Robots have long been seen as a futuristic threat that will take our jobs, but many of us will increasingly be working alongside them, rather than being replaced by them, a dynamic that several Boston-area companies are advancing with collaborative robots that can take over routine tasks, such as assembly, heavy lifting, and number-crunching.
This shift will inevitably shake up the labor force, but it could also elevate people into higher-level, uniquely human roles that require creativity, emotional intelligence, and leadership.
Then again, it could not.
The frightening thing here is not the Terminator-like future they are constructing.
It is the feeling that the paper is strictly eliti$t -- meaning there are going to be a whole lot of excess people with nothing to do. They tend to be hard to control and need culling from time to time.
WWIII must be right around the corner.
“Automation is not going to be Armageddon for the American worker,” said Andy Storm, an MIT graduate and chief executive of Eckhart, a manufacturing solutions company in Warren, Mich., that uses robotics technology developed in Cambridge. “It really allows people to get out from underneath mind-numbing, repetitive tasks and move into roles where they’re using their minds and their god-given talents.”
Like what, this?
In other words, it’s time to stop fearing that robots are going to replace us and start learning how to get along with them as co-workers.
Now your machine is a "co-worker."
How long until we are all Borg?
The predictions are daunting. By 2025, machines will carry out more than half of workplace tasks, according to the World Economic Forum, compared to 29 percent done by machines today, and as more lower-skilled jobs are automated, the most vulnerable workers are likely to suffer the most, either losing their jobs or facing lower wages as more employers have the choice to use a robot instead, but the rise of the machines is also expected to spark positive change.
In China, anyway.
While roughly 75 million jobs will be lost worldwide because of technology, according to the World Economic Forum, 133 million new jobs will be created.
Promi$es, promi$es.
In Massachusetts, one of the country’s original manufacturing hubs, more than 300 robotics and robotics-related companies have sprung up, according to the Mass Technology Leadership Council, roughly half of them in the past eight years.
In many industries, such as manufacturing, the robot invasion is in full swing. For now, many of these heavy-duty industrial robots are caged, to prevent a human from getting too close, but by 2025, collaborative robots, or “cobots,” as they are sometimes called, are expected to make up more than a third of all robot sales.
One major hurdle: making sure humans can work safely alongside them.
As David Mindell, an MIT professor and chief executive of Humatics in Cambridge, put it: “If I’m going to work with you, I have to know you’re not going to kill me.”
I'm sensing a harassment lawsuit.
Humatics has developed a 3-D positioning system using radio frequency that will allow machines to move autonomously in close proximity to humans. Still, no matter how independent robots get, they will need people to function, said Mindell, who wrote the 2015 book “Our Robots, Ourselves.”
Some workers are already benefiting from collaborative robots. At Veo Robotics in Waltham, roboticists are also creating technology that will allow people to work next to robots — and make adjustments if they get too close.
Will it talk to me like a human?
During a demonstration in the firm’s warehouse-like space, a robot lifted a 30-pound steering knuckle — an automotive part that attaches to a wheel — and placed it on an assembly station near an engineer, who bolted it to another part. Three-dimensional cameras tracked them both, using a set of algorithms to predict where and how fast the human would move, which dictated where and how fast the robot would move.
That doesn't look fool proof given the unpredictability of humans, does it?
Maybe best to do away with the surplus population, huh?
If the engineer got within about four feet, the robot slowed down; if he got within three feet, it stopped.
These “cage-free” robots can cut the time it takes to do a task in half, said Clara Vu, Veo’s vice president of engineering, and take over the sort of laborious, repetitive tasks that can injure people.
“We think of it like a farmer working with a draft horse,” said Veo chief executive Patrick Sobalvarro. “We want the robots to be responsive in the way that those animals are responsive to our presence.”
I'm sorry, they are not a living creature.
Even warehouse robots are learning to share space with human co-workers.
The company 6 River Systems, located down the street from Veo Robotics, has created a shopping-cart-size robot, named Chuck, that helps workers find merchandise in a warehouse.
Chuck groups orders by location, then leads workers to the right aisle, displays a picture of the item, points to its precise location, and scans it to make sure the worker retrieved the correct item.
