employment | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Could a robot put you out of business?

Automation, robots and artificial intelligence are threatening the future of many jobs and businesses

Transaction based businesses are in the firing line as robots and algorithms are taking over the tasks that are the mainstay of many service businesses.

In How To Know if a Robot Will Take Your Marketing Job, Gartner consultant Martin Kihn identifies two factors that indicate roles at risk of being overtaken by technology.

“The two dimensions relate to the things computers do best: (1) repetitive tasks, and (2) structured data,” states Kihn. “If you’re a knowledge worker, your biggest enemy is routine. To the extent your work is predictable, it’s codable . . . and you’re a target.”

Kihn describes a curve where repetitive, structured jobs are at risk of automation while at the other end are more abstract analytic roles which are relatively safe from the algorithms and robots.

While Kihn is focusing on marketing jobs, his message is clear for all occupations and businesses – if your company makes most of its revenue from low skill, easily automated tasks then it is ripe for being overtaken by algorithms or robotics.

Even for businesses that are higher up the value chain, there are roles that can be replaced within the enterprise; a good example are the mining companies replacing high paid drivers with automated pit trucks.

There are even many management jobs that may be affected as artificial intelligence advances. Approving spending or hiring requests for example can be largely dealt with by algorithms with only the rare exceptional case requiring a manager to intervene.

So the executive suite may well be just as vulnerable as the lower status roles in an organisation.

MIT professor Andrew McAfee who Kinh quotes has been clear that we’re on the cusp of massive change in the workplace as robots, algorithms and artificial intelligence progress. It may well be there are far more jobs and businesses at risk than we think.

Software eats the sports cameraman

Are sports TV camera operators the next occupation to be eliminated?

Since the beginning of industry technology has changed occupations in unexpected ways the demise of the sports TV cameraman is a good modern example of a highly skilled, specialised trade that may soon be redundant.

Years ago television studios largely replaced cameramen with remote controlled cameras but sports grounds needed skilled operators with excellent attention spans to video action at sports grounds.

At a lunch today in Sydney Michael Tomkins, Chief Technology Office of Fox Sports Australia, explained how a combination of high definition cameras and advanced software is changing the way sports are broadcast and recorded.

“Last year we put two 4k cameras in to cover the length of the ground,” Tomkins said. “Two 4k cameras can see the length of the whole ground so I get rid of four cameramen and replace them with one joystick bunny.”

“He moves a box around the screen and those become a virtual camera. The resolution of a 4k camera is four times that of our HD broadcasts. It’s quite cost effective and I don’t have to roll a crew out.”

A demonstration of how the technology works is in a YouTube clip of an Australian Rules football match from last year. While the ‘joystick bunny’ and the software is somewhat clumsy in the segment, the clip shows the power of the technology.

With abolishing most of the camera, the opportunity to rationalise the production suite also becomes possible; at present most sports events have a producer instructing a group of assistants to cut between cameras, prepare replays and all the other effects expected by viewers. With a software based system most of that labor and its skills become redundant.

Over time as higher resolution cameras become available this application is going to become common, in fact most junior and amateur sports will be able to afford static hi-res cameras for their ground that allows them to record their games.

While the demise of the sports cameraman and producers is a shame in the same way loom weavers and hansom cab drivers disappeared, it is a reflection of changing technologies creating then destroying occupations.

TV camera image through wikipedia

Technology’s crisis of trust

Last night for the monthly ABC Nightlife tech spot we looked at Samsung’s spying TVs and some of the other aspects of security with connected devices.

During the listeners’ calls it became very clear many are worried and scared by technology’s rapid progress. This is a challenge for the leaders of both the tech industry and governments.

Trust in the tech industry isn’t being helped by the revelation Lenovo computers have been loaded with Adware that, among other things, interferes with secure website connections.

Lenovo’s actions raise a serious concern for business as many of those home units may have been connected to office networks under corporate Bring Your Own Device policies and the spoofing of security certificates could cause no end of problems and risks for IT managers.

