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How robots, AI and automation are shaking up Iowa's workforce. Is your job at risk?
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Kevin Hardy | kmhardy@dmreg.com
Updated 10:27 a.m. CT Jul. 8, 2017
WEST BEND, Ia. — If one machine goes down inside the Country Maid plant, the whole operation devoted to churning out Butter Braid pastries comes to a screeching halt.

The stainless steel giants that make up the automated production line constantly talk with each other. When something goes wrong at one station, an alert is instantly sent to the next in line, effectively cutting workers out of the mix.

Plant manager Matt Kenyon explains how the machine senses if enough butter is being rolled out onto ...more
Michael Zamora/The Register
Over the years, the work of making Butter Braid pastries — frozen desserts sold through nonprofit fundraisers across the country — increasingly has shifted from human to machine labor.
Employees in the northwest Iowa plant keep watch over the sophisticated equipment, but it's up to machines to mix the dough, fold in giant blocks of butter and cut precise loaves of pastry.
Across Iowa, companies are making massive investments in automation that are raising productivity but require fewer workers. Since 2000, Iowa has shed nearly 39,000 manufacturing jobs, a 15 percent loss.
In addition, the rise of artificial intelligence is creating jobs and eliminating others far beyond the factory floor.
Fifteen years ago, 70 percent of the workers at Principal Financial handled paper transactions or customer interactions. Today, just 30 percent do.
From automation to computerization, sweeping changes in Iowa's workplaces are requiring workers to adapt to new roles or acquire more education to stay relevant in the workforce.


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A layer of butter is placed along a rolling sheet of dough Friday, June 16, 2017, before it's folded in at... more
Michael Zamora/The Register
By 2025, nearly 70 percent of all jobs in Iowa will require some training beyond high school, according to Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. Currently, only 58 percent of Iowans 25 to 64 have completed some education beyond high school.
Still, state officials say automation doesn't necessarily spell doom for workers.
Iowa factory leaders say their investments in new technologies have actually fueled job growth as better equipment has fueled productivity and overall output.
And in some cases, workforce shortages are accelerating such investments, putting machines in plants that struggle to find available employees.
At the Country Maid plant, automation initially caused some anxiety among employees, said Deb Bleuer, a 24-year veteran. But over time, they adjusted.

"The productivity, how much more you can produce, is incredible," she said. "What we used to make in a day, we now make in an hour."
As the company's fortunes rose alongside its investments in machines, employees' stresses faded.
"We always hired more people," Bleuer said, "and change made us bigger and bigger — more people, more opportunities."

Kathy DeWolf keeps an eye on the frozen Butter Braid pastries working their way down the line into ...more
Michael Zamora/The Register
'It's Not Something That Can Be Resisted'
Manufacturers note that technological change has been a gradual evolution. Automation itself is as old as the printing press and the cotton gin.

"There was once huge riots over sewing machines. And people are still sewing," said Jack Smith, who owns Cybersmith Engineering in Forest City.
"Yeah, it’s had an effect on jobs, but, I mean, look at what happened to bank tellers with ATMs. It's not something that can be resisted, really."
His small machine shop creates automation equipment for manufacturers worldwide. Automation changes the nature of work, but it doesn't necessarily kill jobs, Smith argues.
"If somebody gets automated out of a job, they still have a job doing something else, usually," Smith said. "And there's usually enough attrition in a larger factory that nobody notices anyhow."

Smith said automation-related changes in a plant come at an incremental pace. If an operator previously stamped out 20 parts per minute, machine upgrades might increase the rate to 40 per minute.
"Even in a union shop, we’ll go talk to the people and let them know what's going on. Usually, they’re on board for making their job easier," he said. "They wouldn’t, of course, be on board if we said, 'We’re going to get rid of 30 of you a year from now.'"
'Everybody's Job Is Going To Look Different'
Butter Braid founders Ken and Marlene Banwart started making their flaky pastries in their basement, selling them at local farmers markets as a way to bolster family income during the 1980s farm crisis.
By 1992, the business had grown into a shop in a standalone building in West Bend. In January 2000, the plant began investing in industrialized automation.

The upgrades never led to labor cuts, though some employees went on to other tasks, said CEO Darin Massner. He said automation has decreased workplace accidents, while also improving output.
In 2000, workers produced about 5,000 pastries a day. Now, output has more than quadrupled, Massner said.
"I don't see automation as a job killer," he said. "But it does require us to continually learn."
The takeaway is the same for workers, he said: It's increasingly important to take on new roles and learn how to use new tools.
"I anticipate in 10 more years, my job's going to look different," Massner said. "Everybody's job is going to look different, and that's OK."

