ai and the workforce
ai and the workforce

Updating the Definition of ‘Data Scientist’ as Machine Learning Evolves

By Bernardo Lustosa, Partner, cofounder, and COO at ClearSale In the early days of machine learning, hiring good statisticians was the key challenge for AI projects. Now, machine learning has evolved from its early focus on statistics to more emphasis on computation. As the process of building algorithms has become simpler and the applications for AI […]

Beware of AI’s Dark Side, Warns Google Cofounder Sergey Brin

Artificial Intelligence is a recurring theme in recent remarks by top executives at Alphabet. The company’s latest Founders’ Letter, penned by Sergey Brin, is no exception—but he also finds time to namecheck possible downsides around safety, jobs, and fairness. The company has issued a Founders’ Letter—usually penned by Brin, cofounder Larry Page or both—every year, beginning with the […]

Richard Liu, Founder of JD.com, China’s Largest Retailer, Envisions A ‘100%’ Robot Workforce

“I hope my company would be 100% automation someday … no human beings anymore, 100% operated by AI and robots.” That’s Richard Liu’s audacious goal, which he outlined to my colleague David Roth* in a rare, just-released interview conducted in English at the World Retail Congress in Madrid last week. Liu is the 44-year-old founder, CEO and […]

Tale of Two Amazons: Average Pay is $28.5K; Software Engineers Earn North of $100K

Amazon disclosed in a filing Wednesday (April 19) that the median pay for its employees was $28,446 in 2017. Put another way: half of Amazon’s employees earned less than that amount. In the same year, Amazon created more than 130,000 jobs, many of them for AI scientists. The underwhelming figure was made public as part of a new rule put into […]

Deep Learning is Seen as a Help to Cardiologists – Not a Job Threat

Applying a deep learning approach to echocardiography could save clinicians time while improving diagnostic accuracy, one Georgia-based cardiologist reported at the American College of Cardiology’s annual meeting in Orlando, this year. Randolph P. Martin, MD, said machine learning—and its self-training subset, deep learning—is often perceived as a threat to cardiologists, but the tools could aid […]

People Architecture and Agile Compensation May Save HR in AI Era

The warning stirs distant memories of the recessionary year 2008 and the Dotcom bust a few years earlier. So many companies, from startups to one-time Blue Chips, laid off thousands of workers or simply disappeared through bankruptcy or acquisition. Their IT teams, entrenched in dated technologies, went from unemployed to unemployable. These weren’t layoffs of […]

17 Experts Weigh In on the Impact of Artificial Intelligence

Recently, I reached out to 17 thought leaders — AI experts, computer engineers, roboticists, physicists, and social scientists — with a single question: “How worried should we be about artificial intelligence?” There was no consensus. Disagreement about the appropriate level of concern, and even the nature of the problem, is broad. Some experts consider AI […]