Another concern Lenovo’s actions raise is about the Internet of Things; if various devices on a network are messing with data integrity, confidence in the information being generated is eroded.

For the tech industry, it’s essential to regain the community’s trust. Equally however it’s essential for business and political leaders to have an honest conversation with voters and workers on how the structure of the workforce is changing.

Measuring Facebook’s network effect

Has Facebook really been responsible for creating over four million jobs?

It’s always best to treat a business’ or industry group’s claims of economic benefits with a grain of salt and the survey released yesterday by Deloitte on measuring Facebook’s effects on the global economy is a good example.

Facebook’s Global Economic Impact looks at what the social media service added to the world’s economy and finds the company created 4.5m jobs and $227 billion of value in 2014 outside of its own operations.

Deloitte’s analysis breaks down Facebook’s effects into three general categories; platform effects, connectivity effects and market effects.

In coming to their figures, Deloitte’s researchers further broke the numbers down into the direct revenues of businesses using Facebook, the indirect impact upon suppliers and the ‘induced effect’ of employee spending patterns.

The basic formula, although the methodology gets quite complex in extrapolating the value added, is described in this illustration.

The main areas of contention are the employment multiplier effect, which Deloitte marks at 3.1 in Brazil down to 2.1 in the UK with the United States coming in at 2.7, and the valuation of individual Facebook actions.

For example here is the description of how companies’ page engagement is valued;

Sales from Page engagement are estimated as
a product of the total sales of businesses with
Pages and the sales uplift estimated due to their engagement on Pages (see section A3 for how elasticities are estimated by econometric methods). The total sales of the businesses that have a Facebook Page are estimated using the revenues of the private sector in the economy based on national statistics. Survey evidence is then used on the percentage of businesses with a Page in the US and the UK.

For the rest of the world, the value of a liking action of a Page is estimated using relative GDP per capita of each country to the UK and USA to reflect the local economic conditions.

The gross revenue supported by Pages is then the product of the number of Pages liked and the value of a liking action of a Page.

The key here is the word estimated, there’s no doubt it’s in the interests of Facebook, the marketing agencies and the staff employed to manage social media to overstate this effect; it’s an arbitrary at best measure.

Marketing is claimed to be the most valuable aspect of Facebook, accounting for about two thirds of the service’s claimed economic value with a $148 billion contribution. Deloitte defines marketing effects as “the impact from businesses’ use of Facebook marketing tools to drive online and offline sales, and to increase awareness of their brand.”

Again this is subject to a number of arbitrary definitions and guesstimates which take us into the tricky area on measuring social media’s Return On Investment.

The reason why the numbers don’t pass the smell test is because of the sheer size; in Australia for instance the company’s effects are valued at $5.7 billion and employment generated at 63,000 workers. If we fully apply the 2.6 multiplier Deloitte attributes to the country this would suggest over 17,000 Australian workers are directly employed full time in running Facebook related tasks.

While it’s hard not to be sceptical of Deloitte’s numbers, it certainly is true that social media platforms have opened new roles for administrators, developers and other staff. We just need to be a touch cautious of overstating the benefits.

For businesses, probably the best lesson from Deloitte’s survey is to measure the genuine effects of social media on a business there have to be properly thought out measures and objectives. Guesstimates are not good enough.

Daily links: The IoT goes to sea, building the innovation state and Boko Haram

The IoT goes to sea, building the innovation state and Boko Haram’s murderous rampage

The scale of the carnage Boko Haram has inflicted on remote parts of Nigeria is becoming more apparent every day and satellite imagery shows just how much damage the insurgent group is doing to communities in its territories.

Closer to home, Google’s Project ARA gets another outing, we look at how economies can deal with the jobless future, what a terrible aunt Ayn Rand was and how the IoT is going to sea.

The IoT goes to sea

At the CES show two weeks ago Ericsson launched their new maritime cloud service that promises to connect ocean going ships to the same services available on land

Google unveils more about Project Ara

Project Ara is Google’s attempt to reinvent the smartphone, the project came a little closer to completion with the company showing off some of its progress

Creating the innovation state

What do we do in a world where most people’s jobs have gone? Create an innovation state rather than a welfare state could be an answer suggests one economist.

