Nexttech Transformation

Thursday, September 20, 2018

The PC is dead - long live the PC

Great insites by Rajkumar VR Sigamany - as he talks about Resilience, Innovation and Collaboration

"Death of the personal-computer” is one of the recurring themes we’ve been seeing for the past several years. Having a long association in the semi-conductor Industry, such articles performed their duty, creating churns in my stomach. While such articles are not uncommon in the last two decades, once again the PC sales have bounced back proving the pundits wrong.

I’ll attribute the success to these factors: Resilience, Innovation and the Support Group

Resilience - For many years, smaller devices have challenged the PC with better flexibility, longer battery-life, lightweight, etc. Despite all the setbacks, challenges and the assumption that the millennials will avoid the PC as they refuse to be tied to a desk, the reality is smartphones, tablets and PCs all being used alongside performing the tasks best suited to.

We’re at the beginning of the 4th revolution. Although Artificial Intelligence discussions started around 1950s, it looks more real now due to the processing power, data and cloud. While there are clear benefits, we hear more challenges and the uncertainty. That’s what makes it interesting. We have successfully seen three revolutions in the past and the questions for the 4th should be, “How are we going to approach it? How quick we’re going to bounce back from the challenges”.

Innovation - If you look at the history of the PC, you could see how heavy, boring and less innovative the PC was for a long time. The competition from the smaller devices and the user preferences forced the PC to innovate more in the last few years than it has innovated in the first few decades becoming a better product and evolving.

In a world of disruption due to technology, new trends are threatening our jobs, they way we've performed our jobs, outdating the skills we developed over many decades and pushing us out of our comfort zone. The change is uncomfortable, unsettling and our usual response is to avoid and resist if possible. While the change is difficult, a positive outlook could help us to see the numerous opportunities it brings. History proves, the best option is to embrace the change by investing in new skills to create a better tomorrow.

Support Group– The PC bounced back due to the contributions of the organizations in its ecosystem. Organizations of various sizes collaborated, leveraging each other strengths to make the PC better and relevant. The result, we have a PC with better design, features and usage.

In an era of 24-hour news and updates, the role of the others are becoming crucial in our success. It’s becoming essential for us to build a support network with diverse skills and talent. It is our responsibility to ensure that they care in our success.

With PC considered as a ‘thing’ in the ‘Internet of Things’, I don’t expect the PC to die, rather see a bright future. By remaining resilient, innovative and guidance from the support network, I believe in we can…

Conquer the change!

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

So what does the employer of the future look like?

Having a specific skill does not cut the mustard anymore - machines and AI have that covered!

The workplace has become far more multi-dimensional. To get the job you want, you need to show that you can

collaborate well
communicate well
have high values and integrity.
be prepared to integrate with other business units
be able and willing to be part of a continuous learning programme

There are few job roles now that don't involve some element of working with software, social media, "the Cloud" and definitely your mobile!

It is fair to say that Technology and the Internet are ubiquitous in everything we do and is as important as being able to read and write!

About 65 per cent of ICT workers studied non-IT degrees.

Technology skills underscore the future job market.

“The sharply increased importance of skills such as technology design and programming highlights the growing demand for various forms of technology competency identified by employers surveyed for this report” -

says a 2018 report on the future of jobs (World Economic Forum)

However, proficiency in new technologies will be just one part of the 2022 skills picture.

Intuitive human skills, such as creativity, originality and initiative, critical thinking, persuasion, and negotiation will retain or increase their value, as will attention to detail, resilience, flexibility, and complex problem-solving. Emotional intelligence, leadership, and social influence, as well as service orientation will also see an outsized increase in demand relative to their current prominence.

The good news is that non-technical people have found themselves gaining IT skills on the job or through structured learning and IT professionals have been upskill Ing their non-technical and "soft skills", connecting their technical roles to the broader business environment.

LinkedIn data shows that six out of the top 10 skills required by ICT workers are non-technical in nature:

project management,
business strategy,
relationship management,
strategic planning,
sales and
customer service

were in the top 10 skill sets needed.

There is a massive shortage of skills in the IT sector , and the size of Australia's digital economy is expected to almost double in the next six years from $79 billion in 2014 to $139 billion in 2020 (creating an extra 66,000 IT jobs)

Graduates and imported skills will not meet the demand.

Cliffy Rosenberg - IT Guru, mentor and ex CEO of Linkedin Australia said the only way to meet demand was through educating and training the existing workforce – (Vocational Education) particularly when it comes to women, who are under-represented in in the IT industry (only 28 per cent of the ICT workforce) and older people (only 11 per cent are aged over 55), who often are discriminated against because of outdated stereotypes about their ability to learn about new technology.

The organisations that will thrive will be those who have a culture of continuous learning and programmes to upskill their employees.

"The digital future is coming rapidly and it doesn't matter which area that you work in, you have the ability to improve the competitiveness of your business by investing in your team through continuous learning programmes," says Rosenberg .

"We have got to prepare our economy for the future. We have got to prepare the workforce for the skills needed for today's economy and then make sure we are ready for tomorrow's economy as well."

So what does the Employer of the future look like ?