'The Rebirth Of Manufacturing'
The evolution of Iowa's factories nowadays is more likely to reveal sparkling floors, digital monitors and high-powered computers than rust, grime and grease.
"In many cases these aren’t your grandfather's manufacturing floors," said Debi Durham, director of the Iowa Economic Development Authority. "They're really tech floors that happen to be manufacturing a product."
Durham knows it's easy to disdain automation as a job-killer. But she argues that it has allowed Iowa firms to remain globally competitive.
Across Iowa, 212,000 people work in factories large and small. Technology has played a role in keeping manufacturing a viable career option here, even as factory jobs have dropped nationwide since their high point in 1979, according to federal data.

Still, manufacturing job losses have hit some Iowa communities especially hard. Cerro Gordo County lost 35 percent of its manufacturing base in just a decade. In Webster County, more than three-quarters of all factory jobs vanished between 2006 and 2016.
Research released in May from the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that each industrial robot introduced in a factory pushes down wages and leads to the equivalent of about 5.6 lost jobs.
A June study from Ball State University researchers predicted that automation will continue to target jobs, particularly data entry keyers, mathematical science occupations and telemarketers.
“Automation is likely to replace half of all low-skilled jobs,” Michael Hicks, the director of the university's Center for Business and Economic Research, said in a news release.

Yet Iowa officials believe manufacturing still has a future in Iowa.
More advanced machines may automate some assembly line tasks, but they can also open up new positions for machinists, engineers and other higher-skilled workers.
Among the state's efforts to promote manufacturing, Durham points to Future Ready Iowa, a workforce initiative to build Iowa's talent pipeline, and a gubernatorial declaration of 2017 as the Year of Manufacturing.
"I think you’re seeing the rebirth of manufacturing," she said.
'Nobody Likes Change At First'
But that doesn't diminish the unsettling changes workers are seeing at many plants.
Over the years, the ranks of workers at the John Deere Dubuque Works factory has shrunk from a high of 6,000 to about 1,300 union members today.
"I’ve toured plants in Detroit and different places," said Dan White, president of the UAW Local 94. "And the story is the same: They’re not what they used to be, but they’re producing more product."
That goes for Dubuque as well, where the operation increasingly has become automated. White started out as a welder, sometimes working with rusty and oily parts.
Now, welders and plumbers operate robotic welders inside the spotless plant. Over the years, output increased, even as the production line's footprint shrank.
"People like the work a lot," White said. "There’s so much more work that can be done in so much less space."
That kind of transformation has played out hundreds of times across the small and medium manufacturers that dot every Iowa county.
Farming's Technology Revolution
Experts say the changing American farm has a lot in common with manufacturing.
As advanced machines allowed each farmer to do more, the numbers of farms and farmers tumbled: Since 1900, the number of U.S. farms has fallen 63 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Iowa State University Economist Peter Orazem said farming shows that a jobs-above-all mentality is short-sighted. Industrialized agriculture has made food more affordable and allowed more ag workers to find gainful employment in other areas.
"If all you want is people to be employed, let’s get rid of tractors," Orazem said. "Everybody can go back to hand-farming and back to subsistence living."
Orazem said it's difficult to argue that automation has led to large job losses in manufacturing in Iowa. The state's unemployment rate was 3.1 percent in May. It hasn't topped 4 percent in 28 months.
But Orazem said those who view manufacturing as a "safe haven" for workers with limited education and skills are mistaken. Those jobs increasingly require more of workers.
"If I am not a high school graduate, this economy is going to be very damaging to my job prospects," Orazem said, "because what we’ve done is replaced the low-skill routine jobs, and we’re likely to continue to replace those because it’s expensive to hire people with relatively low productivity in this particular economy."
Technology Has Its Limits
Automation and other new technologies are rolling through local office buildings just as rapidly as they spread across factory floors.
A recent survey of Des Moines-area firms by staffing agency Robert Half found that many are embracing new technologies. The survey found:
Thirty-nine percent said their companies were using machine learning;
Thirty-six percent reported using artificial intelligence;
Fifty-seven percent said they have implemented the "internet of things," or IOT, which embeds internet connectivity into everyday objects so they can send and receive data.
Regional Vice President Stacey Singleton said software is changing roles across companies, such as automating daily tasks in accounts receivable and payables.
"Let's say the manager of the accounting department is able to automate an accounting task," Singleton said. "You could spend a lot more time being strategic, developing your staff, collaborating across departments, figuring out how to find more revenue or sales."
Artificial intelligence is also changing the nature of the job search itself. At Robert Half, employees used to thumb through piles of paper resumes and applications.
Now, software takes the first pass, determining which candidates are qualified, before people narrow the pool.
"You have to be nimble; you have to work at a pretty high level," Singleton said. "You have to meet high expectations and work at a fast pace. It definitely has changed."
3 Ways Tech Has Changed Iowa Workplaces
DuPont Pioneer
Researchers at DuPont Pioneer's labs have cut years off the research and development time needed to get new plant breeds on the market.
And they have automation and robots to thank for that.