OMG!
How long before they don't need the person, and what if the robot is wrong?
All of this makes the process more efficient — reducing the number of miles that warehouse workers walk in a day by an estimated 66 percent — and it also makes workers job-ready on day one, even if they don’t speak English, said vice president of marketing Fergal Glynn.
???????
Why wouldn't they speak English?
“We’re not eliminating jobs,” said Glynn, whose company is planning to double the number of Chucks in operation to 600 by the end of the year. “People who are in the warehouse today, we’re looking to make them more productive.”
They have been telling us that since the beginning of industrialization, all while making their own wallets fat.
Technology has been displacing workers since the Industrial Revolution, said Stefanie Tellex, a computer science professor at Brown University who is developing robots that can respond to voice commands and learn from mistakes, and although robots that improve manufacturing could potentially bring work back to the United States, Tellex said, she is well aware of the disruption they will cause.
They will have to give Trump the credit.
“I think it’s incumbent on us as a society, it’s a political and societal question, how are we going to mitigate these effects?” she said.
More than three-quarters of the way through the article and now questions are raised?
Not for long, either!
As robots acquire more basic skills, they will inevitably raise the bar for entry-level jobs, forcing people to acquire more advanced skills such as those that involve problem-solving, said Willy Shih, a Harvard Business School professor.
“The jobs of the future are not going to be putting tops on bottoms. They are going to be ‘Robot, stop, I need to change the tool,’ ” Shih said.
Joseph Aoun, the president of Northeastern University, believes it’s essential that higher education prepare people for this change. In his 2017 book “Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” Aoun writes about the need to train creators instead of laborers, to foster people’s ability to innovate and empathize.
WTF kind of gibberish is that?
What we shouldn’t do, he said, is focus on data processing or other tasks that machines can master. “If we compete with machines on their terms . . . we lose,” he said.
I'll be back!
Julie Shah, a roboticist at MIT, spent several years teaching a machine to manage the workflow on a labor and delivery floor. One of her graduate students shadowed doctors and nurses at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center — where Shah’s husband is an obstetrician — then programmed the machine with this information and created a simulator that allowed it to learn which decisions produced the best outcomes.
Shah then installed the artificial intelligence system on a robot and, in the fall of 2015, brought it to the hospital, where the robot made suggestions about giving breaks and assigning nurses to patients in real time.
So what did the nurses have to say?
By and large, the medical staff on duty agreed with the robot, but sometimes, said nurse Kristen Jerrier, “the decision that makes the most sense on paper is not the right one.” If a nurse had just participated in an especially emotional delivery, Jerrier said, a human could tell if she needed a break, but a machine couldn’t, and that’s exactly the point, Shah said.
“If we can offload many of the easier decisions on the machine, we can get the best of both worlds,” she said. “This would allow people to focus on the parts of job that truly require human judgment and experience.”
Then Kensho can pick your stocks for you!
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Related:
Tornado hit Baltimore Amazon center
Antiquarian booksellers hit Amazon with strike
Building facade collapse in Allston injures 2
Where you gonna stay?
"Union hotel workers reached an agreement with Marriott International to settle a strike in Detroit, the Detroit Free Press reported Sunday. The strike was one of about a half-dozen by workers in several US cities, including Boston. The job action in Boston is still ongoing, but “we’re making progress,” said Brian Lang, president of Unite Here Local 26, which has 1,500 workers at seven Boston hotels involved in the work stoppage. In Detroit, only a single Marriott-run hotel — Westin Book Cadillac — was on strike, Lang said, which made coming to an agreement less complicated. Still, the settlement is a positive sign, Lang said. “It shows that the strike is working,” he said, noting that as picketing enters its fifth week, the number of local workers participating is holding strong. “There’s an inspiring commitment to stay the course.” Local 26 is scheduled to sit down with Marriott in the next week, Lang said. The contract in Detroit was ratified with “historic progress on crucial issues” such as wages, health care, benefits, and working conditions, according to a statement from Unite Here AFL-CIO Local 24, the union representing about 150 workers. The walkout began on Oct. 7."
Haven't seen much since.
What do you mean there is no food or beverage service?
