strangephenomenonrevealed-blog

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Cloud falls from the sky and wanders around a parking lot like a lost puppy.

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Thanks to rapid advances in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, smart machines that would have once been relegated to works of science-fiction are now a part of our reality.

Today, we have AIs that can pick apples, manage hotels, and diagnose cancer. Researchers at MIT have even developed an algorithm that can predict the immediate future. If only they could train it to predict how automation is going to impact the human workforce…

Currently, opinions on the subject are as varied as the types of AIs in development. In January, MIT Technology Review compiled a list of 19 studies focused on automation and the future of work. No two reached identical conclusions.

In 2017, research and advisory company Gartner released a study predicting automation would destroy 1.8 million jobs worldwide by 2020. That same year, another research and advisory company, Forrester, released their own report on automation and the workforce. According to their calculations, the U.S. alone will lose 13.8 million jobs to automation in 2018.

The numbers vary even more wildly the farther out you look. By 2030, futurist Thomas Frey predicts humans will lose 2 billion jobs to robots, while researchers from consulting firm McKinsey predict a comparatively paltry 400 to 800 million in losses.

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Beyond the numbers, experts also disagree on the professions that will become automated, as well as where in the world will bear the brunt of the job losses. Are teachers and writers safe or should they start thinking about a career change? What about lawyers and doctors? Will the U.S. be the nation to lose the highest percentage of jobs, as PricewaterCooper predicts? Or will Japan be hit the hardest, like McKinsey’s report concludes? In an attempt to get to the bottom of the automation mystery, Futurism asked several experts to tell us who they believe will be most likely to suffer as a result of automation. Here’s what they had to say. Edward D. Hess, professor of business administration and Batten Executive-in-Residence at the University of Virginia: Automation is going to dramatically impact service and professional workers. To find work, one must be good at doing what the technology won’t be able to do well. For the near term, those skills are: (1) higher order thinking (critical, innovative, imaginative) that is not linear; (2) the delivery of customized services that require high emotional intelligence to other humans; and (3) trade skills that call for real-time iterative problem diagnosis and solving and/or complex human dexterity. Jobs that have a high risk of being automated are jobs that involve repetitive tasks and linear tasks that are easy to code: “if this, then do this.” High-risk fields are retail, fast food, agriculture, customer service,  accounting, marketing, management consulting, investment management, finance, higher education, insurance, and architecture. Specific jobs include security guards, long-haul truck drivers, manual laborers, construction workers, paralegals, CPAs, radiologists, and administrative workers. Technology is going to continue to advance, and in reality, all of us are going to have become life-long learners, constantly upgrading our skills. The most important skills to have will be knowing how to be highly efficient at iterative learning — “unlearning and relearning” — and develop high emotional and social intelligence. Jobs requiring high emotional engagement in the customization and delivery of services to other human beings will be the most safe. Those include psychological counselors, social workers, elementary school teachers, physical therapists, personal trainers, trial lawyers, and estate planners. Other jobs that will be in high demand are in computer and data science. What will become human beings’ unique skill? Emotional and social intelligence. Joel Mokyr, an economic historian at Northwestern University and author of A Culture of Growth: Origins of the Modern Economy: The short answer is people who have boring, routine, repetitive, and physically arduous jobs. The long answer is that labor-saving process innovation and “classical” productivity increase may make some workers redundant as they are replaced by robots and machines that can do their jobs better and cheaper. This could get a lot worse if AI will also replace workers who are trained and skilled in medium human-capital intensity jobs, such as drivers, legal assistants, bank tellers, etc. So far, the evidence for that is very weak, but it could change, depending on what happens to demand and output as prices fall and quality improves. What counts is demand elasticities with regards to price and with regards to product quality (including user-friendliness). However, product innovation (unlike process innovation) is likely to create new jobs that were never imagined. Who in 1914 would have suspected that their great-grandchildren would be video game designers or cybersecurity specialists or GPS programmers or veterinary psychiatrists? The dynamic is likely to be that machines pick up more and more routine jobs (including mental ones) that humans used to do. At the same time, new tasks and functions will be preserved and created that only humans can perform because they require instinct, intuition, human contact, tacit knowledge, fingerspitzengefühl, or some kind of je ne sais quoi that cannot be mechanized. Bob Doyle, director of communications for the Association for Advancing Automation: I would argue that the question should be phrased as the following: “Who is actually going to thrive because of automation?” And the answer is everyone who embraces automation. Automation is the competitive advantage used by companies around the world, and for good reason. Companies automate heavy-lifting, repetitive, low-value processes in order to achieve higher output and product quality so that they can be more competitive in global markets. That gives them the resources to innovate, to improve business processes, and to continue to meet consumer demands. That lets those companies continue to hire human workers for the jobs they’re best-suited for: insight-driven, decision-based, and creative processes. You can say that another word for “automation” is “progress.” The inability to compete is the real threat to jobs, not automation. Between 2010 and 2016, there were almost 137,000 robots deployed in manufacturing facilities in the U.S. During that time, manufacturing jobs increased by 894,000 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics) and the unemployment rate declined by 5.1 percent. These companies (along with their employees) are competing and thriving today because of automation. We should remember that technological advances have always changed the nature of jobs. We believe this time is no different. We must be sure that we’re preparing the workforce to fill these jobs that are being created, especially in advanced manufacturing. The future of automation in bright!

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Meanwhile, on the homefront, dads have decided to take up specialized hobbies, now that they have more time on their hands (thanks to automation) to do other things.

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Dads are making marvellous progress in the kitchen, busily perfecting their cooking techniques.

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Their kids are busily conducting their own home-based science projects, trying to get those chemical reactions just right …

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And automation is influencing many in the general public to experiment with new forms of shelter and housing methods.