The extent of Boko Haram’s massacres

Words fail to describe the horrors being visited on the people of Nigeria.

Ayn Rand was a terrible Aunty

What happened when one of Ayn Rand’s nieces asked aunty for a $25 loan?

Daily links

Apple extends its lead over Android in smartphone activations, a teenager’s view on social media and Google’s declining market share.

Today’s links are somewhat more upbeat; starting with Apple extending its lead over Android in smartphone activations, a teenager’s view on social media and Google’s declining market share.

Apple takes the lead in smartphone activations

In their regular survey of mobile phone activations, research company Kantor found that Apple have taken the lead back from Android phones. The Kantar Worldpanel ComTech global consumer panel monitors the brands of phones being connected through selected apps to give them an idea of what’s going on in the smartphone marketplace.

While not an absolute numbers, and one that was inflated by the new range of Apple iPhones released late in the year, it’s clear Apple are by no means out for the count when it comes to the smartphone market.

What teenagers think of social media

I’m not sure how accurate or scientific this story is, but it illustrates how complex the social media industry is and how dangerous assumptions are with what age groups use new media channels for.

How boring can driverless cars be?

Another story points out driverless cars are actually quite boring to ride in. Maybe we’ll all catch the train insead.

Google loses market share

Since signing an agreement with Firefox to be the default search engine provider, Yahoo! sees its share of the marketplace spike upwards. Should Google be worried?

So you thought a tech job was safe?

Document service Evernote cuts jobs proving that even a job in the hottest parts of the tech sector isn’t safe. Notable in this story is the concentration of employment in two locations which shows Silicon Valley isn’t keen on remote working at all.

Links of the day – touring an old nuclear plant and terrorists misusing Twitter accounts

Links for Sunday, January 4 – Terrorists and social media, cooks and smartphones and what an old nuclear power station looks like inside

From a quiet Sunday here’s some of the stories that have kept me occupied; terrorists misusing their Twitter accounts, what chefs really think of smartphone toting customers and more musings on the future of work in an age where robots and algorithms dominate.

To kick off the post, what does a nuclear power plant looks like after it’s been shut down?

Touring a decommissioned nuclear plant

Yesterday former New York Governor Mario Cuomo passed away, one of the most contraversial moves of his administration was closing down the state’s only nuclear power plant at Shoreham, Long Island.

In March last year Nick Carr had an opportunity to tour the abandoned site and posted the story of this visit onto hist Scouting New York website.

Where will all the workers go?

Economist Nouriel Roubini adds to the discussion about jobs in an age of robotics and algorithms in Where Will All The Workers Go? In his Project Syndicate piece, Roubini focuses on how the current wave of automation will affect jobs in emerging markets.

Today, for example, a patient in New York may have his MRI sent digitally to, say, Bangalore, where a highly skilled radiologist reads it for one-quarter of what a New York-based radiologist would cost. But how long will it be before a computer software can read those images faster, better, and cheaper than the radiologist in Bangalore can?

Like the rest of us he doesn’t have any firm answers except to suggest we may have to accept a new age of under-employment. This has serious consequences for today’s consumerist societies and the economic assumptions that underpins them.

The risks of Instagramming your Jihad

A clumsy Kiwi jihadist gave away the location of secret training camps in Syria through his Twitter account reports the iBrabo website. Mark Taylor joined an insurgent group in June this year and publicly burned his New Zealand passport on declaring he had no intention of returning to his homeland.

A few months after destroying his travel documents, The New Zealand Herald reported Taylor wanted to return home. All of which proves the point of The War Nerd that the best way the west can deal with its suburban jihadists is to give all of them a one way business class ticket to Syria.

How do chefs really feel about cell phone use in restaurants?

Many articles have been written about how restaurateurs are driven to distraction by mobile phone users in their establishments, but how true are those tales.