Speaking of walkouts:
"Google employees walk out of Cambridge office as part of companywide protest" by Morgan Hughes Globe Correspondent November 02, 2018
CAMBRIDGE — Hundreds of workers streamed out of Google’s Kendall Square office on Thursday morning, joining colleagues around the globe, to protest what they described as the Internet giant’s lenient treatment of men accused of sexual misconduct.
In Cambridge, where Google employs about 1,400, the workers walked out from the company’s building along Main Street just after 11 a.m.
The backlash comes amid a cultural reckoning over misconduct by men in positions of power, and the technology business has been particularly visible because of a years-long trend of underrepresentation of women in important roles.
Sara Sedgwick Brown, 34, an employee of more than six years, said recent revelations brought to mind other uncomfortable situations she has faced at work.
“I’ve had the slights,” she said at the Cambridge rally. “I’ve had those awkward interactions by the microwave that made me feel uncomfortable.”
A New York Times story last week detailed a misconduct claim against Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android mobile operating system. Rubin left Google in 2014 with a $90 million exit package despite a claim, which the story said was determined credible, that Rubin had coerced a woman he had been dating into a sex act. Rubin derided the Times story as inaccurate and denied the allegations in a tweet.
The Kendall Square protest followed others around the world — all around 11 a.m. local time on Thursday — in an effort called “Walkout For Real Change.” As the day began in Boston, employees had already left their offices in Singapore, Tokyo, London, Berlin, and Zurich.
Local organizers said the walkout was intended to address more than sexual misconduct allegations. Participants called for an end to forced arbitration, for publicly reported sexual harassment reports, an inclusive and uniform process for reporting sexual assault, and equal pay and opportunity for all employees.
Vicki Tardif Holland, an eight-year employee who helped organize the Cambridge walkout, said she has noticed that people of color in the office are more frequently asked for their identification badge.
Other participants said they were most concerned about the company’s forced arbitration policy incases of harassment and discrimination.
Lucas Sanders, who has worked for Google for about two years, said he feels the company needs to better support its employees.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized for the company’s ‘‘past actions’’ in an e-mail sent to employees Tuesday. ‘‘I understand the anger and disappointment that many of you feel,’’ Pichai wrote. ‘‘I feel it as well, and I am fully committed to making progress on an issue that has persisted for far too long in our society . . . and, yes, here at Google, too.’’
In an e-mail last week, Pichai and Eileen Naughton, Google’s executive in charge of personnel issues, sought to reassure workers that the company had cracked down on sexual misconduct since Rubin’s departure four years ago.
Among other things, Pichai and Naughton disclosed that Google has fired 48 employees, including 13 senior managers, for ‘‘sexual harassment’’ in recent years without giving any of them severance packages, but Thursday’s walkout could signal that a significant number of the 94,000 employees working for Google and its corporate parent Alphabet Inc. remained unconvinced that the company is doing enough to adhere to Alphabet’s own edict urging all employees to ‘‘do the right thing.’’
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Related:
"How Google protected Andy Rubin, the ‘Father of Android’" by Daisuke Wakabayashi and Katie Benner October 25, 2018
SAN FRANCISCO — Google gave Andy Rubin, the creator of Android mobile software, a hero’s farewell when he left the company in October 2014.
What Google did not make public was that an employee had accused Rubin of sexual misconduct. The woman, with whom Rubin had been having an extramarital relationship, said he coerced her into performing oral sex in a hotel room in 2013, according to two company executives with knowledge of the episode. Google investigated and concluded her claim was credible, said the executives, who spoke on the condition they not be named, citing confidentiality agreements.
Google could have fired Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. Instead, the company handed him a $90 million exit package, paid in installments of about $2 million a month for four years, said two people with knowledge of the terms. The last payment is scheduled for next month.
At least he got all the money before the cat was let out of the bag.
Rubin was one of three executives that Google protected during the past decade after they were accused of sexual misconduct. In two instances, it ousted senior executives, but softened the blow by paying them millions of dollars as they departed, even though it had no legal obligation to do so. In a third, the executive remained in a highly compensated post at the company. Each time Google stayed silent about the accusations against the men.....