Jason Abbas, director, global production genotyping at DuPont Pioneer, shows the company's ...more
Rodney White/The Register
At the global company's largest lab in Johnston, a robot retrieves microscopic plant samples and extracts DNA. The tens of millions of tests performed here each year deliver genetic signals to plant breeders in the field or greenhouse who are developing and testing product lines.
"Ten years ago we were doing tenfold less than we are today. And it was costing us in the neighborhood of 10 times more," said Jason Abbas, director of global production genotyping.
And staff has increased over that time.
Instead of paying six people to spend their days moving around liquid samples, Abbas said Pioneer might take those same workers and employ them in an engineering or data analytics role.
"It's changed how we do our work," he said, "but the need for the staff and specific skill sets is certainly there."
Principal Financial Group
Fifteen years ago, about 70 percent of the employees at Principal Financial Group were considered transactional workers, moving paper, handling customer requests or entering data, said Gary Scholten, the company's executive vice president, chief information officer and chief digital officer.
Now, about 70 percent of the company's employees are knowledge workers and 30 percent are transactional.
Technology took over some lower-level jobs as customers began accessing account information online and completing their own transactions. Yet, Scholten doesn't expect the introduction of technology to winnow the pool of employees.
"The optimistic side of me says I think technology is going to continue creating jobs that we don’t even know about today," he said.
The company teams up workers from various departments — such as a marketing professional and a software developer — to quickly solve problems and create new products. Workers across departments must know how to use data in decision-making.

"We don’t need this just for our employees who are IT employees or actuaries," Scholten said. "We need all of our employees to have a basic understanding of math and technology."
Pella Windows and Doors
Inside the Pella Windows and Doors plant in Pella, a giant robot speeds around, measuring and cutting pieces of metal that eventually will fit between two sheets of glass in a double-paned window.
After an employee programs the machine, the plexiglass-encased robot works quickly. To switch tasks, it changes out the tools on its arm and switches them between arms within seconds.

Ben Coady operates a robotic grille processing machine at Pella Corp. in Pella Tuesday, June 6, ...more
Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Register
Don Lanke, director of operations engineering, said robots increasingly are taking over the tasks in Pella's plants that are difficult for humans. Robots are good at lifting heavy, awkward objects. And they don't worry about ergonomics or injuries.

But the plant still relies heavily on employees.
"There are just some things that humans are better at doing," Lanke said.
That includes tasks that require dexterity, such as working with small parts and assemblies. People are better at many visual tasks, such as spotting product irregularities. And they're also better at making on-the-spot judgments, he said.
That's a key distinction at a company that produces nearly everything on-demand: Pella's mostly custom products aren't kept in stock, but are produced once an order is in hand.
Lanke pointed to overseas plants that have grown so reliant on automation they call themselves "dark factories" for their lack of human workers. Though he's unsure if that day is coming to American factories, he's sure of one thing for now:
"It won't be fast," he said. "There are so many things that humans are so good at."

Effects on Iowa's economy, both good and bad.

[MKSheppard]

I can't wait till automation necks HR in the head.

[FaxModem1]

I can't wait till automation necks HR in the head.

How automated would companies have to be for that to be a realistic possibility?

[FaxModem1]

News 18

Indian IT Sector Faces Choppy Waters Due To Automation
IT Firms are now looking at developing platforms based on artificial intelligence (AI).
Updated on: July 21, 2017, 6:54 PM IST
News18.com

Prasesh18 Prasesh18 Prasesh18 Prasesh18 Prasesh18
Indian IT Sector Faces Choppy Waters Due To Automation
Automation is the biggest threat facing Indian IT jobs. The situation, irrespective of what IT companies say, is grim.

“Most companies are cutting down on managerial positions. It’s like taking off the fat in your body. These are people who have been in the company for long, are taking home big salaries, but have sort of lost touch with the client base,” said Kris Lakshmikanth, founder, Head Hunters India. Automation, he adds, will eliminate at least 30% of the 40 lakh tech jobs.

Additionally, he adds, companies are now looking at ‘platforms’. “Firms are now looking at developing platforms based on artificial intelligence (AI). Infosys’s Vishal Sikka is talking about it, IBM has Watson, and so on and so forth. These platforms basically imply that they need less manpower but more money. So, the most immediate thing for them to do is cut down on salaries, thereby people, and hire people who are more in touch with today’s technology but can be hired at much lower costs,” he added. According to McKinsey, on an average, 69% jobs in India are susceptible to automation.

Boom time over for IT firms?
“Indian companies have failed to touch base with technology at the required pace. This is a major factor. The size of the projects that these companies get now has reduced. This has not gone well with many companies in terms of business, especially the top 5 ones,” Lakshmikanth said. Clients, he adds, are now open to the idea of working with smaller firms that are in tandem with technology.

