Kara Frederick, tech director at the Heritage Foundation, discusses the need for regulations on artificial intelligence as lawmakers and tech titans discuss the potential risks. Two significant shifts are changing America's workforce as we've known it. First, artificial intelligence (AI) continues to transform everything about work. AI technologies-related job displacement presents a major challenge to the American worker and it continues to disrupt our economy. Equally disruptive is our rapidly aging workforce.

The acquisition and use of digital skills are essential for the digital transformation of European economies. Using digital devices to find, evaluate, use, share, curate and create content has become the norm in many if not most professional and social environments. While digital natives -- Millennials and especially Gen Z -- grew up with these new technologies and have gained early exposure and experience, many older workers -- Gen X and beyond -- face higher learning barriers. Moreover, as digital technologies evolve rapidly, with new platforms emerging and ever more complex tools being introduced, regular updating of essential knowledge about these technologies becomes a necessity. Lot of attention, therefore, focuses on the type of skills needed to be able to properly use digital tools and devices and how to introduce this into updated curricula.

Just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water, a new threat has emerged to equal employment opportunity as employers base hiring decisions on artificial intelligence powered video and game-based "pre-employment" assessments of job candidates. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research center based in Washington, D.C., recently asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate HireVue, a recruiting company based in Utah that purports to evaluate a job applicant's job qualifications through online "video interview" and/or "game-based challenge." According to its web site, HireVue has more than 700 customers worldwide including over one-third of the Fortune 100 and such leading brands such as Unilever, Hilton, JP Morgan Chase, Delta Air Lines, Vodafone, Carnival Cruise Line, and Goldman Sachs. The company states it has hosted more than ten million on-demand interviews and one million assessments. The EPIC complaint follows a wave of lawsuits in recent years charging that employers are using software algorithms to discriminate against older workers by targeting internet job advertisements exclusively to younger workers.

Just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water, a new threat has emerged to equal employment opportunity as employers base hiring decisions on artificial intelligence powered video and game-based "pre-employment" assessments of job candidates. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit research center based in Washington, D.C., recently asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate HireVue, a recruiting company based in Utah that purports to evaluate a job applicant's job qualifications through online "video interview" and/or "game-based challenge." According to its web site, HireVue has more than 700 customers worldwide including over one-third of the Fortune 100 and such leading brands such as Unilever, Hilton, JP Morgan Chase, Delta Air Lines, Vodafone, Carnival Cruise Line, and Goldman Sachs. The company states it has hosted more than ten million on-demand interviews and one million assessments. The EFF complaint follows a wave of lawsuits in recent years charging that employers are using software algorithms to discriminate against older workers by targeting internet job advertisements exclusively to younger workers.

Just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water, a new threat has emerged to equal employment opportunity as employers base hiring decisions on artificial intelligence powered video and game-based "pre-employment" assessments of job candidates. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research center based in Washington, D.C., recently asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate HireVue, a recruiting company based in Utah that purports to evaluate a job applicant's job qualifications through online "video interview" and/or "game-based challenge." According to its web site, HireVue has more than 700 customers worldwide including over one-third of the Fortune 100 and such leading brands such as Unilever, Hilton, JP Morgan Chase, Delta Air Lines, Vodafone, Carnival Cruise Line, and Goldman Sachs. The company states it has hosted more than ten million on-demand interviews and one million assessments. The EPIC complaint follows a wave of lawsuits in recent years charging that employers are using software algorithms to discriminate against older workers by targeting internet job advertisements exclusively to younger workers.

Just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water, a new threat has emerged to equal employment opportunity as employers base hiring decisions on artificial intelligence powered video and game-based "pre-employment" assessments of job candidates. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit research center based in Washington, D.C., recently asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate HireVue, a recruiting company based in Utah that purports to evaluate a job applicant's job qualifications through online "video interview" and/or "game-based challenge." According to its web site, HireVue has more than 700 customers worldwide including over one-third of the Fortune 100 and such leading brands such as Unilever, Hilton, JP Morgan Chase, Delta Air Lines, Vodafone, Carnival Cruise Line, and Goldman Sachs. The company states it has hosted more than ten million on-demand interviews and one million assessments. The EFF complaint follows a wave of lawsuits in recent years charging that employers are using software algorithms to discriminate against older workers by targeting internet job advertisements exclusively to younger workers.

In 1888, the London-based accounting firm that became PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) faced a major technological upheaval thanks to the Burroughs adding machine. The first-ever mechanized calculator, an invention by William Seward Burroughs, cut the time to perform accounting tasks in half, and PwC's hundreds of workers had to quickly master the new system, or get left in the dust. Today, PwC isn't simply an accounting firm--now it's a global consultancy with 250,930 employees in 158 countries, raking in $43.1 billion in revenue in 2018--but once again it, along with thousands of other companies, faces a seismic technological shakeup with the advent of AI and other advanced technologies. It's rising to meet the challenge by preparing its workers to use digital technologies at all levels, from entry-level staff to C-suite executives. And it's not alone in its reskilling push--AT&T, IBM, Walmart and other forward-leaning companies also have major retraining programs underway.

In today's business landscape, the value of a diverse workforce has become indisputable. Hard numbers support its positive impact on businesses' top and bottom lines. A recent survey revealed that 62% of participating executives rated diversity and inclusion as a high or top priority. Diverse organizations are often more successful than others. For example, McKinsey & Company found that gender-diverse organization are 15% more likely to outperform their peers, while ethnically-diverse organizations are 34% more likely to do so. With many of the world's leading economies facing an increasingly aging population, it is encouraging to see that retaining older workers can increase business productivity.

They define middle-aged workers as those between the ages of 26 and 55, and older workers as those over the age of 55. They find that countries that are undergoing more rapid aging, meaning that they are experiencing a greater proportional decrease in the number of middle-aged workers relative to older workers, invest significantly more in robotics. They are more likely to develop new technologies and manufacture robots, and to deploy these robots in production. Population aging can explain almost 40 percent of the country-to-country variation in the adoption of industrial robots. The researchers estimate that a 10 percentage point increase in the ratio of the number of middle-aged to older workers is associated with 0.9 more robots per thousand workers.

IF there are two truths that are universally acknowledged, they are that western populations are ageing and that more jobs are likely to be automated. That is the focus of a new report called "The Twin Threats of Aging and Automation", a collaboration between Marsh & McLennan's Global Risk Centre, Mercer, and Oliver Wyman. The study looks at 15 countries and concludes that Asian workers are most at risk (see chart). By 2050, the UN estimates that more than a third of the world's population will be over 50, up from less than 16% in 1950. As a proportion of the working-age population, those aged between 50 and 64 already make up more than 30% of the workforce in Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan.