect to human resources really does matter, as does investment in education and infrastructure,” write the report’s authors. “The ability of firms to successfully implement new technologies depends on their access to a well-qualified, motivated, and agile workforce.”

Training cobots to do the heavy lifting.

Going back to the example of pallet-stacking cobots, there’s nobody better placed to instruct those machines on the ins and outs of getting products safely out of the door than the workers who’ve done the job manually. They’re perfectly placed to monitor and catch any issues, and are unlikely to miss having to do the task by hand – as long as they’ve got the backing of their employer and the question of how to keep your job can be put to bed.

The findings of what drives UK firms to adopt AI and robotics, and what are the consequences for jobs [PDF] are by no means isolated to a single study. In its 296-page Future of Jobs Report 2023, the World Economic Forum (WEF) writes that the impact of most technologies on jobs is expected to be a net positive over the next five years.

AI tools aren’t right all of the time, which could explain why the majority of business tasks are still performed by humans.

Considering the ‘human-machine frontier’, it was predicted in the WEF’s preceding study – conducted in 2020 – that almost half of all business tasks would be automated in the next five years. However, today organizations estimate that around two-thirds are still performed by humans – a decrease of just 1% on 2020 figures. AI and robots may be slower to take our jobs than some commentators have suggested.

Also, speaking to the need for organizations to engineer a high-level of readiness, the WEF Future of Jobs 2023 report points to ‘skills gaps’ and ‘an inability to attract talent’ as the key barriers preventing industry transformation. Having the opportunity for on-the-job training, reskilling, and upskilling is important when it comes to knowing how to keep your job secure as AI and robots enter the workplace.

What can spreadsheets tell us about how to keep your job?

Spreadsheets can be an acquired taste, with a mix of fans and critics, but they may provide a useful lesson on how the rise of AI and robotics could play out in terms of employment. Episode 606 of NPR’s Planet Money Podcast (a rerun of a show first broadcast in 2015) discusses the invention of electronic spreadsheets in the late 1970s, which quickly rendered the original paper version of the accounting tool obsolete.

In 1984, electronic spreadsheets were dubbed by some as ‘a new, possibly dangerous thing, that was about to transform the world’ (sound familiar?) – and on some counts, that description rang true. But overall, there was an upside in terms of employment.

“The spreadsheet both killed jobs, and it created jobs,” David Kestenbaum, co-host of NPR’s Planet Money Podcast, told listeners. “While the number of bookkeepers and accounting clerks fell, the electronic spreadsheet actually meant more jobs for regular accountants.”

According to employment numbers given on the show, for every bookkeeping and accounting clerk job lost since electronic spreadsheets became widely available, 1.5 accounting jobs have been added.

The big selling point for electronic spreadsheets was that they opened the door to rapid what-if analysis, which had been slow and costly when performed by penciling in and rubbing out numbers on a giant sheet of paper before the advent of PCs.

And from here, it’s not a stretch to apply those learnings to how to keep your job safe in a world of AI and robots. It’s more evidence that – as signposted in the studies referenced earlier in the article – employment opportunities could expand with the commercialization of generative AI tools and robotics.

It means that when Reuters runs headlines such as, “AI could replace 27% of jobs” [YouTube] – quoting the Organization for Economic and Co-operation and Development (OECD) – it’s worth recalling that many new roles will be created too.

Hopefully, this provides some reassurance if the topic of how to keep your job secure as AI and robots enter the workplace is weighing heavy on your shoulders.

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Content: On October 30, 2023, President Biden issued an "Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence" to address the growing concerns surrounding the use of artificial intelligence (AI). The 111-page document identifies several areas of concern with the use of AI, including labor, competition, cybersecurity, education, health, and privacy. The order not only calls on federal agencies to work collaboratively, provide more guidance, and conduct training, but it also urges agencies to develop principles and best practices to mitigate the harms and maximize the benefits of AI for workers.

Here are some of the key directives from the executive order:

  • Orders the Secretary of Labor, in conjunction with outside entities such as labor unions, to develop principles and best practices to mitigate the harms and maximize the benefits of AI for workers by addressing job displacement, labor standards, workplace equity, health, and safety, and data collection. Once these best practices are identified, the agencies are expected to adopt these guidelines, to the extent feasible, in their programs. A fact sheet, which was issued before the executive order was released, explains that "[t]hese principles and best practices will benefit workers by providing guidance to prevent employers from undercompensating workers, evaluating job applications unfairly, or impinging on workers' ability to organize."
  • Orders the Secretary of Labor to issue guidance emphasizing that employers must ensure that employees are appropriately compensated for all hours worked under the Fair Labor Standards Act when using AI tools to monitor or augment employees' work. Significantly, this marks the first time that the Biden administration has shown any interest in AI-related concerns in the wage and hour context.
  • Directs the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to produce a report regarding AI's potential impacts on the labor market, and directs the Secretary of Labor to submit a report identifying options for strengthening federal support for workers facing labor disruptions caused by AI.
  • Directs the U.S. Department of Justice to increase coordination with federal civil rights offices on AI and algorithmic discrimination issues, "improve external stakeholder engagement to promote public awareness of potential discriminatory uses and effects of AI; and develop, as appropriate, additional training, technical assistance, guidance, or other resources[.]"
  • Instructs the Director of the National Science Foundation to "prioritize available resources to support AI-related education and AI-related workforce development through existing programs."
  • Encourages the Federal Trade Commission to consider whether to use its existing authorities, including the agency's rulemaking authority, "to ensure fair competition in the AI marketplace and to ensure that consumers and workers are protected from harms that may be enabled by the use of AI."
  • Creates a White House AI Council to help coordinate the efforts of the various agencies to ensure the effective formation and implementation of policies related to AI, including those contained within the executive order.