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Maybe robot bosses would be better, 'eh, ladies?
"Being your workplace’s only woman takes a toll, study says" by Rebecca Greenfield Bloomberg News October 28, 2018
The last time Kaitlin Savage attended a meeting that included another woman was months ago. Savage works in the solar industry, in which men outnumber women 3 to 1. The majority of her time is spent surrounded by men who at times, she said, underestimate her work, flirt, call her after midnight for ‘‘personal reasons,’’ and give her inappropriate compliments.
‘‘It’s emotionally exhausting,’’ said Savage, who has considered switching to a less heavily male-dominated field, like oil and gas.
She’s part of a group that a survey from LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Co. calls ‘‘Onlys’’: women who are often or always the only female in the room at work.
All men turn into cavemen then.
Onlys face more challenges in the workplace than other women, the survey found. Half of these women said they need to provide more evidence of their competence than others do. Onlys are twice as likely as other women surveyed to be mistaken for someone junior. These women are also almost twice as likely to be subjected to demeaning comments and twice as likely to report having experienced sexual harassment in their careers.
‘‘This was my entire career, basically,’’ said Kristen Fanarakis, who worked 15 years in finance. She was a part of many all-male teams and didn’t have a female friend at work until she was in her 30s, she said. Although Fanarakis had many supportive male colleagues and mentors, she said, other men treated her with disrespect.
Yeah, #MeToo never really came to that world, did it?
These experiences are even worse for women of color. Almost half said they’re often the only person of their race at work. These women are more likely to feel excluded, scrutinized and closely watched, the survey found.
More than 90 percent of the companies surveyed said that having diversity and inclusion is a top priority, but for the fourth year in a row, Lean In and McKinsey found that corporate America has made almost no progress in increasing women’s representation in the workplace.
Proving that is nothing but public relations bull.
See:
"There’s no shortage of corporate leaders who say they care about diversity and pledge to promote more women. The executives in charge of human resources, however, say there are few if any strategies for actually making it happen....."
Related: Women take more seats on boards
But parity is still out of reach.
"Even after a year of focus on gender balance and the harassment of women in the workplace, the era of “manels” — male-dominated panels and speakers — at conferences and events shows no sign of waning. Men made up 68 percent of the speakers at conferences, trade shows, marketing events, and other gatherings this year, a scant improvement from 70 percent two years ago, according to an analysis by Bizzabo. The event software company analyzed 60,000 speakers at thousands of events over five years in 23 countries, according to Alon Alroy, Bizzabo co-founder."
Yeah, ‘‘you have a group of women who are put in very isolating and scrutinized positions’’ with no voice.
Fanarakis, for one, eventually left her finance career behind. Being an Only ‘‘takes a physical and emotional toll,’’ she said. She went to business school, wrote a book, and in 2017 launched a women’s workwear startup.
Thomas suspects that many companies check the diversity box by hiring just one or two women. It’s a strategy that hurts more than it helps, she said.
At her first job out of college, Molly Oswaks was one of two women on staff at the tech news site Gizmodo. She said her colleagues posted pornographic content in the company group chat, adding that readers would harass her in the comments section of her stories, saying she’d slept her way to the job.
The benefits of diversity don’t kick in with tokenism. Studies have found that if women make up 20 percent of a group, they account for only 10 percent of the conversation. Women need to constitute a supermajority to make up 50 percent of talk time in a group.
‘‘These companies want a diversity of ideas,’’ Thomas said, but hiring the bare minimum number of women produces ‘‘a diluted form of diversity.’’
Then we need quotas.
--more--"
Related:
In corporate America, pregnancy discrimination can come with high stakes
Like a miscarriage?
Also see:
Many female executives think sexual harassment is uncommon
They say it is how you dress that brings it on.
"These business veterans see mentoring as ‘a two-way street’" by Robert Weisman Globe Staff October 27, 2018
Martha Sloan Felch grew up in comfortable suburbs of Philadelphia and Chicago. She earned an MBA before launching a successful banking career, with tours at Shawmut, Fleet, and smaller Massachusetts banks, but on a recent weekday, Felch found herself in a borrowed conference room, trying to guide a fledgling nonprofit through a leadership transition. Nurys Camargo, a woman of Dominican-Colombian descent who started the Chica Project seven years ago to mentor young Latinas, listened carefully as Felch talked about the need to build a stronger board.
