Hello there!
It seems that slowly the fear of AI is losing its force. I found a study that indicates that workers demand AI to boost productivity and read about first use cases of AI helping humans to focus on more meaningful work. This means that AI is slowly on the rise. When the technology loses its sci-fi image and becomes a practical tool, people will relax. AI will likely assist them with certain tasks — teachers might find more time to prepare for their work as AI can assist them with grading tests.
Has your attitude towards AI changed? What do you believe will happen in the future with AI on the rise?
I’d love to read your thoughts!
Best,
Alice
Headlines you shouldn’t miss
FORBES Five Predictions For The Future Of In-Office Work: Forbes Councils Member Bobby Marhamat dares to formulate five predictions for the future of work: 1. More contractors and freelancers. 2. Spatially distributed/remote teams. 3. Flexible schedules. 4. Offices as one big coffee shop. 5. Flatter hierarchies.
YAHOO! FINANCE Asana Launches App for Zoom to Reimagine Meetings: Asana has worked on the seamless adaption of their work management tool into Zoom's conferencing software. Both companies believe that remote work requiring efficient digital tools is here to stay.
WASHINGTON POST The AI we should fear is already here: MIT star economist Daron Acemoglu shares his opinion about AI and believes that the greatest threats are already here — even though there is no artificial general intelligence yet. The existing tools are enough to threaten the legal system, implement surveillance of citizens and enforce involuntary monitoring of workers.
FAST COMPANY Why our fears of job-killing robots are overblown: AI is best at assisting people at the moment. It can’t replicate the common sense and general intelligence yet. The fear of massive job losses has existed for decades, but currently, few indicators confirm this skepticism.
TECHCRUNCH Dover raises $20M to bring the concept of ‘orchestration’ to recruitment: The recruiting platform Dover successfully raised $20 million after convincing investors of its ‘orchestration’ adaptation to HR. Dover helps recruiters streamline their hiring process, juggle various candidates simultaneously, and automate certain steps of the recruiting process.
Opinion: How to prepare your children for the future of work
Simon Kuestenmachen, the founder of The Demographics Group, knows how work has evolved during the last decades. The Australia-based advisor uses data to illustrate the trajectory of the labor economy and provides several core findings.
Like most Western countries, Australia has transformed into a knowledge economy, with most job openings emerging for people with a university degree.
STEM skills are a good indicator for job and income prospects
The more education people obtained, the higher their salary
Kuestenmacher, however, doesn’t conclude to recommend your children to get as much higher education as possible. With technology changing jobs and tasks at all skill levels, he believes parents should advise their children beyond conventional wisdom. While the right academic skills will matter a lot, the advisor believes parents should send their children to acting class.
Acting, Kuestenmacher believes, is a skill that gets closest to a business environment with people representing specific interests and taking different roles. Additionally, acting helps you to interact with others:
“Acting is much more valuable than debating. The future of work is increasingly collaborative in nature rather than adversarial. Sure, you need to be able to make your point when facing a hiring committee, your board, or clients; but in a world where work is even more interpersonal in nature than it is today, being able to interact with your boss, colleagues and clients is arguably the most important part of the job.”
Do you agree? Feel free to leave a comment!
The future of e-learning might work best with AI assistance
Have you ever taken an online course in an ambitious attempt to learn a new valuable skill? In my experience, online courses can get you hooked and spark your interest in a certain area — but they don’t necessarily lead to the best results. After all, when you try to apply your newly acquired knowledge, there is no teacher to look over your shoulder and correct you.
Chelsea Finn, Standford professor and AI researcher might change that. She has developed a neural network that can provide feedback to students. The network analyzed large data sets of tests, and the feedback teachers have provided until it learned the patterns itself. It can now give direct feedback to students on their tests, for instance, when they write code.
Interestingly, students seem to agree slightly more with the feedback the algorithm gives them compared to human feedback.
Why does this matter? The high-paced nature of work-life requires continuous skill-building, and workers need to keep up with their knowledge levels. However, quality education has required human supervision for guidance and correction. AI could lead to a leap of quality in education.
