"AI is already here. This isn't some future, theoretical technology we are working on. AI machines are already among us. Take for example Microsoft's recent security robot demonstration. Called the K5, these autonomous machines stand 5 feet tall, weigh 300 pounds, and are equipped with HD cameras, sensors, alarms, Wi-Fi and - you guessed it - artificial intelligence. These machines have been programmed to recognize if something is out of place, like an injured employee or a potential trespasser. And as technology improves, the K5 will become more capable of recognizing even smaller discrepancies than humans can."
"Going from small data analytics to Big Data analytics or to predictive and prescriptive analytics is trickier. Expanding in both dimensions is human capital intensive, requiring talented data scientists. A McKinsey report (2011) estimates that by 2018, there will be a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 workers with "deep analytical" experience and a further 1.5 million data-literate managers in the US. Technology giants such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, and large investment banks and top hedge funds can afford such employees, however even now the competition is fierce, as is evidenced by the ongoing talent war in Silicon Valley. The data scientist is indeed a sexy job in the 21st century."
"At the heart of the problem that troubles Ming is the training that computer engineers receive and their uncritical faith in AI. Too often, she says, their approach to a problem is to train a neural network on a mass of data and expect the result to work fine. She berates companies for failing to engage with the problem first - applying what is already known about good employees and successful students, for example - before applying the AI."
"When Vancouver tech retailer NCIX went bankrupt, it stopped paying its bills, including the bills for the storage where its servers were being kept; that led to the servers being auctioned off without being wiped first, containing sensitive data -- addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, passwords, etc -- for thousands of customers. Also on the servers: tax and payroll information for the company's employees."
"Following backlash, the company said it removed the alarm function from the smartwatch, but reports maintain the employees are still being required to wear the device so their location can be tracked."
"More and more independent thinkers are realizing that when being an employee is the equivalent to putting all your money into one stock - a better strategy is to diversify your portfolio. So you're seeing a lot more people looking to diversify their career."
Faith Popcorn, a futurist, echoes the idea that we will all have to become as agile as possible and "have many forms of talent and work that you can provide the economy".
"Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was "bots masquerading as people," a portion so high that employees feared an inflection point after which YouTube's systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake. They called this hypothetical event "the Inversion.""
"Across the technology industry, rank-and-file employees are demanding greater insight into how their companies are deploying the technology that they build. At Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce, as well as at tech startups, engineers and technologists are increasingly asking whether the products they are working on are being used for surveillance in places like China or for military projects in the United States or elsewhere."
"Each chip costs $300 and the company is picking up the tab. They're implanted between a person's thumb and forefinger. Westby added the data is both encrypted and secure.
"There's no GPS tracking at all," he said.
No one who works at Three Square Market is required to get the chip implant."
HOW scary is this!
"Xiao Long, or "Little Dragon", is not your typical employee - she's a robot at China's first fully automated, human-free bank branch.
As guardian of the bank, she talks to customers, takes bank cards and checks accounts (she comes complete with a PIN pad) and can answer basic questions. After a quick initial chat with Xiao Long, customers pass through electronic gates where their faces and ID cards are scanned. On future visits, facial recognition alone is enough to open the gates and call up customer information."
"An AI system developed by Chinese tech company Baidu that uses an infrared sensor and AI to predict people's temperatures is now in use in Beijing's Qinghe Railway Station, according to an email sent to Baidu employees that was shared with VentureBeat."
"YouTube will rely more on machine learning and less on human reviewers during the coronavirus outbreak. Normally, algorithms detect potentially harmful content and send it to human reviewers for assessment. But these are not normal times, and in an effort to reduce the need for employees and contractors to come into an office, YouTube will allow its automated system to remove some content without human review."
"But a newsroom rebellion ended her tenure before it began. A group of employees wrote a letter protesting against her appointment because of several tweets she had written ten years earlier, when she was herself a teen. In them Ms McCammond reported Googling how to avoid waking up with "swollen, Asian eyes". She complained about the lack of an explanation for a poor mark in chemistry: "thanks a lot stupid Asian T.A. [teaching assistant]". She had apologised for these comments in the past, but a killing in Georgia on March 16th, in which six of the eight victims were Asian women, made them look even worse. Two days later Ms McCammond took to Twitter again-to say that she had agreed to renounce the Teen Vogue job."
"Facebook has allowed a state-backed harassment campaign targeting independent news outlets and opposition politicians in Azerbaijan to return to its platform, less than six months after it banned the troll network.
A Guardian investigation has revealed how Facebook allowed an arm of Azerbaijan's ruling party, the YAP, to carry out the harassment campaign for 14 months after an employee, Sophie Zhang, first alerted managers and executives to its existence in August 2019."
"Explained by "Anna", a desk-sitting avatar complete with an artificial voice, the video introduces TP Observer as "a risk-mitigation tool that monitors and tracks real time employee behaviour, and detects any violations to pre-set business rules".
Anna explains that this means home workers will have an AI-enabled webcam added to their computers that recognises their face, tags their location and scans for "breaches" of rules at random points during a shift."
"West Midlands Trains emailed about 2,500 employees with a message saying its managing director, Julian Edwards, wanted to thank them for their hard work over the past year under Covid-19. The email said they would get a one-off payment as a thank you after "huge strain was placed upon a large number of our workforce".
However, those who clicked through on the link to read Edwards' thank you were instead emailed back with a message telling them it was a company-designed "phishing simulation test" and there was to be no bonus. It warned: "This was a test designed by our IT team to entice you to click the link and used both the promise of thanks and financial reward.""
"The disclosure points to a problem security researchers have been warning about for years: that despite its reputation for building what is seen by millions of customers as a secure product, some believe Apple's closed culture and fear of negative press have harmed its ability to provide security for those targeted by governments and criminals.
"Apple's self-assured hubris is just unparalleled," said Patrick Wardle, a former NSA employee and founder of the Mac security developer Objective-See. "They basically believe that their way is the best way. And to be fair … the iPhone has had incredible success.
"But you talk to any external security researcher, they're probably not going to have a lot of great things to say about Apple. Whereas if you talk to security researchers in dealing with, say, Microsoft, they've said: 'We're gonna put our ego aside, and ultimately realise that the security researchers are reporting vulnerabilities that at the end of the day are benefiting our users, because we're able to patch them.' I don't think Apple has that same mindset.""