Technology has always existed to make work easier, and to that end it has been incredibly successful. But what happens when work becomes so easy that the technology simply does it for us? It’s no secret that I have my own opinions about the prospect of artificial intelligence affecting our job market. That said, I do believe that the dialogue isn’t complete by any means. In his book Zero to One, Peter Thiel of PayPal and Palantir reminds us not to become spoiled by the idea that the future will happen, because, unless we actively design and implement that future, it won’t be the one that we get.

Here in my state of North Carolina, there is a continuous discussion about employment and economy. Further, the entrepreneurial fire has grown hotter and larger over the past several years, triggering a period of job creation, especially in the digital and biological tech industries. With companies such as IBM with their Watson learning machine and Automated Insights content-writing robot Wordsmith based in the state, there is a sense of cognitive dissonance in the conversation. Are these companies actually taking jobs from humans by automating skills we rely on? Will we adapt quickly enough to feed people into the new workforce? Is our education infrastructure prepared to instill the next generation of workforce skills?

The Institute for Emerging Issues at NC State is hosting the 31st Annual Emerging Issues Forum Februrary 8–9 2016. The event, named “FutureWork,” is themed around the above issues and will focus on helping communities and companies in North Carolina prepare for the impact of automation and intelligent machines. This is a perfect opportunity for leaders and workforce members to be involved in the greater discussion, present their concerns, and learn more about the systems already in place on both ends of journey. This forum will be the first in history to be televised live on UNC-TV, allowing even those that may not attend to take part.

The forum, a two day affair, will begin at the Raleigh Convention Center for Day One on the 8th, and will relocate and continue at the Hunt Library at NC State on the 9th, Day Two.

The first day will be geared toward exploring what North Carolina can do today to prepare by creating quality jobs for the upcoming future. This should be a perfect discussion for entrepreneurial leadership to take part in to inspire the creation of more leaders, and also to help direct their own actions towards innovating their own models to suit the changing market.

The second day of FutureWork will involve hackathon sessions designed to help identify and dig into the obstacles presented by technological automation and the predicted market changes, and then create actionable plans and frameworks to address them. These hackathon sessions will be industry specific, and topics will feature the key sectors of Banking & Finance, Education, Energy, Healthcare, and Government/Smart Communities. Speakers and appearances at FutureWork will include Governor Pat McCrory, Governor of North Carolina; Martin Ford, Silicon Valley Entrepreneur and Author of “Rise of the Robots”; Vivek Wadhwa, Nationally Syndicated Columnist; Dambisa Moyo, International Economist and Futurist; and Jaylen Bledsoe, Youth Entrepreneur and Tech Prodigy.

Digital automation, robot manufacturers, machine learning, and electronic decision-making may have all been fantasies just decades ago, but they are now realities and are very present in our industries today. Many of these technologies are being pioneered right here in North Carolina. I personally doubt that jobs will ever deplete; as long as we have problems, there will be work to do. It is still a question, however, if we are producing the workers and leadership capable of identifying and solving these problems quickly enough to create and fill those jobs in the upcoming environment. FutureWork is a discussion that has already begun and has to be formally addressed, not just by thought leaders and experts, but by everyone touched by the economy.

Again, the future will happen, with or without your permission, but only the future that we actively create today will manifest tomorrow. If we don’t replace fear with understanding and ideas with strategies, we will miss the chance to inject our vision into this upcoming paradigm shift and will have to adapt to the consequences rather than direct them. With that in mind, regardless of our employment scenario – now or in the future – we have at least one more job to do.

Today is National Data Privacy Day. My specialty is developing application systems for human wellness and business performance. As one can imagine, this involves monitoring and working with particularly sensitive data. Business activities and an individual’s health stats are considered among the most private breeds of data, and a compromise can mean not only losing confidence with your clients, but it can also make very vulnerable data available to a malicious third party. With this in mind, what is one expected to do about the delicate matter of privacy, and how should he approach it?

Good security is mostly just good policy. Even a bad thief knows to check under the welcome mat for a spare key. That being said, most of your attacks come in through the front door, so to speak. Here are some general considerations for the non-geek to make when handling security.

In Business

Your office security can be locked down completely, but if an employee uses the same password for his Facebook as he does to login to your billing software, your business doesn’t even need to be breached for them to get credentials to your finances. A good password policy and auditing plan can help this, and it’s best to have someone in charge of this. Keep it scheduled and enforce changing passwords, or implement two-step authentication.