However, students can’t ask the algorithm why they were wrong. They still need humans to explain the details to them. Stanford scholar Dr. Chris Piech summarizes the likeliest prospect:
“The future is symbiotic — teachers and A.I. working together.”
Rating apps can manifest racism — and companies don’t know how to deal with it
Black, brown, and immigrant taxi and delivery drivers tend to get lower ratings on apps like Uber, Lyft, or DoorDash. Freelancers of color receive lower reviews on platforms like Fiverr.
Customers — knowingly or subconsciously — tend to manifest biases against people of color with every tap on their phone that rates a service. This can have direct consequences for drivers and other gig workers. They might miss a promotion or even get fired.
However, many companies don’t collect demographic data about their drivers in an attempt to avoid internal biases and racism. Therefore, it is difficult to track if the drivers with lower ratings might be experiencing racism or not.
KQED reporters reached out to various companies asking how they deal with racist customer attitudes. Lyft responded that they are conducting a study to understand the impact of racism and ratings. DoorDash kicks racist customers out of their app.
But by avoiding analyzing demographic data, workers of color that might be subjected to racism are left without the means and tools to prove their experiences. After all, negative ratings might have a variety of reasons.
As long as there is no proper understanding of what is happening, the data-driven rating systems could hurt workers of color and worsen their opportunities for social mobility.
German robotics startup pushes for more automation
The Munich-based startup Robotise is hoping for the next automation boom in the hospitality and care industries. Despite signs that robotics has passed its recent trend — I wrote about the end of production of the robot Pepper — Robotise CEO Oliver Stahl believes that the pandemic is creating a greater demand for the hospitality industry.
Robotise is developing minibar robots that can deliver cold drinks and snacks to guests. It is capable of using the elevator independently and could save hotels time and money. Minibars are mostly a losing game. A robot could change that. Robotise additionally develops a robot that is capable of sanitizing rooms and hallways.
Skeptics fear that in human-centered industries like care work, robots could lead to worse care. Stahl, however, stresses that robots are automating routine tasks that take a lot of time. Hospitality and care workers would have more time to focus on humans if a robot performed those tasks.
Number of the week: 68 percent of workers demand more AI to boost productivity
According to a new survey by SnapLogic among 400 office workers in the US and the UK, 68 percent support the introduction of AI tools in their workspace. 81 percent believe that AI boosts their performance at work. Among the surveyed workers, slightly more than half (56 percent) indicated they were already using AI. However, they didn’t specify in which way.
This finding might come as a surprise to some skeptics of AI.
SnapLogic’s CTO Craig Steward explains:
“In recent years, there was concern among office workers that AI would drive job losses, but employee opinions seem to have changed. The more they’ve been exposed to AI and see it in action, the more they’ve realized how much it can assist them with their daily work.”
Recommendation of the week: Jill Lepore’s ‘If Then’
I recently went to my favorite book shop in Berlin and stumbled across Jill Lepore’s ‘If Then.’ The back of the book read:
The Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge--decades before Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica. Silicon Valley likes to imagine it has no past but the scientists of Simulmatics are the long-dead grandfathers of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Borrowing from psychological warfare, they used computers to predict and direct human behavior, deploying their "People Machine" from New York, Cambridge, and Saigon for clients that included John Kennedy's presidential campaign, the New York Times, Young & Rubicam, and, during the Vietnam War, the Department of Defence.
Harvard historian Jill Lepore did a great job explaining the origins of modern tech, political influence, and the impact data has on society. The book's themes are surprisingly current and at times reminded me of ideas economists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein presented in their famous book ‘Nudge.’
If Then will give you a good understanding of how many technological developments and their abuse is not new at all — and it’s almost too entertaining to believe it’s true.
Tweet of the week: WEF showing how to avoid bias in algorithms
Bias in AI is one of the major challenges developers and practitioners face. Women and people of color tend to receive more negative treatment by AI algorithms. The World Economic Forum summarized what causes bias and how to fight it: