Lifeboat Foundation

Today, Amazon has more than 200,000 mobile robots working inside its warehouse network, alongside hundreds of thousands of human workers. This robot army has helped the company fulfill its ever-increasing promises of speedy deliveries to Amazon Prime customers.

“They defined the expectations for the modern consumer,” said Scott Gravelle, the founder and CEO of Attabotics, a warehouse automation startup.

And those expectations of fast, free delivery driven by Amazon have led to a boom in the retail warehouse industry, with entrepreneurs like Gravelle and startups like Attabotics attempting to build smarter and cheaper robotic solutions to help both traditional retailers and younger e-commerce operations keep up with a behemoth like Amazon.

As jobs are automated out of existence, the division between the very wealthy and the very poor will grow — and any notion of a comfortable middle class will vanish.

That’s according to Roey Tzezana, a future studies researcher at Israel’s Tel Aviv University, according to Haaretz. That stands in contrast to the common argument that new jobs will emerge as others vanish, painting a grim picture for the workforce and global economy.

Forrester projects that artificial intelligence will severely impact jobs like cubicle workers, location-based workers, and loan processors.

The Future of Intelligence, Artificial and Natural
https://www.creativeinnovationglobal.com.au

Ray Kurzweil is one of the world’s leading inventors, thinkers, and futurists, with a thirty-year track record of accurate predictions. Called “the restless genius” by The Wall Street Journal and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes magazine, he was selected as one of the top entrepreneurs by Inc. magazine, which described him as the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison.” PBS selected him as one of the “sixteen revolutionaries who made America.”

Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil (USA) at Ci2019 — The Future of Intelligence, Artificial and Natural” »

In the kale-filled facility at vertical farm startup Bowery Farming, it’s a piece of proprietary software that makes most of the critical decisions — like when to harvest and how much to water each plant. But it still takes humans to carry out many tasks around the farm. Katie Morich, 25, loves the work. But as roboticists make gains, will her employer need her forever? This is the fourth episode of Next Jobs, a series about careers of the future hosted by Bloomberg Technology’s Aki Ito.

Host, Producer: Aki Ito
Camera: Alan Jeffries, Brian Schildhorn
Co-Producer: David Nicholson
Editor: Victoria Daniell
Writers: Aki Ito and Victoria Daniell.

Disruption of the job market and the economy from automation and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the primary ideas animating Andrew Yang’s surprising campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Alone among the candidates, Yang is directly engaging with one of the central forces that will shape our futures.

A recent report from the consulting firm Deloitte found that, among more than a thousand surveyed American executives, 63 percent agreed with the statement that “to cut costs, my company wants to automate as many jobs as possible using AI,” and 36 percent already believe that job losses from AI-enabled automation should be viewed as an ethical issue. In other words, while media pundits dismiss worries about automation, executives at America’s largest companies are actively planning for it.

It may seem odd to worry about AI and automation at a time when the headline unemployment rate is below 4 percent. But it is important to remember that this metric only captures people who are actively seeking work. Consider that, in 1965, only 3 percent of American men between the ages of 25 and 54 — old enough to have completed education but too young to retire — were neither working nor actively looking for employment. Today, that number is about 11 percent.

Continue reading “AI and automation will disrupt our world — but only Andrew Yang is warning about it” »

The employees get paid $15 an hour cleaning the green space in Austin.

AUSTIN, Texas — The homeless often face barriers when trying to find employment. This week, after reaching the one-year anniversary of their new program, a nonprofit said they are making a difference for those trying to get on their feet and find a job.

In October 2018, The Other Ones Foundation (Too Found) created its Workforce First program to provide the homeless with jobs cleaning the green space in Austin and reduce panhandling.

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We face complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty about the future consequences of cryptocurrency use. There are doubts about the positive and negative impacts of the use of cryptocurrencies in the financial systems. In order to address better and deeper the contradictions and the consequences of the use of cryptocurrencies and also informing the key stakeholders about known and unknown emerging issues in new payment systems, we apply two helpful futures studies tools known as the “Future Wheel”, to identify the key factors, and “System Dynamics Conceptual Mapping”, to understand the relationships among such factors. Two key scenarios will be addressed. In on them, systemic feedback loops might be identified such as a) terrorism, the Achilles’ heel of the cryptocurrencies, b) hackers, the barrier against development, and c) information technology security professionals, a gap in the future job market. Also, in the other scenario, systemic feedback loops might be identified such as a) acceleration of technological entrepreneurship enabled by new payment systems, b) decentralization of financial ecosystem with some friction against it, c) blockchain and shift of banking business model, d) easy international payments triggering structural reforms, and e) the decline of the US and the end of dollar dominance in the global economy. In addition to the feedback loops, we can also identify chained links of consequences that impact productivity and economic growth on the one hand, and shift of energy sources and consumption on the other hand.

Watch the full length presentation at Victor V. Motti YouTube Channel

You can protest about the Environment all you want, while some of us actually plant trees to heal it. Kenya is one country that has been instrumental in planting trees. Wangari Maathai had a coffin made of hyacinth, showing how real she was even in death. Ethiopia recently set a record planting trees. Some people talk, while others do. One Kenyan woman’s organization planted over 51 million trees, and still counting. #BeTheDifference

Equity Group has announced plans to implement an ambitious project to plant 35 million trees across the country within a year.

In an effort to conserve the environment, Equity has partnered with Kenya Forest Service (KFS) to promote Farm Forestry Initiatives.

Continue reading “Equity Group kick starts a 35 million trees planting campaign” »