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There's even new kinds of condominiums and apartment complexes going up in forests across North America.

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Trees in which to build your new luxury retreat are also relatively inexpensive.

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All kidding aside, this is a distant view from Planet Nine back towards the sun. The object is thought to be gaseous, similar to Uranus and Neptune. Hypothetical lightning lights up the night side. Image Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

The question is: What do we name this planet if it is eventually discovered? Donaldus Trumpo?

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Hypothetical Planet X

Caltech researchers have found mathematical evidence suggesting there may be a “Planet X” deep in the solar system. This hypothetical Neptune-sized planet orbits our sun in a highly elongated orbit far beyond Pluto. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed “Planet Nine,” could have a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbit about 20 times farther from the sun on average than Neptune. It may take between 10,000 and 20,000 Earth years to make one full orbit around the sun.

The announcement does not mean there is a new planet in our solar system. The existence of this distant world is only theoretical at this point and no direct observation of the object nicknamed have been made. The mathematical prediction of a planet could explain the unique orbits of some smaller objects in the Kuiper Belt, a distant region of icy debris that extends far beyond the orbit of Neptune. Astronomers are now searching for the predicted planet.

In Depth In January 2015, Caltech astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown announced new research that provides evidence of a giant planet tracing an unusual, elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The prediction is based on detailed mathematical modeling and computer simulations, not direct observation.

This large object could explain the unique orbits of at least five smaller objects discovered in the distant Kuiper Belt.

“The possibility of a new planet is certainly an exciting one for me as a planetary scientist and for all of us,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division. “This is not, however, the detection or discovery of a new planet. It’s too early to say with certainty there’s a so-called Planet X. What we’re seeing is an early prediction based on modeling from limited observations. It’s the start of a process that could lead to an exciting result.”

The Caltech scientists believe Planet X may have has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and be similar in size to Uranus or Neptune. The predicted orbit is about 20 times farther from our sun on average than Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). It would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun (where Neptune completes an orbit roughly every 165 years).

When was it Discovered? Planet X has not yet been discovered, and there is debate in the scientific community about whether it exists. The prediction in the Jan. 20 issue of the Astronomical Journal is based on mathematical modeling.

What is its Name? Batygin and Brown nicknamed their predicted object “Planet Nine,” but the actual naming rights of an object go to the person who actually discovers it. The name used during previous hunts for the long suspected giant, undiscovered object beyond Neptune is “Planet X.”

If the predicted world is found, the name must be approved by the International Astronomical Union. Planets are traditionally named for mythological Roman gods.

Why Do They Think It's There? Astronomers studying the Kuiper Belt have noticed some of the dwarf planets and other small, icy objects tend to follow orbits that cluster together. By analyzing these orbits, the Caltech team predicted the possibility that a large, previously undiscovered planet may be hiding far beyond Pluto.

They estimate the gravity of this potential planet might explain the unusual orbits of those Kuiper objects.

What’s Next? Astronomers, including Batygin and Brown, will begin using the world’s most powerful telescopes to search for the object in its predicted orbit. Any object that far away from the sun will be very faint and hard to detect, but astronomers calculate that it should be possible to see it using existing telescopes.

“I would love to find it,” says Brown. “But I’d also be perfectly happy if someone else found it. That is why we’re publishing this paper. We hope that other people are going to get inspired and start searching.”

“Anytime we have an interesting idea like this, we always apply Carl Sagan’s rules for critical thinking, which include independent confirmation of the facts, looking for alternate explanations, and encouraging scientific debate,” said Green. “If Planet X is out there, we’ll find it together. Or we’ll determine an alternate explanation for the data that we’ve received so far.

"Now let’s go explore.”

Sources: Fesenmaier, Kimm, “Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Real Ninth Planet,” press release, last modified January 20, 2015

Konstantin Batygin and Michael E. Brown, “Evidence for a Distant Giant Planet in the Solar System,” The Astronomical Journal

Green, James, “A New Planet in our Solar System? NASA Takes a Look,” video statement, last modified January 20, 2015

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Food for thought. Is there a Planet X lurking nearby that nobody is aware of - nobody but government officials sworn to secrecy to prevent widespread panic? As long as it hits us on the opposite side of the Earth (so we don’t all get squished on this side) I guess I’ll be good with that. Gulp!

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Alot of this can actually be attributed to increased seismic activity, which, yes, is likely to result in lakes draining mysteriously away through fissures suddenly opening up after an earthquake along some fault line. Our tampering with the width of rivers for water transportation purposes may also be a contributer to lakes decreasing in size. But I really hesitate to agree with the idea that these incidents are a sign of the so-called acopalypse. It’s change, period. Like Madonna or Kati Perry, the Earth is constantly reinventing itself, and we, as humans, adapt to the horror of it all.

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This really makes you think about how the world we live is changing right before our very eyes. And yet, even though we’re reminded throughout our lives that nothing is constant and everything changes over time, it leaves you to wonder at what is happening and how it will eventually affect us all - hopefully not too seriously.

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This is called soil liquifaction. It occurs at the start of an earthquake, such as this one in Japan. I've been through one very minor earthquake, and even that one was terrifying. Having the very ground beneath your feet destabilizing, even for a second, makes you realize how small and how helpless we, as a species, truly are.

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Whenever I see one of these, I’m always a bit skeptical. Notice how you can’t see the mouth moving because the lower half of the face is shrouded in darkness. Very imaginative, though. The other thing that strikes me as being somewhat odd is I doubt the interrogators would be so foolish as to not be wearing hazmat suits. Also, any foreign life form to this planet would likely be placed in some sort of sterile, secure containment to avoid the release of unknown viral/bacterial agents that could potetially threaten everyone's lives.