The Daily Meal interviewed a dozen US chefs about their attitude towards diners taking selfies and instagramming their meals. It turns out they are more concerned about their customers enjoying their meal rather than being upset at them shooting photos.

Hyundai connects their cars to Google Android watches

Korean conglomerate Hyundai has joined the connected car race with an Android Wear app that works with the company’s Blue Link system. The app, designed to work on Google’s wearable devices as well as smartphones, will work allow users to lock, open and locate their cars.

It’s another example of how car manufacturers are integrating wearable and mobile apps into vehicles and it’s a small taste of what’s possible when the smart home and the connected car start talking to each other.

Stack ranking claims another victim in Marissa Mayer’s Yahoo

Stack ranking claims another corporate victim with Merissa Mayer at Yahoo!

One of the clumsiest management tools deployed by modern executives is stack ranking, the practice of putting staff members on a scale where the bottom 20% miss out on bonuses and, in bad times, are the first to be fired.

The process has terrible effects upon the morale of workplaces as it rewards political manoeuvring over effective performance; the worker who focuses on their task and the business tends to be overlooked compared to those who curry favour with the boss.

Another debilitating effect is it destroys teams as it has the perverse effect of discouraging people joining teams with high flying colleagues as it increases one’s chances of receiving a poor rating.

Stack ranking has previously damaged Microsoft and HP and now it appears Marissa Mayer has made the same mistake at Yahoo!.

That Mayer has made the same mistakes at Yahoo! is a disappointment; there were so many high hopes for her in reinvigorating the troubled company. Indeed carrying out the stack ranking process every quarter seems particularly debilitating and management intensive, it’s hard to think of a more effective way of destroying morale and distracting management.

In some situations Stack Ranking can be effective but the way companies like Yahoo!, HP and Microsoft have implemented the method, it’s proven to be the wrong tool for the job of managing high skilled workforces.

When implementing clumsy management tools like stack ranking, it’s worthwhile considering whether it’s the right tool for the job.

Work in an age of abundance

Our society is changing as we enter an age of abundant information and automation

We aren’t prepared for the changes technology is bringing our society warns Vivek Wadhwa in Our future of abundance—and joblessness.

Vivek makes the important point that in the near future many of the jobs we take for granted today will be replaced by machines, this is similar to the warning from Andrew McAfee that a wave of innovation is going to overrun businesses over the next two years.

That innovation is going to cause massive disruption; as Vivek notes we’re going to see the loss of jobs in occupations as diverse as taxi drivers, farmers and – probably the most underestimated of all affected occupations – managers.

Of course this is not first time we’ve seen massive changes to our economy and over the last century farming has gone from one of the most labour intensive industries to one of the most automated.

The automation that changed farming though created millions of new jobs; today’s retail and food industries employ far more people than agriculture did a century ago and most of those jobs were made possible by the same technologies that reduces the need for farm workers.

Vivek acknowledges this in quoting Ray Kurzweil in that jobs are lost only if we look narrowly at the industries and communities affected.

Automation always eliminates more jobs than it creates if you only look at the circumstances narrowly surrounding the automation. That’s what the Luddites saw in the early nineteenth century in the textile industry in England. The new jobs came from increased prosperity and new industries that were not seen.

What we have to acknowledge though is the transition to a new economy won’t be painless and that millions of people will be dislocated and some communities will cease to exist – just as the bulk of the developed world’s populations moved from rural villages to industrial cities during the Twentieth Century.

The truth is we don’t know how that process is going to evolve; then again, neither did our forebears a hundred years ago.

A hundred years ago we were at the beginning of an age of abundant energy and that changed society beyond recognition in the course of the century, at the end of this century of abundance our society will be very different again.

3D Printing promises to change architecture and building

Large scale 3D printing is about to radically change the building industry

One of the longest running large scale 3D printing projects is based at the UK’s Loughborough University where since 2007 researchers have been working on developing the technology’s applications to the construction industry.