The sector, however, will continue to thrive, but the growth rate will not be high. “It’ll be like any other industry. The growth of the industry will be somewhere around 5-7% over the next 4-5 years. As of now, it’s affecting 1,00,000-2, 00,000 people and this is not a one-year or two-year affair,” he said. Companies have also failed to capitalize on domestic markets, he adds. “Look at Facebook, for example. It has a strong domestic base. Only then did it grow outwards. Indian IT firms on the other hand have looked to earn in dollars. Only now are they trying to build their domestic market share,” says Lakshmikanth.

Is there a way out?

This is, as Lakshmikanth says, the ‘digital tsunami’. Quite a number of earthquakes will lead to something big. But, that comes at a price.

“Those willing to work at lower salaries with average skill set will find a way out. There is a structural change in the industry and the firms need people who are okay with that change and are willing to save the firm a lot of money,” says Lakshmikant.

The glass is half full. “Or it’s half empty. You can look at either way. The best possible way for firms would be to increase their domestic share. Make mistakes, learn from it and then move out,” he says.

How large is the Indian IT industry, and what effect will this have on it? And what will that do to the Indian economy and population?

[FaxModem1]

The Columbus Dispatch

Softening vehicle sales, rising automation halt growth in Ohio’s auto jobs

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General Motors' assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio, makes the Chevy Cruze. Reuters reported last week that GM is considering phasing out U.S. production of several passenger-car models, but the Cruze was not on the list. [FILE PHOTO]
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Ohio's auto assembly plants include the Jeep Wrangler site in Toledo. The state's auto-sector employment — both vehicle manufacturing and the making of parts — rose by 1,500 jobs, or 1.6 percent, last year. [FILE PHOTO]
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General Motors' assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio, makes the Chevy Cruze. Reuters reported last week that GM is considering phasing out U.S. production of several passenger-car models, but the Cruze was not on the list. [FILE PHOTO]
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Ohio's auto assembly plants include the Jeep Wrangler site in Toledo. The state's auto-sector employment — both vehicle manufacturing and the making of parts — rose by 1,500 jobs, or 1.6 percent, last year. [FILE PHOTO]
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By Dan Gearino
The Columbus Dispatch

By Mark Williams
The Columbus Dispatch

Posted at 6:07 AM
Updated at 9:56 AM

It was nice while it lasted.

A surge in auto-manufacturing jobs since the start of the decade provided a desperately needed lift for Ohio as it climbed out of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

But that growth has stalled, based on recent figures, and analysts expect the job totals to remain flat or even shrink.

Much of the blame goes to a peak in auto sales after years of growth; automation is also a factor because it allows companies to produce more with fewer workers.

The question for Ohio is how will this shift reverberate through the economy. In short, the state will need to look more to other sectors to attract jobs, or find ways to counter the trend in auto manufacturing.

“It’s not a catastrophe, but some of the bloom is off the post-recession growth,” said Mike Hicks, a Ball State University economist. “For Ohio, that may be more painful, and for the Midwest in general. It is another factor that keeps growth less robust than we might have wished or expected it to be.”

Ohio’s auto-sector employment — both vehicle manufacturing and the making of parts — rose by 1,500 jobs, or 1.6 percent, last year; that was the slowest growth rate since the recession, according to federal employment data. Those two sectors employ about 97,000 in Ohio.

Looking ahead, modest increases probably will shift toward modest declines, according to a forecast by Moody’s Analytics. The research firm expects that Ohio’s transportation-sector employment will grow less than 1 percent this year, followed by decreases of less than 1 percent in each of the following six years.

“We’ll be expecting this to be a slowdown, but we don’t think it’s going to be anything that will be severe enough to send Midwestern states into recession,” said Brent Campbell, a Moody’s Analytics’ economist who covers Ohio.

Bound to happen

The stalled growth is a normal part of the economic cycle after the boom of the last few years. Auto-related employment in Ohio has increased about 35 percent since 2010, when automakers began adding jobs after the recession. Auto plants have been running at close to full capacity as sales of new cars and trucks doubled from 2009 to 2016.

There is no doubt that the tide has turned, however. Here is some of the evidence:

‒ Ohio’s employment in manufacturing had flat-lined as of June compared with a year ago, with a drop of 200 jobs among manufacturers of “durable goods,” which are items meant to last at least three years, according to preliminary government data issued Friday.

‒ Auto inventories were at 4.2 million vehicles as of July 1, the highest in 13 years, according to Automotive News.

‒ New-vehicle sales are down 2.1 percent from 2016′s record pace.

‒ Production in the first five months of 2017 at auto assembly plants in the district covered by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland — all of Ohio, western Pennsylvania, eastern Kentucky and northern West Virginia — was down about 9 percent from the same period of 2016, according to the bank.

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At the same time, the industry is contending with an unsettled political climate.

President Donald Trump has threatened to enact stiff tariffs or quotas on steel imports. Although such a move would benefit U.S. steel producers, it probably would lead to higher prices for trucks and cars — and potentially further depress sales — because automakers would have to use more-expensive domestic steel.

At the same time, banks and other lenders have tightened some lending for auto buyers, particularly for those with low credit scores.

If these factors weren’t enough, manufacturers continue to figure out how to produce more with fewer workers.

“They are developing remarkable technologies. It is much more sophisticated, but needs fewer people to operate,” said Eric Burkland, executive director of the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association. Workers “are higher-skilled, more highly compensated.”

Openings available

Despite the slowdown in hiring, manufacturers have openings, and Burkland said they routinely talk about how tough it is to find applicants.

That trouble finding workers is another reason that job growth is being held in check, said Ned Hill, an Ohio State University economist.

“If the cost of semi-skilled labor gets too high, including the cost of health-care benefits, work will be automated,” he said. “This is looming in the logistics side of the business.”

But Hill does see a silver lining: Predictions of a decrease in manufacturing jobs do not account for normal attrition, such as retirements. So, even if the state’s total is falling, there will be openings.

Also, other sectors will be growing. Moody’s Analytics and others expect service and health-care jobs to become a larger share of Ohio’s economy. Economic-development leaders can use this information to help attract more jobs in the fields most primed for growth.

Unexpected events could change the landscape, however. Hill said the only way he sees more-significant auto-related employment in the future is the addition of an assembly plant, something he doubts will happen.

In addition, the state will need to hold on to the assembly plants it has: two Jeep plants in Toledo, a General Motors plant in Lordstown, and Honda plants in Marysville and East Liberty.

In addition, many plants make engines, transmissions, vehicle bodies and other auto parts.

The president of the United Auto Workers union raised concern last week that GM’s lagging sales could lead to job losses. Reuters reported that GM is considering a phaseout of U.S. production of several passenger-car models. Absent from the list, which Reuters said came from unidentified sources familiar with the plans, is the Chevrolet Cruze, the model assembled in Lordstown.

Honda appears to be a stable presence in central Ohio, where it makes the Accord in Marysville and the CR-V in East Liberty, among other models. The automaker also has a research-and-development office and has attracted a network of other companies that manufacture parts, making the region a hub for auto production.

Asked about Honda’s plans, spokesman Chris Abbruzzese said:

“We’re confident that our products and our flexible manufacturing operations will continue to provide Honda and our suppliers with the ability to maintain a significant presence in central Ohio.”

mawilliams@dispatch.com

@BizMarkWilliams

dgearino@dispatch.com

@DanGearino

Ditto with auto manufacturing and the Ohio population and economy.

[Gandalf]

How automated would companies have to be for that to be a realistic possibility?

A lot of the work has been knocked out due to automation. For a bunch of recent jobs, I had to fill out online forms with the details that would normally be in a resume. The normal work history stuff was there, as was every unit taken done at university. Now one can automate sifting through much larger resumes to get those worthy of advancing. There are also gamified personality/intelligence tests that can be automatically issued and marked without HR interaction. So theoretically an applicant can have their resume screened and their capabilities tested before anyone in HR knows their name.

[JLTucker]

That personality test shit happens all the time in retail. If you don't score well enough for the company, your application is tossed out and no one sees it. That's happened to me as early as 2007.

[FaxModem1]

So, how necessary is a job interview for most positions? Do you really need one for stocking a warehouse, for example?

[Gandalf]

So, how necessary is a job interview for most positions? Do you really need one for stocking a warehouse, for example?

One might be needed if only to have a manager (not even HR) meet the prospective employee and just check for things that the screening process might have missed. For example, if there's a physicality to the job they might want to size you up.

[Elheru Aran]

So, how necessary is a job interview for most positions? Do you really need one for stocking a warehouse, for example?

One might be needed if only to have a manager (not even HR) meet the prospective employee and just check for things that the screening process might have missed. For example, if there's a physicality to the job they might want to size you up.

Pretty much this. There's only so much that you can legally ask on an application, and there's nothing to prevent someone from fudging a little (or a lot). Jobs aren't so common and so desperate for hires that people won't try hard to at least get their foot into the door with the application.

One common question, for example, is 'are you willing and able to perform tasks that include lifting up to [x] weight repeatedly'. This could be... pretty much anything from shuffling papers, to hefting 80-lb boxes of people's crap in a 100-degree semi trailer, or shifting entire beef sides in a walk-in freezer... and the answer is 'yes' or 'no'. And if you might not be *sure* that you CAN do it, but you think you MIGHT be able to, and you really need the job... there's not much stopping you from saying 'yes'.

The same applies for pretty much any question you could ask on the application. At the very least, meeting your applicant in person establishes a few things for certain-- whether they are physically suited to the job, whether they seem to think they can do it or if they may be shading a few things on the application, how professional they seem, and so forth. A glowing application for a high level business job won't make up for showing up looking like a slob (unless you're Will Smith in Pursuit of Happyness).