The employee of the future would appear to be a flexible, creative, emotionally intelligent contract worker who understands AI, robotics, and automation, and has deep analytical and experience design skills.

How do they learn this

Being able to learn how to learn
Working at an organisation that values learning in the workplace

Read - robots will create jobs but decimate middle class careers By Chris Middleton

Click here to find out more

Monday, September 10, 2018

Economic indicator chart

http://projects.wsj.com/econforecast/?standalone=1#ind=unemp&r=20

Friday, September 7, 2018

Sapiens - where are we heading?

Interview with Noah Harari on his book Sapiens

Interview with Noah Harari on his book Homo Deus

Learning how to reengineer our bodies and minds - could result an end of humanity. When the datacentre understands you more than you know yourself - you become useless

Steve Cutt’s on Sapiens and impact on the Planet

Are you lost in the World - Steve Cutts

Our History in 2 minutes

Thursday, September 6, 2018

Yuval Boah Harari on AI, Cars , Doctors , Jobs and Cyborgs

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/why-the-rise-of-ai-makes-mental-resilience-so-important/

I came across an interesting CBS newsclip (link above) of an interview with Yuval Noah Harari - author of Sapiens , Homo Deus and now 21 lessons for the 21st century.

Some of my takeouts. - would be interested in yours ....

Will AI become the dominant force on earth controlled by a few humans or cyborgs?

Politics has moved from Land to Machines to Data !

The powerful will be those who control the data!

Up to now , life matter as we know it has been made of organic compounds and organic biochemistry - from Giraffes, tomatoes, plant animals and humans.

We are now entering the realm of replacing natural selection with intelligent design.

Organic to inorganic life forms - cyborgs - will this enable us to explore the galaxy (ps whose us?)

Is AI going to create “The useless class of Sapiens?
Will humans stay relevant? What will they do?

They will Not only be unemployed - but unemployable

Not only will drivers of vehicles be replaced by more efficient AI - but doctors by IBM Watson!!

Will AI augment and improve doctors as opposed to replace them?

It is clear that the onset of AI will change the nature of jobs as we know it. AI will not be a Big Bang but a gradual evolution of byte size innovations that will eventually disrupt and replace jobs as we know them today

Some questions

Jobs - can people retrain and reinvent - and do it again and again and again ? They say a millennial's today will have 14 jobs in their lifetime - at least

Have we got the tools to teach emotional intelligence at schools?

Do we need to have a new paradigm to learn how to learn - knowledge dumps is not the go .

What should we be teaching?

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Preparing for artificial intelligence, or the fourth wave of industrialisation

Posted 7 hours ago in Tech

by Dina Veljanovska

https://www.xero.com/blog/2018/09/artificial-intelligence-fourth-wave-industrialisation/

It’s Day 1 of Xerocon, and the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre is buzzing with excited accountants and bookkeepers as they explore what’s on offer.

Anthropology professor and futurist Genevieve Bell, known for her work at the intersection of culture and technology development, took the stage today and shared with us her vision of how artificial intelligence, or AI, will shape our lives.

“AI is nothing more and nothing less than the steam engine of the 21st century,” said Professor Bell. “Steam engines were originally used to power mining operations. But over the next 100 years, they changed the ways we live in ways far beyond the mines – enabling us to build railway systems.”

We are now on the cusp of a fourth wave of industrialisation, says Professor Bell.

The first wave, in the 1800s, was about mechanisation using steam power.

The second wave was about the electrification of mass production, which gave us the assembly line in the 1900s and electricity in the home.

The third wave, starting in 1946, was about computers.

Now, we are entering an era of cyber-physical systems – drones, robots and self-driving cars powered by artificial intelligence. They will change how we live in ways we can’t anticipate today, just as no one envisioned the railways and automated factories that would spring from the first steam engines, said Professor Bell.

As we enter this age, we need to consider five issues about AI:

The question of autonomy

Are these machines really going to be autonomous? And if so, what do we mean by that? Are they really running around with complete free will?
To make a machine autonomous you need AI technology.

The nature of agency

What are the rules? Someone is going to have to determine what those rules are. Someone has to decide how many rules there are and what rules this system should follow.

The challenge of assurance

Trust, reliability, security, ethics, management. How do you know they are safe? Who gets to decide what the threshold is for risk? Who is determining whether the system works?

The necessity for metrics

How will we measure these systems? Is it safety? Is it about collecting better data? Some of these technologies need to be thought of in terms of how much energy they consume. Who gets to decide what the metric should be?

The possibility of relationships

You do not want a world where you have to learn how to engage with the autonomous vehicles. Do we want to talk to those systems, or will they learn to talk to us?

“I didn’t want the future to be built just by engineers,” said Professor Bell. “So as an anthropologist, I’ve spent 20 years in Silicon Valley looking for answers. How do you put people first in the business of making technology – what people care about, what frustrates people – and build technology with that in mind?”

We will increasingly grapple with these questions over the next few years.

“Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but two years from now, three years from now — this will be our world,” says Professor Bell. “How do we manage these cyber-physical systems? These will be the questions that propel our businesses.”

You can follow the work of Professor Bell at the Autonomy, Agency and Assurance (3A) Institute, which is building a new applied science around the management of artificial intelligence, data, technology and their impact on humanity.