Loughborough’s technology, named Freeform, offers faster and more flexible ways of casting concrete and building structures using a computer controlled concrete pouring system. For property developers the attraction is cheaper buildings while for architects the technologies offer more innovative structures.

In late November the team announced a venture with Swedish building company Skanska SA to develop the world’s first commercial concrete printing robot.

The venture, which will include collaborations with companies including iconic UK architects Foster and Partners, Buchan Concrete, Scandinavian contracting giant ABB and Lafarge Tarmac, aims to have the first commercially available robot printer available by mid 2016.

Competing with the European venture is Chinese company WinSun who earlier this year showcased its 3D printer capable of producing ten houses every 24 hours. An interesting aspect of WinSun’s project is that the printing rig was build out of existing parts and controlled by an off the shelf Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing software system.

While the Chinese results are relatively crude, they show the potential for the technology. The economics of the WinSun project are enhanced by using waste building site material for the concrete which only increases the attraction of these machines to cost conscious property developers.

The Chinese and British are not just the only countries working on these technologies, in the Netherlands the 3D Print Canal House shows how techniques and materials are being developed while in the United States the University of Southern California’s Contour Crafting project is looking at how to use large scale 3D printing in a range of construction scenarios including building space colonies.

While using moon dust to build structures in space is some way off, both Freeform and WinSun show what will become commonplace on building sites in the near future.

These technologies promise to radically change architecture and the building industry with ramifications for jobs and the economics of building structures. 3D printing buildings is another example of how industries and employment will be very different by the middle of this century.

For businesses, it’s another example of how managers have to prepare for very different marketplaces.

Builder image courtesy of thesaint through Freemimages.com

Where will the jobs come from? ABC Nightlife radio

The future of work in an age of robots and algorithms is this month’s Nightlife technology radio spot

If you missed the program it’s available from the Soundcloud site.

Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife across Australia from 10pm Australian Eastern time on Thursday, November 27 to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

Last week a US company showed off its robotic security guard, with the boast it costs less than half the wages of a human officer. It isn’t just security guards, baristas or taxi drivers, many knowledge based jobs — from call centre workers to lawyers — can be done by computer programs, or algorithms.

Even the building industry isn’t immune from the robots as 3D printing moves into making houses by squeezing concrete out of computer controlled nozzles.

In almost every occupation technology is changing the way we work and reducing the number of workers needed to do a job. So where next for employment in the Twenty-first Century?

Meet the K-5 robot security guard

For this month’s Nightlife we’ll be discussing how the robots and algorithms are taking over the workplace and what this means for our communities and businesses.

Join us

Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Australian Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

The rise of the robots

A robot security guard shows the way for future employment

One of the key themes of this site is how industries and workplaces are changing, one good example of this is Knightscope’s K-5 robot, a refrigerator sized device that does many of the tasks currently done by human security guards.

The K-5 comes with an impressive list of security features; live video, facial recognition, behavioral analysis and a range of other tools to help organisations protect their premises.

With an advertised running cost of $6.25 an hour, half the US mean average wage for security guards, the robots appear an attractive proposition although one suspects the limitations of the devices, not to mention the networking infrastructure involved, won’t make them feasible for most places in the near future.

Despite its limitations, the K-5 shows the direction of robot technologies in replacing jobs that until recently were thought to be immune to automation. As the technologies inside the K-5 become smaller and lighter, future devices will become even more flexible and adaptable.

Adding to the strengths of these autonomous devices is their constant connectivity, as the promotional video shows the robot uses cloud services to run its recognition and alarm services. Coupled with various sensors and beacons within a building, and these robot security guards become formidable devices.

The applications for devices like the K-5 goes beyond patrolling shopping centres, car parks or industrial complexes; it’s not hard to see how similar devices can be deployed in applications like agriculture, mining or manufacturing for tasks where it would be expensive or dangerous to employ humans.

What the K-5 illustrates Andrew McAfee’s warning of exponential technological change being about to engulf businesses, the employment implications of that should have community leaders thinking as well.

For entrepreneurs, on the other hand, advances in robotics are another great opportunity.