The future of hiring, will it become 100% automated?

9

October

2021

No ratings yet.

One of the most important things managers and recruiters do is hiring the right people for the company. This is one of the reasons why some companies do better than others. However, this is easier said than done. Some companies like Google receive 50000 applications per week, which results in a time-consuming process of picking the applicants that qualify for the job. Most of these companies use artificial intelligence to automate this process. In this article, I will discuss what is being automated, the pros and cons of the automation of recruitment processes, and what we may find in the future.


Like I mentioned in the introduction, the first step of recruitment is more and more often automized by the larger companies. In 2020 alone, recruitment automation had a growth of 547% because of the efficiency of the technology. Artificial intelligence is for example able to filter out all resumes or motivational letters that contain grammatical errors. Apart from that, the algorithm can look for skills that are relevant for the job. As a result, the recruitment process time and cost are reduced by up to 40% and the performance of that company is increased by 20%. This sounds quite appealing, but it is not a solution for every company as it involves high implementing costs. Therefore, for now, you only see this at bigger companies. Another downside is that a filter on grammatical errors will also filter out applicants that do qualify for the job but have some inconsistencies in their CV or motivational letter.


But it does not stop here. Some companies include an AI-powered chatbot in their application process. This robot can collect information such as contact details or a resume, but also ask job-related questions and schedule meetings. 66% of candidates claim that they feel comfortable talking to a chatbot, but another study found out that 82% feel frustrated by overly automated technologies by companies. The recruitment process has become very impersonal in these cases and lacks accuracy.


In the future, it may even be possible to have the whole recruitment process automated by using robots to handle job interviews. This robot could analyze words, speech patterns, and facial expressions of candidates to create an adequate assessment. However, considered the limitations of this technology at the moment, we are far away from a 100% automated hiring process as the technology does not have the emotional intelligence humans have. This is crucial to find the right fit between an applicant and the values of the company.


Personally, I think there will never be a fully automated recruitment process that will be as effective as a personal recruitment process. An interview goes both ways and if you do not get to speak to a real employee, I believe this will increase the occurrence of new employees leaving the company shortly after being hired. And this is something companies do not want to go for.


Have you already been part of an automized recruitment process? And what did you think of that process? Let me know in the comments.

https://valoria.ro/blog/pros-cons-recruitment-process-automation/

https://wperp.com/40125/the-pros-cons-of-recruitment-automation/

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/09/13/enterprise-automation-adoption/

Please rate this

Homo Deus: Create living robots using evolutionary algorithms and bio-design

13

September

2021

No ratings yet.

Can you imagine the possible image of a future robot? What does it look like? The T-1000 from Terminator 2? Transformers from Cybertron? Or an agile robot with unprecedented mobility like those developed by BostonDynamics? Indeed, most of the human technologies are made from steel, plastics, and chemicals, so are robots. But the story has changed since advances in computational search and 3D printing made manufacturing physical instances possible. In 2020, researchers from the University of Vermont and Tufts University engineered living robots, called Xenobots, using skin and heart cells from frogs. Yes, they are the moving tiny blobs in the picture. 

How were they created?

They are the products of computational design and biological manufacturing. 

The first step of computational design is the evolutionary algorithm. The evolutionary algorithm creates multiple generations and thousands of candidate solutions for new design forms, and simulates each design in a physics-based virtual environment, and automatically assigns performance scores. The lower-performing design will be deleted and overwritten by a randomly modified copy of the higher-performing design. Repeating this process can yield diversified and high-performance design solutions. Then, performance filters are used to judge and delete the design that does not meet the requirements. There are mainly two filters. The first is “Robustness Filter”, which is mainly used to judge and delete those designs that cannot resist the chaotic and complex physical environment through noise resistance. The second is “Build Filter”, which is mainly to judge and delete designs that are not suitable for the current biological construction method.

Designing and manufacturing reconfigurable organisms.

Biological manufacturing comprises stem cell culture and micromanipulation. First, scrape the skin cells and the early cells of cardiomyocytes from the Xenopus embryo at the blastocyst stage, separate them into single cells, and then incubate the different cells in a layered stacking manner. Then the researchers used tiny tweezers and electrodes to manually shape the gathered tissue, and manipulate it under a microscope to shape it into the approximate shape designed by the computer.

