Artificial Risk

Over the past months, I've written quite a bit about how automation, driven by an Artificial Intelligence (or three), will take our jobs and that it is a good thing.  Then along comes Mr. High-and-Mighty Technocrat Elon Musk saying that AI is an existential threat to humanity and needs to be proactively regulated.

Well, crap.

What is a blogger with an audience of (maybe) dozens supposed to do against the loudest voice for Futurism on the planet?  I don't know what the others are doing, but I'm going to unpack his comments and do some on-page thinking.

Work is What You Make of AI

Last month I got all on a kick about how automation is going to take our jobs and that that is a good thing.  There has been some more press on this topic so I want to continue kicking it around.

The first article for my shouting-into-an-empty-house discussion is from the BBC: How long will it take for your job to be automated.  This is about an Oxford study that asked 352 scientists how long various jobs would take to be automated.  This is a better information than the one that the Will Robots Take My Job site used.  And it offers up a time frame that is more heartening for those that are hip deep in the status quo: 120 year before 50% of all jobs are automated.  Hold on to that thought.

The second article is about Eric Schmidt, Google Founder and Techno Spouter (of course I'm jealous, people ask his opinions instead of me trying to force them down any ear that will listen).  In it, Mr. Schmidt puts forth the idea that A.I. will create more jobs that can't be filled instead of destroying them.  His reasoning is that automation will make workers more efficient, more productive, but that humans will still need to be part of the process.  He cites a McKinsey study that says that 5% of current jobs can be automated with today's technology for his reasoning.  It's a very together-we-are-stronger statement, but it has a few holes.

A Matter of Travel

I saw this article about how autonomous vehicles will change everything a few weeks ago.  I meant to write about it then, but then Amazon distracted me.  But I did not forget.  Not this guy.

The basic gist of the article is that, as both self-driving cars and electrical power systems grow, coupled with the instant-ordering supplied by smart phones, it will change how people choose to get their transportation.  Instead of owning, we will rent on an as-needed basis.  The author goes on to predict that, at the inflection point of long battery life and reliable autonomy, this behavior change will happen very quickly.  "A matter of months" quickly.

Amazon Patent Menagerie

When I wrote about the potential Amazon-Whole Foods merger last week, I may not have adequately (or at all) connected it to the nominal subject of this blog: The Internet of Things.  I'd like to take some time this week to correct that oversight.

First, let's all remember that 'Things' are physical and require a physical space in which to operate.  Amazon has had that through its distributions centers (DCs), but not in an publicly accessible space.  At best, they've had a few experiments with Amazon Go and physical bookstores in select metros.  With the Whole Foods thing, this changes.

In last week's post, I mentioned that these 450-ish stores give Amazon an opportunity to observe us shopping.  Not to sell IoT products to consumers, but to use them on us.  To see how we shop in physical spaces and then use that information to improve product placement, to optimize store layout, to optimize product choice.  To improve the shopping experience, not for the shoppers, but for Amazon.

And, on the heels of the merger announcement, we saw a patent that may be the kind of thing that will result from that learning.

Prime Foods

Amazon had a good week last week.  There were a lot of sales on their various signature products (Echo, Kindle, Fire, etc) in lieu of Father's Day, they launched the Dash Wand with Echo so that you can 'say it or scan it', and they agreed to purchase the Whole Foods grocery chain for $13.4 Billion.  A good week indeed.

It is the Whole Food deal that I want to focus on.  As someone who has spent a couple of decades in a variety of retail positions, from floor sales to manager to vendor rep, as well as some opinions on where automation may take us, this deal raised my eyebrows and got me going, "Hmmm."  With that in mind, I read a few articles, starting with two from the Grey Lady:

• Amazon to Buy Whole Foods for $13.4 Billion
• The Amazon-WalMart Showdown That Explains the Modern Economy

Both articles are worth your time (if you haven't already read them), but the focus of both is too narrow.  They both only scratch the surface of why Amazon might have agreed to buy a brick-and-mortar grocery chain.  Yes, they have been dabbling with physical locations for the last year or two: Amazon Go being one and they now have a physical book store or two.  Yes, they want to take more market share from WalMart.  But to swallow a nationwide chain when they have been spending two decades destroying nationwide chains is a different animal all together.

What's In A Name

I'm going to step off the techno-socialist soapbox I've been using for the past few months.  Instead, I'm going to put on my old marketing gloves, open up the sales toolkit and do a product tear down.  Though, not really.  What I want to tear down is the launch of a product, not the product itself.

The item in question is the new Apple HomePod, announced last week at Apple's World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC).  The HomePod is a package of tech that is roughly the size of that urn your grandmother keeps on the mantle.  The one full of your grandfather's ashes.  Only this one may be full of something else.  Something smellier.

No Jobs Are Safe

Hello, World!  I'm back after a brief hiatus that I spent remembering our troops by taking the Middle School Daughter Unit white water rafting (among other things).

But that's all over now and it's back to banging the what-do-we-do-when-the-jobs-are-all-automated drum.  The jumping off point is a website I discovered through Reddit, called:

WILL ROBOTS TAKE MY JOB