If your business runs under a Bring your own Device (BYOD) structure, creating a strategy can be a real pain, but even a simple plan can help avoid huge threats. Catalog each device that an employee may bring that connects to your network. That means phones, tablets, laptops, and even USB sticks. This will give you a real idea of what threats you might be bringing into your network from the outside and will let you know what type of BYOD policies you truly need.

The Cloud

The cloud is generally more secure than your own datacenter. On one hand, you have the security of “owning” your systems when you have in house technology, at least in a geographic sense. However that means all responsibility for those systems fall on you. A reliable third party cloud company dedicated only to the storage, management, and encryption of your systems and data will be dedicated to managing the infrastructure while you manage your business.

Of course that doesn’t mean that the cloud provides perfect security. Always read the fine print to figure out how your cloud provider encrypts and protect your data. If there is a blank spot on any of this in your provider’s terms, you should worry a little.

IoT

I know I said this would be non-geek, but IoT (Internet of Things) is now a main stream real concern. Every device you own that shares data without you necessarily interacting directly with it is essentially an IoT device. This includes FitBits, Google Nest, Iris, automatic pet feeders, front door cams, and a whole host of sensory devices. While you willingly allow these devices to monitor and spy on you all day, there are many cases where a third party can be listening in.

To start with, any time a device offers a chance for you to change its default admin username and password, do so. This goes from routers plugged directly into the network to drones. Especially with popular devices, an attacker can remotely access any of these by identifying its signature and become a man in the middle, listening in to your communications. Also, often times the only way to access these devices is through a web or mobile application that is still communicating via WiFi or cell signals. This means that for unencrypted channels anyone on the network can “listen in” to what you’re communicating. At that point your are whispering in a crowed but quiet room. When dealing with any new IoT device make sure the vendor has protected it’s communication with a secure SSH key and an encrypted web connection.

The Rest of Us

Simply keep your antivirus updated. The nature of business now means you will be collecting and sharing a lot of information just to keep operations going, and you shouldn’t trust yourself to be safely discretionary of everything that comes past your email. It won’t catch everything, but it will stop more threats than having nothing in place.

In Short…

While developers and device providers like my colleagues and myself work hard to create software and tools that take your data privacy into consideration, there are thousands of devices that I can’t account for. Personal privacy is also your responsibility as a consumer, so keeping savvy with vulnerabilities and using basic conventional wisdom should both be on your list at the very least. Thank you, and I wish you a happy, and secure, Data Privacy Day.

Originally posted – https://medium.com/@bluefission/data-security-2af0fe76db14#.cbtx4px7b

When Uber driverless cars and Amazon delivery drones are the norm, what will happen to all the drivers and package handlers who were replaced? This is usually the first line of thinking that many come up with when approached with the reality of technological automation. It spurns a rage against the machine and a sense of a war against devices that will replace us. The problem with this perspective is that it simply makes no clear sense.

It’s natural that people fear being replaced. We seek jobs and careers for a sense of purpose, livelihood and fulfillment. There is something spiritually crushing about facing a future where you may not be needed or may be plain superfluous. This innate sense of worth and belonging is where the fear ends, though. There is nothing else after that, merely an irrational fear of being replaced by a machine that truly doesn’t want your job, because it doesn’t really want anything.

But what about those people pushing the technology? Surely they are looking to push people out of their workflows to reduce overhead and improve efficiency! Well yes, that is a driving factor, but then there’s another dynamic at work here. When machines flood the work force, society won’t stay as it is. It simply can’t. The quality of life will increase as the First World elevates itself. In the future, the developing nations of today will be like the First World of the present. That, along with the current Entrepreneurial Age, will ensure we don’t simply “run out of jobs.” We are amazingly good at making up jobs as soon as the opportunity arises. Titles and positions such as “digital marketing director,” “iPhone screen repair person,” or “sales ninja” simply didn’t exist a hundred years ago,

Good technology has a way of winning in the end. Our grandchildren will laugh over the quaintness of the term “driverless car” the same way we do over the phrase “horseless carriage.” The opportunities related to that technology will remain foreign as long as the name of the technology itself does. Our capacity to adapt will change in proportion to our capacity to accept, and when the jobs that are easy enough for our technology to replace are gone, we will be ready to take on the hard ones still meant for us humans only.

Originally posted – http://www.wilmingtonbiz.com/insights/devon__scott/when_robots_take_our_jobs/1042