For over 23 years, Larry Collins worked as a toll collector on the Carquinez Bridge in San Francisco. He loved his job -- every day, he would come to work and greet drivers, provide directions, answer questions, and collect toll fees. Over the years, although the toll price had changed tremendously, his job was always in a stable condition. But, this all changed during March of 2020. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Collins was suddenly informed that his tollbooth was getting shut down and replaced by an artificial intelligence-based toll collector machine. Collins was not the lone victim of industrial automation unemployment, just in the Northern California region, 185 other toll booths were also shut down and replaced by technological alternatives (Semuels). As the 21st-century technological advances continue, applications of artificial intelligence are expected to expand exponentially. Slowly but surely, artificial intelligence is automating a multitude of manual jobs, causing widespread unemployment around the world (Peterson). There is clear uncertainty about the future of artificial intelligence. A recent report from the conference on Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection suggested that the European Commission (EU), is strongly "considering the possibility of legislating for Artificial Intelligence". This legislation would explore a number of nuances that come with future artificial intelligence job automation and will consider the implementation of a novel regulatory framework (MacCarthy). On the other hand, organizations such as Deltec, an international financial research institute, are in support of artificial intelligence automation and don't want regulation as it would hinder humanity's ability to research and solve problems in an efficient manner (Trehan). Currently, there has been no clear conclusion to this ongoing debate -- experts have varying opinions but agree that a full-proof solution is direly needed.

There are several studies predicting how many jobs will be automated by robots, but they all focus on software robots, such as speech and image recognition, financial robo-advisers, chatbots, and so forth,

Welcome to your new weekly Briefing from The Digital Eye. This has been compiled for busy professionals who have limited time but want to stay up to date with the latest digital news. WHY Ethics is'the new frontier for technology' We hope you have found these articles informative. Would you please share with others who might also be interested? To build trust, important those developing AI are aware of unintended consequences". "Questions about AI ethics AI are uncomfortable, as requires reflection on our own ethics & society generally.

This article was contributed by Valerias Bangert, strategy and innovation consultant, founder of three media outlets, and published author. The debate around whether AI will automate jobs away is heating up. AI critics claim that these statistical models lack the creativity and intuition of human workers and that they are thus doomed to specific, repetitive tasks. While AI job automation has already replaced around 400,000 factory jobs in the U.S. from 1990 to 2007, with another 2 million on the way, AI today is automating the economy in a much more subtle way. Take the example of writing jobs.

This article was contributed by Valerias Bangert, strategy and innovation consultant, founder of three media outlets, and published author. The debate around whether AI will automate jobs away is heating up. AI critics claim that these statistical models lack the creativity and intuition of human workers and that they are thus doomed to specific, repetitive tasks. While AI job automation has already replaced around 400,000 factory jobs in the U.S. from 1990 to 2007, with another 2 million on the way, AI today is automating the economy in a much more subtle way. Take the example of writing jobs.

UNESCO just released its new report on Artificial Intelligence and Gender Equality, which sets forth proposed elements of a Framework on Gender Equality and AI for further consideration, discussion and elaboration amongst various stakeholders. Advancing gender equality through education, the sciences, culture, information and communication lies at the heart of UNESCO's mandate, with Gender Equality constituting one of the two Global Priorities of the Organization since 2008. UNESCO is therefore keen to adopt a gender equality lens in its ongoing work on artificial intelligence in all its programme areas. Research, including UNESCO's 2019 report I'd Blush if I Could: closing gender divides in digital skills through education, unambiguously shows that the gender biases found in AI training data sets, algorithms and devices have the potential of spreading and reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes. These gender biases risk further stigmatizing and marginalizing women on a global scale.

In July 2017, The State Council of China released the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan," outlining China's strategy to build a US$150 billion Chinese AI industry in a few short years, and to become the leading nation in AI by the year 2030. Other nations followed suit quickly with national AI strategies of their own – with the US trailing behind by nearly two years before developing a semblance of an AI initiative. The proposed 2021 budget for the national security budget in the US is $740 billion – with a billions of dollars being earmarked for AI specifically (learn more: US Public Sector AI Opportunity Report). AI applications play a considerable role in the direction of technology development in many defense sectors, particularly in surveillance, intelligence gathering, reconnaissance, logistics, command and control, cyberspace, and information operations – but AI's relevance for national security is just as much in it's implications for the economy as it is for defense itself. This article is based on my presentation at the UNICRI / Shanghai Institutes for International Studies event Artificial Intelligence – Reshaping National Security – held in Shanghai. While I'm not able to embed my full slide deck from that presentation publicly, I am able to share some of the key ideas from my talk – with a focus on AI job loss and defense implications.

In recent decades, women have made huge gains in employment. But the rise in job automation is threatening to undo that. Jobs held by women are more likely to be displaced by automation, according to The World Economic Forum's 2020 report on the global gender gap, while men are more likely to be employed in less vulnerable roles. To avoid job irrelevance, female workers must approach education and their careers in new ways, finding opportunities in areas that predominantly employ men. "The jobs that are emerging are not very gender-equal," said Vesselina Ratcheva, the data lead at the World Economic Forum.

Tech CEOs and politicians alike have issued grave warnings about the capability of automation, including AI, to replace large swaths of our current workforce. But the people who actually study this for a living -- economists -- have very different ideas about just how large the scale of that automation will be. For example, researchers at Citibank and the University of Oxford estimated that 57 percent of jobs in OECD countries -- an international group of 36 nations including the U.S. -- were at high risk of automation within the next few decades. In another well-cited study, researchers at the OECD calculated only 14 percent of jobs to be at high risk of automation within the same timeline. That's a big range when you consider this means a difference of hundreds of millions of potential lost jobs in the next few decades.

Job automation was hotly debated by speakers at the CIPD's Festival of Work conference this week, with many agreeing that it will replace many middle-skilled occupations. But this shouldn't be seen as a threat to the human workforce, as Ashleigh Webber reports. Until very recently, job automation and the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) would put swathes of the workforce out of work seemed distant concerns. However, with Amazon recently rolling out 200,000 robots across 50 warehouses and two NHS hospitals in London introducing software to automate certain back office functions, the concept of a "robot workforce" appears to be rapidly becoming reality. What challenges will HR face in the next 10 years?