Lifeboat Foundation

Machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence systems influence many aspects of people’s lives: news articles, movies to watch, people to spend time with, access to credit, and even the investment of capital. Algorithms have been empowered to make such decisions and take actions for the sake of efficiency and speed. Despite these gains, there are concerns about the rapid automation of jobs (even such jobs as journalism and radiology). A better understanding of attitudes toward and interactions with algorithms is essential precisely because of the aura of objectivity and infallibility cultures tend to ascribe to them. This report illustrates some of the shortcomings of algorithmic decisionmaking, identifies key themes around the problem of algorithmic errors and bias, and examines some approaches for combating these problems. This report highlights the added risks and complexities inherent in the use of algorithmic decisionmaking in public policy. The report ends with a survey of approaches for combating these problems.

Despite the popular belief that artificial intelligence is coming to take your jobs away, accountants would love some robotic help to get them through the day. This is according to a new report by Sage, which says 96 percent of accountants are confident about the future of accountancy as well as their role in it.

Despite welcoming change, more than two thirds of respondents (68 percent) expect their roles to change through automation, in the future.

Here’s what accountants are expecting from automation: almost four in ten (38 percent) see number-crunching as their number one frustration. Thirty-two percent still use manual methods for this work. A quarter (25 percent) use Excel while seven percent still use handwritten notes.

Artificial intelligence and drones will be key policing tools in the future amid budget and job cuts, Gwent Police’s chief constable has said.

Jeff Farrar said he foresees every police vehicle carrying a drone in the years to come and for more computers to do jobs “that do not involve emotion”.

Gwent has had £50m of funding cuts and still needs to make £9m of savings. It has also lost 300 officers since 2011.

A tsunami of change is already arriving. Artificial intelligence is now capable of doing desk jobs that were previously safe from automation. The social and economic effects remain to be seen, but is AI what we think it is?

Workplaces that include artificial intelligence (AI) will soon be reality, say researchers who believe the rise of AI in all areas of life is not only inevitable, it’s set to reshape the way we think about consciousness and human identity.

From Metropolis to 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Terminator, robots and super-intelligent AIs in film have seduced and terrified our collective consciousness, having an impact on how we view artificial intelligence. But will they really crush the puny humans and take over the world?

Continue reading “Workplace diversity will soon include artificial intelligence” »

President Trump has vowed to bring back American manufacturing jobs. But the evidence is overwhelming that foreign-made robots are the future.

Sometimes people bring up overpopulation scenarios where the population can fit inside Texas. But they ask, what about all the stuff that supports that population? Here is one answer.

Located in an abandoned 70,000-square-foot factory in Newark, New Jersey, the world’s largest vertical farm aims to produce 2,000,000 pounds of food per year. This AeroFarms operation is also set up to use 95% less water than open fields, with yields 75 times higher per square foot. Their stacked, high-efficiency aeroponics system needs no sunlight, soil or pesticides. The farm’s proximity to New York City means lower transportation costs and fresher goods to a local market. It also means new jobs for a former industrial district.

Continue reading “From Home Aeroponic Gardens to Vertical Urban Farms” »

Your job isn’t safe. Nearly half of the jobs in America today may soon be done by robots.

Robots will begin delivering Domino’s pizza starting this summer. The small, six-wheeled devices go 4 miles per hour and will drop the pizzas off within a one-mile radius of its stores in the Netherlands and Germany.

Continue reading “There’s a 50% chance that a robot is coming for your job” »

The fear that automation in the form of robots or artificial intelligence is going to destroy jobs is widespread. But it can be difficult to gauge just how serious to take the threat. Different reports offer different estimations of how many jobs will be lost, while politicians and economists argue that technology creates as many jobs as it destroys, maintaining an equilibrium in employment over the long run.

But is this really true? A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research aims to add some solid numbers to the debate, looking at the historical effects of robots on employment in the US. Economists Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo studied the US labor market between 1990 and 2007, looking at employment rates in different areas and industries while controlling for the influence of factors like increased imports from China and the offshoring of jobs.

In his final speech as US president, Barack Obama warned of the “relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good, middle-class jobs obsolete.” Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, has said that governments will need to tax robots to replace forgone revenue when human workers lose their jobs.

If the past is prologue, these concerns are warranted.

In a recent study (pdf), economists Daren Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University try to quantify how worried we should be about robots. They examine the impact of industrial automation on the US labor market from 1990 to 2007. They conclude that each additional robot reduced employment in a given commuting area by 3–6 workers, and lowered overall wages by 0.25–0.5%.

Continue reading “Compelling new evidence that robots are taking jobs and cutting wages” »