The executive order puts the onus on the federal agencies to achieve the goals articulated for them. Most agencies will have anywhere from 30 to 365 days to fulfill their respective requirements as outlined in the document.

Even though the executive order is largely focused on the federal workforce, private entities are still affected. For example, companies that develop (or intend to develop) AI tools for the federal government are required to provide the government certain information, reports, and records. Additionally, the executive order leverages the federal government's pocketbook, as one of the largest purchasers of technology, to ensure the compliance of private companies. These federal procurement procedures provide a method for federal agencies to regulate AI indirectly.

The new executive order continues the approach the Biden administration initially laid out in its "Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights" in October 2022 and Executive Order 13985, which directed agencies to combat algorithmic discrimination and enforce existing laws to protect rights and safety. The new executive order is also the byproduct of continued cooperation with many leading AI companies. In 2023, the White House announced that it had secured voluntary commitments from 15 of the leading AI companies to control the risks posed by AI.

The new executive order also reflects the Biden administration's "whole of government" approach to aggressively promote a pro-union agenda across the entire spectrum of the government. This "whole of government" approach has relied on executive orders, interagency task forces, councils, interagency agreements, individual agency actions such as rulemaking and enforcement strategies, attempts to influence Congress, and a variety of other means to achieve a pro-union agenda. The new executive order continues this approach. Most notably, the fact sheet that was released before the executive order identifies the dangers of increased workplace surveillance, bias, and job displacement and then explains that mitigating these risks must involve supporting "workers' ability to bargain collectively." One of the eight "guiding principles and priorities" of the executive order is explicitly pro-union: "The responsible development and use of AI require a commitment to supporting American workers. As AI creates new jobs and industries, all workers need a seat at the table, including through collective bargaining, to ensure that they benefit from these opportunities." In addition, the executive order's fact sheet emphasizes that the Biden administration's response to the risks of using AI entails instructing agencies to develop principles and best practices to mitigate the harms, including if AI tools impinge "on workers' ability to organize."

Because the executive order urges agencies to develop AI principles and best practices, employers should stay alert to new guidance and regulations that could affect business operations.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

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Content: Home » These four jobs are at risk from AI by 2030, according to a study

These four jobs are at risk from AI by 2030, according to a study

by admin

Applicants queue at a job fair. AP

According to a McKinsey study, nearly 12 million US workers could have to change jobs by 2030.

Low-wage workers are expected to be affected 14 times more often.

Here are the professions that have been hit hardest.

This is a machine translation of an article by our US colleagues at Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor. We welcome feedback at the end of the article.

Nearly 12 million Americans in declining demand occupations may have to change jobs by 2030.

That comes from a new one Study by management consultancy McKinsey, which examined how the rise of artificial intelligence and other factors such as an aging population and e-commerce could affect US employment in the years to come.

In recent years, the job-turning boom dubbed the “Great Resignation” has been fueled by workers seeking better pay and a balanced career. However, McKinsey researchers estimate that by 2030, 11.8 million workers will have to change jobs, not because they want to but because they have to. According to the study, around nine million of them may have to find entirely new jobs in new sectors.

Most jobs are likely to be lost in customer service and sales, among other things

Michael Chui, a partner at McKinsey’s Research Institute who has researched the impact of new technologies on businesses and co-authored the study, told Business Insider that 75 percent of projected job losses will fall into four categories: clerical support, customer service and sales, hospitality, and manufacturing work (e.g. manufacturing).

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Low-wage workers are expected to be the hardest hit by these changes. The study found that Americans in low-wage jobs are up to 14 times more likely to have to change jobs by 2030. At the same time, the study found that demand for higher-paying jobs in sectors such as healthcare, engineering and transportation is likely to increase significantly in the future.

These factors influence whether jobs are lost or continue to grow

Chui pointed to four key factors responsible for the projected shifts in labor demand.

The first factor is workplace automation, which could be fueled by the rise of generative AI technologies like Chat GPT. The study found that up to 30 percent of the hours currently worked in the US could be automated by 2030. “That will change the number of hours people have to work when machines sometimes do some of the work,” he said.

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Researchers predict that generative AI will improve rather than replace the work of STEM professionals, creatives, business people and legal professionals. The biggest negative impacts of automation could be on the clerical support, customer service and sales, and hospitality professions.

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The study estimates that within the four hardest-hit categories, demand for clerical workers, retail salespeople, administrative assistants, and cashiers will each fall by more than 600,000 jobs by 2030, in part because these occupations “have a high proportion of repetitive tasks, data entry, and… elementary data processing, all activities that can be efficiently performed by automated systems,” according to the study.

The second factor is the continued rise in online shopping. “If people spend relatively more in e-commerce than in brick-and-mortar retail, there may be fewer salespeople needed in stores, but more people to move the goods and more needs in warehouses,” Chui said. Due in part to the e-commerce boom, the researchers predict that the transportation services category will see 9 percent job growth by 2030.

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The head of marketing at SAP reveals how we strategically use artificial intelligence and where we are deliberately cautious with the technology

Third, as Americans age, people of different ages tend to have different spending patterns. According to Chui, this could result in demand for certain jobs falling and demand for others — such as healthcare — rising.

“This applies to all professions, from nursing to surgeons and radiologists,” he said. Fourth, despite the upswing in US manufacturing, productivity gains could mean the industry needs fewer workers than it used to. “You will need fewer people but with more skills,” he said.

The job losses caused by artificial intelligence could result in some low-paid workers moving into higher-paying positions

The extent to which these changes will affect the US workforce, positively or negatively, is debatable, according to Chui. It depends on the country’s ability to reskill vulnerable workers.

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“The ‘glass-is-half-empty’ variant is that the people most affected by these shifts are some of the lower-paid workers in the economy,” he said, adding, “The ‘ The ‘glass-is-half-full’ variant is that by retraining them they could take higher-paying jobs. If we can make the labor market work by facilitating these transitions, that’s really only an advantage.”

While Chui is confident that the US can make this transition, it will require significant investment from businesses, schools and governments. In addition to educating workers, the US could also benefit from a “skills-based labor market” in which a worker’s specific skills are valued as much, if not more, than their college degree during the hiring process.

“There was a time when the vast majority of workers in the United States worked in agriculture,” he said, and years later far more people worked in factories, for example. But we didn’t have 50 percent unemployment. We have always been able to do this in the past. It’s new challenges, but if you’re an optimistic American, you say we can do it.”

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Policy discussions have also included ideas like Universal Basic Income (UBI) to provide a safety net for displaced workers .

**Identity and Cultural Resistance** Some individuals openly embrace a "tech-averse Luddite" identity, rejecting mainstream technologies like smartphones in favor of simpler alternatives, reflecting broader unease with the pervasive influence of large tech companies .

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Content: Thousands lose jobs as Artificial Intelligence replaces humans in tech sector

New YorkEdited By: Mukul SharmaUpdated: Jun 05, 2023, 08:08 AM IST

Artificial Intelligence words are seen in this illustration taken March 31, 2023 | Representative Photograph:(Reuters)

Story highlights

AI-related job cuts: For the first time-ever, companies have cited Artificial Intelligence as reason behind laying off part of their workforce.

For the first time ever, Artificial Intelligence has been included as one of the reasons behind American companies executing job cuts. The US companies cut over 80,000 jobs last month, up 20 per cent from April due to reasons such as market conditions, restructuring and buyouts and Artificial Intelligence, according to a report by Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The report said that in May, 3,900 people were laid off due to Artificial Intelligence.

"We do believe Artificial Intelligence will cause more job loss, though we are surprised how quickly technology was cited as a reason," Andy Challenger, senior vice president of the outplacement firm, was quoted as saying by the Fortune magazine.

"It is incredible the speed the technology is evolving and being adapted," Challenger added without specifying which companies had the AI-related job cuts.

A recent survey by software company Krista found most people believe that AI will affect their jobs at one point or the other. But while only 11 per cent of employees at managerial levels said that the technology will negatively affect their work, the number nearly doubled when it came to the rank-and-file workers.

Earlier in March, Goldman Sachs said in a report that 18 per cent of all jobs worldwide and a fourth of all jobs in the United States and Europe could be automated.

Also watch | Gravitas: Tech layoffs: Is your job safe?

The report also found that white collar jobs such as the ones in the IT and finance sectors as well as the administrative and legal jobs were at greater risk of being replaced by the AI than the blue-collar ones that require physical labour.

Artificial Intelligence can automate tasks such as writing code, and other tasks that require years for humans to learn.

With that kind of computing power, some companies find it cheaper and more efficient to enlist Artificial Intelligence than employ people.

"The uncertainty lies in whether companies will cite A.I. as a reason [for termination] going forward," Challenger is further quoted as saying by the Fortune magazine.

"It remains to be seen how investors will react to that sort of adoption that costs human jobs."

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This cultural resistance is not a wholesale rejection of technology but a call for critical examination, ethical development, and implementation of technology that serves human interests and preserves dignity, autonomy, and social

This cultural resistance is not a wholesale rejection of technology but a call for critical examination, ethical development, and implementation of technology that serves human interests and preserves dignity, autonomy, and social