“You need to go slow and have your ducks in order,” Felch counseled.
Felch, who dislikes the word retirement, left banking last year to join the growing ranks of older executives who are “paying it forward” by coaching nonprofit leaders. For high-octane professionals, mentoring social entrepreneurs — as paid consultants or as volunteers — offers the chance to share skills and insights gained in the corporate world with idealistic up-and-comers who need business savvy to carry out their missions.
Related:
"nonprofits provide new ways for corporations and individuals to influence"
It is really is a richer's pre$$!!
Also see: Where charity goes to wait
And you thought nonprofits were doing good work, not sheltering tax bills!
The need has grown at a time of budget cuts at some government agencies and foundations that have traditionally funded nonprofits. The financial constraints, along with a tighter labor market, has made it tougher for them to hire staffs and access talent.
Caused by the billions in corporate welfare!
Felch and Camargo, who spent the summer working intensively to reposition Chica, are a study in contrasts: Felch, a grandmother and onetime Sunday school teacher, is direct, authoritative, and reserved. Camargo, 43, is a voluble veteran of political campaigns who talks with passion about her motivation for founding the Chica Project: “I didn’t see many women who looked like me” in Massachusetts professional circles.
The mentoring movement dates back at least four decades. A group of prominent captains of commerce, led by banker David Rockefeller Sr., founded the Executive Service Corps in 1977 to strengthen nonprofits.....
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At least bankers aren't rapi$ts:
"Man charged with raping 2 women at gunpoint; prosecutors fear there are more victims" by Travis Andersen Globe Staff May 16, 2018
New Hampshire State Police wanted no part of Joseph A. Losano when he tried to get a job with the department.
The Swampscott native and military veteran was rejected after a rocky interview, in which he told a trooper that he “might have” bitten off part of someone’s ear during a fight and boasted that “no one messed with me,” legal filings show.
On Wednesday, prosecutors asserted that Losano’s violent tendencies escalated. He was arraigned Wednesday in Roxbury Municipal Court on charges of raping two women at gunpoint last year.
Though Losano failed to become a police officer, he worked as a per-diem substitute teacher in the Swampscott Public Schools for three months in 2017, according to Pamela R.H. Angelakis, the superintendent.
In court Wednesday, Assistant Suffolk District Attorney Ian Polumbaum said both women were working as prostitutes when Losano picked them up in Boston and allegedly raped them on a mattress on the bed of his truck.....
So he didn't pay?
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Related: Swampscott man charged with raping five women at gunpoint
Maybe a robot society would be better:
"Microsoft says it will sell Pentagon advanced technology" by David E. Sanger October 26, 2018
REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft said Friday that it would sell the military and intelligence agencies whatever advanced technologies they needed “to build a strong defense,” just months after Google told the Pentagon it would refuse to provide artificial intelligence products that could build more accurate drones or compete with China for next-generation weapons.
The announcement, made in a town-hall-style meeting with the software giant’s leadership on Thursday, then planned to be published on a blog Friday afternoon, underscores the radically different paths these leading US technology firms are taking as they struggle with their role in creating a new generation of cyberweapons to help, and perhaps someday replace, American warriors, but the divergent paths taken by Google and Microsoft also underscore concerns inside the US defense and intelligence establishments about how the United States will take on a rising China.
With robot warriors.
The Chinese have, in the past two years, set goals for dominance in the next decade in AI, quantum computing, and other technologies it believes will allow its military and intelligence agencies to surpass those of the United States. Pentagon officials have questioned how committed domestic technology companies are to keeping the United States on the leading edge, the way Raytheon, Boeing, IBM, and McDonnell Douglas did in the Cold War.
Let me gue$$: pour loot into them.
Google encountered fierce opposition from young engineers to the company’s participation in Project Maven, a program to improve how drones recognize and select their targets. Google declared a few weeks ago it would not bid on a multibillion dollar contract to provide the Pentagon with “cloud services” to store and process vast amounts of data. Amazon, for its part, appears willing to supply its services to the military and intelligence agencies, and it runs the information cloud services that power the CIA.
