A new automated humanoid robot powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT resembles something akin to the AI Skynet from the sci-fi film Terminator While the new robot is not a killing machine, Figure 01 can perform basic autonomous tasks and carry out real-time conversations with humans - with the help of ChatGPT. The company, Figure AI, shared a demonstration video, showing how ChatGPT helps the two-legged machine visual objects, plan future actions and even reflect on its memory. Figure's cameras snap its surrounding and send them to a a large vision-language model trained by OpenAI, which than translates the images back to the robot. The clip showed a man asking the humanoid to put away dirty laundry, wash dishes and hand him something to eat - and the robot performed the tasks - but unlike ChatGPT, Figure is more hesitant when it comes to answering questions. Figure AI hopes that its first AI humanoid robot will prove capable at jobs too dangerous for human laborers and might alleviate worker shortages. 'Two weeks ago, we announced Figure OpenAI are joining forces to push the boundaries of robot learning,' Figure founder Brett Adcock wrote on X. 'Together we are developing next-generation AI models for our humanoid robots,' he added.

Companies have been trying out automatons to serve food in restaurants, make home deliveries or do chores in stores, partly in hopes of easing the worker shortage. Among the disenchanted, FedEx Corp. said last month it was powering down Roxo, its last-mile delivery robot, to prioritize several "nearer-term opportunities," a spokeswoman said. Inc. said it was ending field tests of Scout, its home-delivery robot, after learning that some aspects of its "unique delivery experience" weren't "meeting customers' needs," a company spokeswoman said. And over the summer, DoorDash Inc. said it was shutting down its Chowbotics business -- best known for Sally, the salad-making robot -- roughly 18 months after buying it. "While we gained valuable insights into how to better serve this market, we concluded our current approach was not meeting our very high thresholds for continued investment," a DoorDash spokesman said.

A few months ago, I asked the question: "Are Bots and Robots the Answer to Worker Shortages?" Here are a few more from recent months: PYMNTS.com: "Record Number of Robots Sold to Help Fill Jobs" "The labor shortage triggered by COVID-19 has been a boon to robot sales as businesses scramble to fill jobs amid increasing consumer demands for goods and services post-pandemic. "Orders for robotics January through October reached 29,000 units for a record $1.48 billion compared to last year's $1.09 billion, topping 2017's record for the same time period of $1.47 billion, the Association for Advancing Automation (A3) said in a press release." International Business Times: "Robots Filling Vacant Jobs Amid Ongoing'Great Resignation'" "The U.S. is struggling with a labor shortage that is hobbling its economic recovery, but companies are not sitting still as they work to keep production up and running.

Atlas and Spot won't have blank spaces on their resumes. The Boston Dynamics robots, famous for their YouTube parkour and dancing exploits, could land a position in a heartbeat, as can many non-human job-seekers, part of the wave of robot hires amid a human worker shortage. As the Associated Press reported, the pandemic ushered in these workplace changes. Companies are starting to automate service sector jobs, thanks to higher labor costs and the aforementioned worker shortages. Machines can do many tasks such as toss pizza dough, transport hospital linens, inspect gauges and sort goods.

The world runs on data, and humans alone could never monitor or safeguard all of it. When applied thoughtfully, artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced cybersecurity can add essential layers of protection for modern enterprise networks. Research firm Technavio expects the AI-based cybersecurity market to grow by $19 billion from 2021 to 2025. The company cites the increased complexity of enterprise networking environments, which often include a mix of legacy, on-premises infrastructure, and cloud resources, all of which need to be accessed remotely. AI approaches add efficiency and accuracy and reduce the impact of the ongoing worker shortage in this field.

As the coronavirus pandemic enveloped the world last year, businesses increasingly turned to automation in order to address rapidly changing conditions. Floor-cleaning and microbe-zapping disinfecting robots were introduced in hospitals, supermarkets and other environments. Some enterprises found that, given the new emphasis on hygiene and social distancing, robotic operations offered a marketing advantage. The American fast food chain White Castle began using hamburger-cooking robots in an effort to create "an avenue for reduced human contact with food during the cooking process". With the worst days of the pandemic hopefully now behind us, the jobs story has turned out to be unexpectedly complicated. While overall unemployment rates remain elevated, both the US and the UK are experiencing widespread worker shortages, focused especially in those occupations that tend to offer gruelling work conditions and relatively low pay.

The current knowledge system of macroeconomics is built on interactions among a small number of variables, since traditional macroeconomic models can mostly handle a handful of inputs. Recent work using big data suggests that a much larger number of variables are active in driving the dynamics of the aggregate economy. In this paper, we introduce a knowledge graph (KG) that consists of not only linkages between traditional economic variables but also new alternative big data variables. We extract these new variables and the linkages by applying advanced natural language processing (NLP) tools on the massive textual data of academic literature and research reports. As one example of the potential applications, we use it as the prior knowledge to select variables for economic forecasting models in macroeconomics. Compared to statistical variable selection methods, KG-based methods achieve significantly higher forecasting accuracy, especially for long run forecasts.

Technology is taking over many jobs, but that's creating demand for other, higher-level positions

SPOKANE, WASHINGTON – Harvesting Washington state's vast orchards each year requires thousands of farmworkers, many of whom work illegally in the United States. That could change dramatically; at least two companies are rushing to get robotic fruit-picking machines to market. The robotic pickers don't get tired and can work 24 hours a day. "Human pickers are getting scarce," said Gad Kober, a co-founder of Israel-based FFRobotics. "Young people do not want to work in farms, and elderly pickers are slowly retiring."

Harvesting Washington state's vast fruit orchards each year requires thousands of farmworkers, and many of them work illegally in the United States. That system eventually could change dramatically as at least two companies are rushing to get robotic fruit-picking machines to market. The robotic pickers don't get tired and can work 24 hours a day. "Human pickers are getting scarce," said Gad Kober, a co-founder of Israel-based FFRobotics. "Young people do not want to work in farms, and elderly pickers are slowly retiring."