[Civil War Man]

That personality test shit happens all the time in retail. If you don't score well enough for the company, your application is tossed out and no one sees it. That's happened to me as early as 2007.

Back sometime in 2009 or 2010, before I got my current job, I ended up sending an application in to the local Best Buy. Almost immediately got a call back from the store manager. I was definitely overqualified for the position, but I was overqualified in a way that gave me a lot of potential mobility within the company, so the manager figured I could be a pretty major asset. He really wanted to bring me in for an interview, but corporate policy prohibited him from doing so until after I passed one of those personality tests. When I didn't score high enough the first time, he actually had me take it a second time because he didn't want to pass up the opportunity. The whole thing fell apart after I didn't score high enough the second time, because I'm not the kind of person who would fudge the answers just to give someone what they wanted to hear, and I wasn't in dire enough straits that I felt like I had to accept entering a corporate culture with a policy as asinine as having to pass a personality test before you could even be given an interview.

I actually found the test itself to be fairly fascinating, because it was all multiple choice, and there were several questions where I could come up with a valid reason why every answer would be considered disqualifying. The one I still remember after all this years was a question asking whether you liked to engage in small talk. If you answer yes, then obviously you might have issues being a hard worker, because you are going to be chatting with people while there's shit that needs to be done. If you answer no, then obviously it means you are not a team player and you won't work well with co-workers and customers.

The same applies for pretty much any question you could ask on the application. At the very least, meeting your applicant in person establishes a few things for certain-- whether they are physically suited to the job, whether they seem to think they can do it or if they may be shading a few things on the application, how professional they seem, and so forth. A glowing application for a high level business job won't make up for showing up looking like a slob (unless you're Will Smith in Pursuit of Happyness).

Meeting in person also helps determine whether the applicant has the right personality for the job, which is something that can't be adequately measured in a resume or application form. It's not even necessarily a question of laziness or professionalism, but whether they would fit into the company culture. If they might end up constantly being the odd one out, or butt heads with their potential co-workers, it might be a good idea to reject an otherwise qualified candidate so they don't negatively impact other people's ability to work.

[FaxModem1]

Some signs that lawyers could be on the chopping block as this process gets more automated:

Knoxville News Sentinel

Legal automation spells hard times for lawyers
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Columnist Published 9:08 a.m. ET Aug. 9, 2017

Both authors are distinguished professors with extensive experience in legal practice, and in particular in serving lower-income Americans. And if you’re a lower-income American (and in this context, lower-income doesn’t mean all that low) paying a lawyer to represent you in a criminal or civil matter, or even to fight a parking ticket or prepare a will, is a major and perhaps unaffordable burden.

Rebooting Justice tells the story of “wildly overburdened” public defenders and court-appointed attorneys who represent poor defendants in criminal cases (and even in death penalty cases), and who often do a substandard job of it. Meanwhile, in civil court, mothers and fathers fighting child custody orders, laid-off workers claiming unemployment, sick people claiming disability — and even couples just wanting a low-cost divorce — find getting legal representation prohibitively expensive.


In many states, we’re told, 75% or more of family law disputes involve at least one party trying to proceed pro se — that is, without a lawyer. Unsurprisingly, these people usually do badly.

More: Forget Russia. I'd fire Jeff Sessions over civil forfeiture.

POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media

The authors quote Derek Bok, who said that in America, “there is far too much law for those who can afford it, and far too little for those who cannot.” But the good news is that law may be about to become a lot more affordable.

One example: A lawyerbot called Do Not Pay helps people contest parking tickets. In London and New York, it helped people overturn 160,000 tickets in its first 21 months. Its creator, 19-year-old London-born Stanford student Joshua Browder observed: “I think the people getting parking tickets are the most vulnerable in society. These people aren’t looking to break the law. I think they’re being exploited as a revenue source by the local government.”

There’s not much doubt about that. Local governments pretend it’s about safety, but use traffic fines for revenue. Those fines fall hardest on poor people, for whom a $150 fine is a financial disaster and for whom an appearance in court is frightening and awkward. Often, a few citations, with interest and penalties accruing, can be the beginning of a downward spiral leading to bankruptcy or jail.

Browder is working on other applications, and with good reason: There’s a need. And as Barton and Bibas point out, lawyer-substitutes like software (or paralegals allowed to practice on their own) don’t have to be better than the best lawyers. They only have to be better than what people who can’t afford the best lawyers can get.

This has the potential for social revolution in many ways. It’s bad for the lawyers who lose work to bots. It’s bad for cities who rely on revenue extorted from motorists and other petty offenders to balance the books. (DoNotPay’s 160,000 overturned tickets represented over $4 million in revenue). And it’s bad for any part of the legal system that forces compliance from ordinary people who just don’t want the hassle of going to court.

