Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: employment

Ivanka Trump, a woman with a lifetime career guarantee and a net worth equalling the GDP of a small African country, has a plan for the millions of unemployed workers, many of whom lost their jobs during the pandemic: “Find Something New.” The initiative, in partnership with the nonprofit Ad Council, Tim Cook, and IBM executive chairman Ginni Rometty, sounds like the familiar Obama-era “learn to code” trope and not exactly on-brand with the Make American Great Again promise of told Ivanka to take her own advice.

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In the coronavirus economy, companies are adopting more automation, as they seek to cut costs and increase efficiency. There is debate about which jobs are most at risk and how soon. But climbing up the skills ladder is the best way to stay ahead of the automation wave.

Even groups that regularly disagree on labor issues said there should be significant public investment in programs that can upgrade the skills of American workers.

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The best way to prevent this is by focusing on the basics. America needs a major all-of-society push to increase the number of U.S. students being trained in both the fundamentals of math and in the more advanced, rigorous, and creative mathematics. Leadership in implementing this effort will have to come from the U.S. government and leading technology companies, and through the funding of ambitious programs. A few ideas come to mind: talent-spotting schemes, the establishment of math centers, and a modern successor to the post-Sputnik National Defense Education Act, which would provide math scholarships to promising students along with guaranteed employment in either public or private enterprises.

Forget about “AI” itself: it’s all about the math, and America is failing to train enough citizens in the right kinds of mathematics to remain dominant.

By Michael Auslin

THE WORLD first took notice of Beijing’s prowess in artificial intelligence (AI) in late 2017, when BBC reporter John Sudworth, hiding in a remote southwestern city, was located by China’s CCTV system in just seven minutes. At the time, it was a shocking demonstration of power. Today, companies like YITU Technology and Megvii, leaders in facial recognition technology, have compressed those seven minutes into mere seconds. What makes those companies so advanced, and what powers not only China’s surveillance state but also its broader economic development, is not simply its AI capability, but rather the math power underlying it.

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This dude was A+OK in my book. Yeah you knew Jobs, yeah you knew Minsky, but did you ever know even the name of the guy who convinced me to become a programmer? Rest In Eternal Peace. #RIP

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Both are AI-enabled, allowing them to take in their surroundings and learn and evolve over time. They know what time to start cooking a well-done burger so that it’s done at exactly the same time as a medium-rare burger for the same order, or could learn how to optimize oil use to minimize waste, for instance.

In a pre-pandemic time of restaurant labor shortages, Flippy kept kitchen productivity high and costs low, a giant deal in an industry known for tiny margins. Introducing Flippy into a kitchen can increase profit margins by a whopping 300%, not to mention significantly reduce the stress managers feel when trying to fill shifts.

But even if restaurants have an easier time finding workers as places reopen, Flippy and ROAR aren’t gunning for people’s jobs. They’re designed to be collaborative robots, or cobots, the cost-effective machines created to work with humans, not against them.

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On Friday, I reported on the data released from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, indicating that 2.5 million jobs were added in May. This was followed by an enthusiastic take on how the United States may be turning the corner. Despite all of the negatives, it seemed the U.S. was seeing rays of hope. The stock market, which has shot up since the initial shocks of the Covid-19 pandemic, bolted up after the report, gaining over 700 points and referred to other positive developments.

Unfortunately, after delving into the footnotes of the numbers, it now looks like the jobs report has been inaccurate for the last two months. BLS has admitted that government household survey takers mistakenly counted about 4.9 million people as employed, although they were unemployed.

Had the mistake been corrected, the unemployment rate would have risen to 16.1% in May. The corrected April figure would have been more than 19.5% —rather than 14.7%.

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Construction is one of the oldest professions as people have been building shelters and structures for millennia. However the industry has evolved quite a bit in the way they design, plan, and build structures. For decades, technology has been used in the construction industry to make jobs more efficient and construction projects and structures safer.

In recent years, construction companies have increasingly started using AI in a range of ways to make construction more efficient and innovative. From optimizing work schedules to improving workplace safety to keeping a secure watch on construction facilities, AI in the construction industry is already proving its value.

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The European Union wants a massive dose of research spending to lift it out of what could be the worst recession in its history. Last week, as part of a €1.85 trillion budget and pandemic recovery proposal, the European Commission, the EU executive arm, unveiled plans to pump €94.4 billion into research over 7 years, nearly €11 billion more than originally planned for the program, called Horizon Europe. But not everyone thinks the money is the best medicine.

Horizon Europe gets €13.5 billion to spend fast, spur growth.

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