Author Archives: greg

Total Automation

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Challenge.  I live in Portland Oregon USA.  Five blocks from us a canteen restaurant was set up.  All automated.  You use a credit card to get in.  You pay with the card.  You’re surveilled.

No humans.   All machine.  We thought a no human restaurant was an outlier.  A cute test of automation in a safe community.

Fast forward 5 years:   California enacted a $20 minimum wage for fast food workers.  And, you’ve heard of the $15 to $20 value meal.  Sorry, the value proposition no longer exists.   This isn’t working for the franchise owners, customers, and shareholders.

Enter automation:  We now got robots flipping burgers. Cutely called ‘flippy.’   We got automated ordering inside the fast food restaurant and drive thrus.

Hard lesson earned:  If you look into the short term future, you’re seeing total automation.  Robots + AI.  Everywhere.

So, ask yourself.  Is the future coming for your work/career/job?  Are you ready?

 

What Do You Do If You’re Average Like Me?

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Set up:  Linda Boff recently left General Electric as their Chief Marketing Officer to be CEO of ‘Said Differently’ a marketing agency.  According to the Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2024, she said the agency’s business model is to:

“To be able to cast a team regardless of geopgraphy and say: ‘Who’s the best designer?  Who’s the best brand strategist?  Who’s the best copywriter?  And, who know this industry.”

But, we as individuals already do this with Fiverr and other creative flatforms.  But, this is different.  What happens when the entire company’s business model is based on ‘only the  best worldwide.”  Just think of your company.  What happens to average folks like me?

Hard lesson earned:  More companies will adopt this business model.  What happens to FTE’s – full time employee model?  What happens when you take this lean business model and add AI and robotics to it?  Something to think about?

Learning AI

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The AI learning challenge: A lot of folks worrying about their work/career/job want to learn AI.  Or ML?   The #1 tool in Machine Learning is gradient descent.  I asked Chat GPT what is it:  “Gradient descent is an optimization algorithm commonly used in machine learning and statistical modeling to minimize a function by iteratively moving towards the steepest descent, as defined by the negative of the gradient.”

Huh?  What’s that.  OK.  Let’s simply it.  Think of a 3D mountain (triple integral in calculus).  You want to find the quickest way down the mountain. Got it?

But, here’s the challenge.  I’m a mathy engineer.  I had to have 2 years of calculus, 1 year of linear algebra, 1 year of statistics/probability, 1 year of fluency of a computer language, etc.  Anyway, you get it that to do ML, you need a lot of math and maybe a degree.

The Simple Solution:  Andrew Ng, a former Stanford professor and now entrepreneur, teaches this intuitively on Coursera.  No math.  Just algebra and intuitive programming using preprogrammed.  https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-introduction

Takeaway:  If you want to learn ML and AI, don’t get a math or CS degree.  Takes Ng’s courses on Coursera.  If you want to get a math degree and solve triple integrals, go ahead.  But, I’m now doing the simple, effective, and doable.

We Are Now All VUCANS®!

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VUCANs:  Now that I got your attention.  You thought when you scanned this click bait title, that we were talking about Vulcans.  In the Star Trek series, Vulcans were the logical aliens with funny ears that always had to suppress their emotions.

Nope.  We’re talking about VUCANs®.  Who are they?  This is a term we invented for our books and risk products.  A VUCAN is a Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity iNhabitant.  Get it…

VUCA acronym:  What did it start?  US military colleges invented the term about 40 years ago to describe the new world of war.  Instead of two opposing armies with nuclear weapons, most wars would consist of irregular combatants with new forms of warfare such as robot, AI, and drones.

Let’s look at these acronym words a little more carefully.  What does VUCA mean:

  • Volatility: Speed and magnitude of change.
  • Uncertainty: Lots of unpredictable change.
  • Complexity: Lots of things happening that make it difficult to understand the change.
  • Ambiguity: Lack of undertanding of what’s going on.

Change happens:  People don’t like change.  It feels different and unfamiliar.  It takes us out of our comfort zone.  It means we may have less personal control.  It can result in fear of the unknown.  It can mean loss of job security.  That’s why we’re now all VUCANs.

Is Your Job Safe?

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The headlines:  “Top VC Kai-Fu Lee Says His Prediction that AI Will Displace 50% of Jobs by 2027 is ‘Uncannily Accurate’ on Fortune Magazine May 25, 2024.

If that wasn’t bad enough the next Fortune Magazine article I read said: “Elon Musk Predicts Jobs Will Become ‘Kinda Like a Hobby’: The AI and Robots will Provide any Goods and Services you Want shouted Fortune Magazine cover shouted in May 24, 2024

WTF.  Not the kind of warm and fuzzy article I was expecting to read this lazy afternoon..  It’s really fearful!

So, have you asked yourself: “Will AI and robots take my job?”  This is now the #1 workplace fear.  It’s not quiet quitting.  It’s not work life balance.

Will I have work/career/job in 5 years.  Tough question.  No easy answer.  It seems that it depends.  What do you do?  How much of the work repetitive?  How much is creative?

Let’s look at AI can do really well.  AI can process and distill huge amounts of information.  The downside is that it can hallucinate.  Not good!

Jobs in jeopardy due to AI:  Accountants.  Mathematicians.  Writers.  Interpreters.  This is according to a study by University of Pennsylvania and OpenAI.