But it’s good for people who, up to now, haven’t had much leverage. If we’re lucky, we’ll wind up, as Barton and Bibas suggest, with “fewer lawyers, more justice.” For people like me, who sell law degrees for a living, that may be bad news. For society as a whole, though, it may turn out pretty well.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

So, how will people react when it becomes more generally aware that white collar jobs, and not just blue collar or customer service jobs are on the chopping block due to automation?

[Elheru Aran]

The thing about lawyering is that it's a fairly specific skillset which basically consists of being able to draw together a lot of data regarding specific legal codes, relevant precedent, and the evidence at hand in order to reach a specific conclusion. It's less intuitive than, say, medicine.

That said, this appears to be more a case of apps or bots that basically add A + B = C to come up with a conclusion which most people wouldn't normally reach on their own because they don't have the time or resources to access the relevant codes in simple procedural cases where the 'crime' is very minor, apparently so far it's generally only minor violations like parking tickets. We aren't going to see law-bots in murder cases anytime soon, for example.

[The Romulan Republic]

Replacing lawyers with bots would, to my mind, be a violation of a citizen's right to an attorney. I'd expect it to face Constitutional challenges. Unless we get actual sapient robots, in which case I suppose they'd have as much right to be lawyers as any other living being.

[Elheru Aran]

Right. Bots that aren't lawyers but allow people to do legal research on the other hand... basically a smarter version of say WebMD, where you do it at your own risk. It might see an increase in self-representation, which would incentivize lawyers to lower their prices.

[Gandalf]

If law becomes a more moderately paying profession, maybe we won't see such a glut of lawyers in society, and the talented people who go into law might go into other fields. I remember reading an article that examined the phenomenon of people in Australia who do well in their university placement exams taking law because otherwise it's a waste of a high mark.

[FaxModem1]

If law becomes a more moderately paying profession, maybe we won't see such a glut of lawyers in society, and the talented people who go into law might go into other fields. I remember reading an article that examined the phenomenon of people in Australia who do well in their university placement exams taking law because otherwise it's a waste of a high mark.

What fields would be better for them to go to? Will these fields also see automation making sweeping changes to the career fields, making less avenues for everyone to go to?

Also, I believe Australia's legal professional phenomenon was the basis for an episode of Farscape: Dream a Little Dream

[Elheru Aran]

If law becomes a more moderately paying profession, maybe we won't see such a glut of lawyers in society, and the talented people who go into law might go into other fields. I remember reading an article that examined the phenomenon of people in Australia who do well in their university placement exams taking law because otherwise it's a waste of a high mark.

What fields would be better for them to go to? Will these fields also see automation making sweeping changes to the career fields, making less avenues for everyone to go to?

If I had to guess?

Fields that still require a fair degree of not only intelligence, but also intuition, empathy, personal interaction with people. As I noted earlier, medicine is one such. Most of the retail trades will still require a certain degree of personal interaction, particularly in more specialized stores like hardware stores. The mechanical trades, of course... though I would not be surprised at all if there aren't apps like U-Fix-It coming out before long if they haven't already. I made up the name, but the idea is simple enough-- type in a problem, it tells you how to fix it, preferably with pictures, and if it's still a mystery, you press a button and for a small fee you can talk to someone who presumably can help you with your specific situation.

Back on topic. For people who want careers with a future, like I said, you look for professions with human interaction and a large degree of intuitive decision making, professions where being able to collate vague data and reach a practical conclusion is a useful ability. To return to medicine, this is exactly what a LOT of practitioners do; they collate vague data ("my stomach hurts, kind of right here"), combine with testing as necessary, and reach a decent conclusion even taking into account that each human is an individual with different metrics and circumstances. And empathy matters; you cannot be a machine and be a good doctor.

Veterinary medicine would be an option as well. Cheaper than human medicine, at least.

I don't have time to explore it further, but that gives you some idea of what is called for.

[Gandalf]

What fields would be better for them to go to? Will these fields also see automation making sweeping changes to the career fields, making less avenues for everyone to go to?

The article I read dealt with the teacher shortages, so I was thinking of fields like education.

[Elheru Aran]

What fields would be better for them to go to? Will these fields also see automation making sweeping changes to the career fields, making less avenues for everyone to go to?

The article I read dealt with the teacher shortages, so I was thinking of fields like education.

That's an excellent one right there. Definitely needs human interaction at various points to really make sure people are learning.

[Simon_Jester]

This.

You can automate education more heavily, if you don't mind a majority of your student body slacking to the point of obtaining a useless pseudo-education.

And I don't even mean 'useless' in the sense that people like to be trendily cynical and say 'an American high school diploma is useless.' I mean literally useless. Worse than now. Like, something that is to today's high-school diploma as a proper seventh grade education is to a proper twelfth grade education.

