Autonomous Vehicles

Artificial Intelligence used to only exist in movies, in science fiction, but over the past decade AI has been replacing jobs, according to CNBC 30 percent of jobs risk being taken over by AI. Recently, one of the biggest tech guys of the industry Elon Musk stated that "AI will make jobs pointless." This has hence led us to wonder what jobs will be replaced by AI in the near future? This has also led us to worry whether our own jobs will be replaced. Therefore, I have compiled a list of jobs that will be replaced by AI in the near future, and also a list of jobs that probably won't be replaced.

A 65-year-old woman in Utah's Snow Canyon State Park got some unexpected help from a drone operated by the local sheriff's department, after injuring her ankle while hiking with friends. While walking near the edge of Island in the Sky, a famous canyoneering and rock climbing route, she slipped and fell several feet, injuring her ankle to the point where she could no longer stand or support her own weight. The group of three friends she was with called the sheriff's search and rescue team rather than attempt to carry her back down the steep and sandy trail themselves. Search and rescue workers from the Washington Country Sheriff's Department in Utah used a drone to deliver then 660 feet of twine to help setup a rappelling system to get an injured hiker down from a clifftop The sheriff's team decided to bring the woman down from the 400-foot-tall cliff, the equivalent of 40 stories, by strapping her to a stretcher and using a rappelling system to guide her down. The only problem was they didn't have enough rope to reach actually reach the ground.

The comments of the president, who avoided the Vietnam War draft thanks to a diagnosis of bone spurs, drew swift criticism from veterans groups. "Don't just be outraged by #PresidentMayhem's latest asinine comments," Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, wrote in a Twitter post that day. "Take action to help vets facing TBIs," meaning traumatic brain injuries. Traumatic brain injuries result from the powerful changes in atmospheric pressure that accompany an explosion like that from a missile warhead. The missiles were launched by Iran in retaliation for the killing of a top Iranian general, Qassim Suleimani, by an American drone strike in Baghdad on Jan. 3.

The vehicles still drive with a safety driver and a software operator. Optimus Ride, an MIT spinoff, has started operating its autonomous vehicles at Paradise Valley Estates in Fairfield, California. The shuttles, which have been carrying passengers for a couple of months now, follow deployments at the Seaport District in Boston, the Halley Rise mixed-use district in Reston, Virginia, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York, a 300-acre industrial park. At the moment, the vehicles still drive with two people from the company on board, a safety driver and a software operator, but the goal of the company is to be fully driverless later this year. We caught up with the company recently -- check out the video below.

Uber's self-driving cars will soon be jockeying for space on the streets of Washington, DC, with the ride-hailing company announcing it will begin collecting data to support the development of its fleet of autonomous vehicles. The vehicles will not be operating in autonomous mode, though. They will instead be operated by human drivers to start out, collecting mapping data and capturing driving scenarios which Uber's engineers will then reproduce in simulation. That said, the company hopes to eventually allow its self-driving cars in Washington to, well, self-drive. "Our hope is that this first round of manually driven data collection will lay the foundation for testing our vehicles in self-driving mode in Washington, DC," the company's Advanced Technologies Group said in a Medium post.

As part of an annual look at global AI investment trends, CB Insights today reported that AI startups raised a record $26.6 billion in 2019, spanning more than 2,200 deals worldwide. That's compared to roughly 1,900 deals totaling $22.1 billion in 2018 and about 1,700 deals totaling $16.8 billion in 2017. The reported high recorded by CB Insights in the AI in Numbers report is in line with analysis by other organizations keeping an eye on investment in the AI ecosystem. The National Venture Capital Association earlier this month said that although overall venture capital spending took a dip last year, investors spent a record $18.4 billion on AI startups in the United States in 2019. With investment highest in fields like autonomous driving, drug research, finance, and facial recognition, the AI Index 2019 report released last month found more than $70 billion in global private investment in AI.

The Lone Star State may become a little lonelier -- at least when it comes to big-rig trucking. Waymo, the self-driving vehicle division of Google parent Alphabet, is about to start mapping in Texas and New Mexico as a prelude to testing its self-driving big-rig trucks. The mapping minivans, to be followed by the large trucks, will run primarily along Interstates 10, 20 and 45 and through metropolitan areas like El Paso, Dallas and Houston, the company said. Waymo previously mapped and tested its big rigs in Arizona, California and Georgia. The latest move will add to that footprint as the company moves toward its vision of big rigs rolling down interstates with no one at the wheel, their sensors and computers making them safer than if they have a human in control.

It is difficult to open an insurance industry newsletter these days without seeing some reference to machine learning or its cousin artificial intelligence and how they will revolutionize the industry. Yet according to Willis Towers Watson's recently released 2019/2020 P&C Insurance Advanced Analytics Survey results, fewer companies have adopted machine learning and artificial intelligence than had planned to do so just two years ago (see the accompanying graphic). In the context of insurance, we're not talking about self-driving cars (though these may have important implications for insurance) or chess-playing computers. We're talking about predicting the outcome of comparatively simple future events: Who will buy what product, which clients are more likely to have what kind of claim, which claim will become complex according to some definition. The better insurers can estimate the outcomes of these future events, the better they can plan for them and achieve more positive results.

After the update/download, to use the app for EI 2020, click on the "More" option in the bottom right corner of the app screen and click "Change Event" from the list of options. Find EI 2020 on the list of available events and download the content to begin planning your EI 2020 itinerary. Go directly to the online SCHOLARONE MyItinerary website! CONFERENCES Electronic Imaging 2020 brings together 17 technical conferences covering all aspects of electronic imaging: (Note: The Photography, Mobile, and Immersive Imaging (PMII) and Image Sensors and Imaging Systems (IMSE) conferences have merged into the Imaging Sensors and Systems (ISS) Conference for 2020.) OPEN ACCESS PROCEEDINGS IS&T EI proceedings are Open Access.

The concept of workplace automation is nothing new, but the future of the robot workforce is bright. Businesses have implemented robotics for decades, if mostly in the realm of manufacturing. The future may hold a different story. Technological advancements and a more widespread cultural acceptance of the concept will likely lead to the further automation of the modern world. The robotics industry has been expanding for years, and this trend will likely continue into 2020.