Amazon is helping in other ways, too.
Even before its announcement, Microsoft seemed like the only plausible alternative for the Pentagon’s giant cloud project, called JEDI, in which Amazon is considered the front-runner, but the Microsoft announcement may have a greater impact on future technologies, including warning systems and weapons powered by AI. And Microsoft’s leadership, after brief debates this summer, concluded that by dropping out of the bidding, Google was also losing any real influence in how the weapons are used.
“This was not a hard decision,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and general counsel, said in an interview in his office. “Microsoft was born in the United States, is headquartered in the United States, and has grown up with all the benefits that have long come from being in this country.”
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I guess they will be getting ready to make the Kessel run, 'eh?
Related:
"Alphabet Inc.’s Google has decided not to compete for the Pentagon’s cloud-computing contract, valued at as much as $10 billion, saying the project may conflict with its corporate values. The project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud, or JEDI, involves transitioning massive amounts of Defense Department data to a commercially operated cloud system. Companies are due to submit bids for the contract, which could last as long as 10 years, on Friday. Google’s announcement on Monday came just months after it decided not to renew its contract with a Pentagon artificial intelligence program, after extensive protests from employees of the Internet giant about working with the military. The company then released a set of principles designed to evaluate what kind of artificial intelligence projects it would pursue. “We are not bidding . . . because first, we couldn’t be assured that it would align with our AI Principles,” Google said in a statement. “And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications.” Google lags other companies such as Amazon and Microsoft in obtaining government cloud-security authorizations that depend on the sensitivity of data a service is hosting. Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, Google would have bid on some of the work, it said. But the Defense Department says making multiple awards under current law would be too slow."
That was also after some sound advice from VP Pence, who called them on his new smartphone:
"Google will give away $25 million to projects that propose ways to use the artificial intelligence of computers to help create a more humane society. The grant program announced Monday is part of a broader Google initiative called ‘‘AI for Social Good’’ aimed at easing concerns that advances in artificial intelligence will eliminate jobs and perhaps even be autonomously deployed by militaries to kill people. Other technology companies have taken similar steps to address ethical issues in AI. For instance, Microsoft has committed $115 million to an ‘‘AI for Good’’ initiative that provides grants to organizations harnessing AI for humanitarian, accessibility, and environmental projects."
Isn't that an oxymoron?
I guess they will be getting ready to make the Kessel run, 'eh?
Related:
"Alphabet Inc.’s Google has decided not to compete for the Pentagon’s cloud-computing contract, valued at as much as $10 billion, saying the project may conflict with its corporate values. The project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud, or JEDI, involves transitioning massive amounts of Defense Department data to a commercially operated cloud system. Companies are due to submit bids for the contract, which could last as long as 10 years, on Friday. Google’s announcement on Monday came just months after it decided not to renew its contract with a Pentagon artificial intelligence program, after extensive protests from employees of the Internet giant about working with the military. The company then released a set of principles designed to evaluate what kind of artificial intelligence projects it would pursue. “We are not bidding . . . because first, we couldn’t be assured that it would align with our AI Principles,” Google said in a statement. “And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications.” Google lags other companies such as Amazon and Microsoft in obtaining government cloud-security authorizations that depend on the sensitivity of data a service is hosting. Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, Google would have bid on some of the work, it said. But the Defense Department says making multiple awards under current law would be too slow."
That was also after some sound advice from VP Pence, who called them on his new smartphone:
"Google will give away $25 million to projects that propose ways to use the artificial intelligence of computers to help create a more humane society. The grant program announced Monday is part of a broader Google initiative called ‘‘AI for Social Good’’ aimed at easing concerns that advances in artificial intelligence will eliminate jobs and perhaps even be autonomously deployed by militaries to kill people. Other technology companies have taken similar steps to address ethical issues in AI. For instance, Microsoft has committed $115 million to an ‘‘AI for Good’’ initiative that provides grants to organizations harnessing AI for humanitarian, accessibility, and environmental projects."
Isn't that an oxymoron?