[FaxModem1]

Automated kiosks at McDonald's charge people for nothing

[FaxModem1]

Bloomberg

Pandit Says 30% of Bank Jobs May Disappear in Next Five Years
By Chanyaporn Chanjaroen
September 12, 2017, 10:57 PM CDT September 13, 2017, 1:18 AM CDT
Vikram Pandit says AI, robotics reduced need for some staff
Pandit now CEO of New York-based investment firm Orogen Group
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Vikram Pandit, who ran Citigroup Inc. during the financial crisis, said developments in technology could see some 30 percent of banking jobs disappearing in the next five years.

Artificial intelligence and robotics reduce the need for staff in roles such as back-office functions, Pandit, 60, said Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Haslinda Amin in Singapore. He’s now chief executive officer of Orogen Group, an investment firm that he co-founded last year.

“Everything that happens with artificial intelligence, robotics and natural language -- all of that is going to make processes easier,” said Pandit, who was Citigroup’s chief executive officer from 2007 to 2012. “It’s going to change the back office.”

Wall Street’s biggest firms are using technologies including machine learning and cloud computing to automate their operations, forcing many employees to adapt or find new positions. Bank of America Corp.’s Chief Operating Officer Tom Montag said in June the firm will keep cutting costs by finding more ways technology can replace people.

While Pandit’s forecast for job losses is in step with one made by Citigroup last year, his timeline is more aggressive. In a March 2016 report, the lender estimated a 30 percent reduction between 2015 and 2025, mainly due to automation in retail banking. That would see full-time jobs drop by 770,000 in the U.S. and by about 1 million in Europe, Citigroup said.


JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon cautioned in June against overreacting to the impact of technology on jobs. While the bank is using technology to reduce costs, that helps create other opportunities, Dimon said in an interview published on LinkedIn. He predicted that employee numbers at his firm will continue to rise -- as it hires more technology workers.

The banking industry is becoming “enormously competitive,” Pandit said, adding that he foresees the emergence of “specialist providers” as well as consolidation in the industry.

A QuickTake explainer on FinTech

“I see a banking world going from large financial institutions to one that’s a little bit more decentralized,” he said.

Since leaving the firm, Pandit has invested in non-bank financial startups such as student-loan venture CommonBond Inc. and home equity finance firm Point Digital Finance Inc. He formed New York-based Orogen last year with investment firm Atairos Group to acquire stakes in mature financial-services companies.

So, what happens if 30 percent of accountants find themselves unemployed by 2027?

[Elheru Aran]

So, what happens if 30 percent of accountants find themselves unemployed?

They flip burgers for awhile until they find another job, or find something else to do besides accounting. Same as anybody else.

30 percent is a lot though, so that means intense competition for existing accounting jobs available.

Accounting is one job where automation does make a bit of sense-- it's basically a lot of number-crunching, the main thing to do is feeding whatever you're using to do the job the numbers it has to crunch. Where the human factor comes in is noticing trends and disrepancies, but that's less of an issue these days, depending on how good your software is. Where you really need human input though is if you're dealing with old paperwork and documents-- hard copy, in other words, that can't always be digitally compiled quickly. Also unconventional solutions.

Like in the film 'The Accountant', early in the movie he's doing taxes for a couple. Seems like they're going to have to pay a bunch of money and they're freaking out about it. So he thinks about it a moment, asks if the woman does any crafts, and from there he finagles them a tax cut based on a 'home business' that they basically made up on the fly. A program won't necessarily do that for you. Even a human accountant won't always do that for you... but they're more likely to think of something like that, to circumvent the usual A--->B--->C steps.

[FaxModem1]

So, what happens if 30 percent of accountants find themselves unemployed?

They flip burgers for awhile until they find another job, or find something else to do besides accounting. Same as anybody else.

30 percent is a lot though, so that means intense competition for existing accounting jobs available.

Accounting is one job where automation does make a bit of sense-- it's basically a lot of number-crunching, the main thing to do is feeding whatever you're using to do the job the numbers it has to crunch. Where the human factor comes in is noticing trends and disrepancies, but that's less of an issue these days, depending on how good your software is. Where you really need human input though is if you're dealing with old paperwork and documents-- hard copy, in other words, that can't always be digitally compiled quickly. Also unconventional solutions.

Like in the film 'The Accountant', early in the movie he's doing taxes for a couple. Seems like they're going to have to pay a bunch of money and they're freaking out about it. So he thinks about it a moment, asks if the woman does any crafts, and from there he finagles them a tax cut based on a 'home business' that they basically made up on the fly. A program won't necessarily do that for you. Even a human accountant won't always do that for you... but they're more likely to think of something like that, to circumvent the usual A--->B--->C steps.

Well, as noted in the Flippy thread, and in here, flipping burgers is not going to be the refuge for the downsized and outsourced that it once was. I guess it really all depends on who gets automated first. A race to full unemployment, as it were.