What can they do?

Don’t be fooled by their appearance, they are genuinely advanced machines. “These robots can move, explore, and collaborate on their own,” said the research team. They can move on their own without additional nutrition, exploring in a watery environment for days to weeks. Even if they are cut open, they can heal automatically. What is amazing is that these simple cellular robots exhibit surprisingly complex behavior characteristics, such as circling together or herding cellular debris into piles. They have a hollow structure, which means they can carry some objects (such as drugs) to designated areas, and these characteristics and functions undoubtedly have high research value and prospects in the fields of medicine, biology, chemistry, etc.

 Cell-based construction 

Will this be another Pandora’s Box?

To attract eyeballs, many media have rendered an atmosphere of fear in their reports, and people felt that this biological design will eventually destroy humans, just like in many science fiction movies. I can hardly agree. Please do not underestimate the greatness of the creator of nature. The simplest life in nature can go up to Mount Everest, down to the Mariana Trench, enter the edge of the earth’s atmosphere, and even parasitize in the human body to coexist with us. Their complexity is not in the same order of magnitude. 

We do not need to be afraid of this breakthrough in scientific research. We should realize that every major discovery in human history has greatly promoted the development of human civilization, and this time will not be an exception. Perhaps, there indeed are crazy scientists in reality, just like the villain characters in Spiderman movies, who want to use their research findings to do some crazy things. This brings me to the last point I want to make. We need to conduct reasonable supervision of scientific research under the premise of complying with the law and try to build a new ethical framework to deal with possible subversive ethical threats.

Source: 

Kriegman, S., Blackiston, D., Levin, M., & Bongard, J. (2020). A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(4), 1853–1859. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1910837117

https://www.wired.com/story/xenobot/

https://www.cnet.com/news/tiny-living-robots-made-from-frog-cells-could-soon-swim-inside-your-body/#ftag=CADf328eec

https://www.uvm.edu/news/story/team-builds-first-living-robots

https://cdorgs.github.io

Please rate this

Hey Podcast Lover! Have You Heard Of Lex Fridman?

7

October

2020

As BIM-student, it is very likely that you are interested in topics like coding, Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, human-robotic interaction, or Autonomous Vehicles. If by any chance you also enjoy listening to podcasts, you might be in luck:

I highly suggest you to check out the Lex Fridman Podcast.

LexFridman

Lex Fridman is an AI research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, often better known as MIT. He works on developing deep learning approaches to human sensing, scene understanding, and human-AI interaction. He is particularly interested in applying these technologies in the field of Autonomous Driving.

LexFridmanTeaching

If you know the Joe Rogan Experience, you likely are already familiar with Lex. Having worked for both Google and Tesla, Lex Fridman understands the business application of digital technologies. He uses his podcast to share this knowledge with his audience and discusses his fascination with a variety of interesting guests. This can be particularly interesting for us as Business Information Management students, as we also form the future bridge between business ventures and technological innovation. The podcast discusses similar topics like we get taught in class, sometimes going more in depth, with international research experts in those particular fields.

If you enjoy podcasts, these are some examples of Lex Fridman Podcast episodes that I highly recommend you to give a listen as a BIM-student:
RecommendedEpisodes

  • Episode #31 with George Hotz: Comma.ai, OpenPilot, Autonomous Vehicles.
    Famous security hacker. First to hack the iPhone. First to hack the PlayStation 3. Started Comma.ai to create his own vehicle automation machine learning application. Wants to offer a $1000 automotive driving application, which drivers can use on their phone.

 

  • Episode #49 with Elon Musk: Neuralink, AI, Autopilot, and the Pale Blue Dot.
    Elon Musk. Tech entrepreneur and founder of companies like Tesla, SpaceX, PayPal, Neuralink, OpenAI, and The Boring Company.

 

  • Episode #114 with Russ Tedrake: Underactuated Robotics.
    Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Mechanical Engineering at MIT.

 

  • Episode #120 with François Chollet: Measures of Intelligence.
    French Software Engineer and researcher in Artificial Intelligence, who works for Google. Author of Keras – keras.io – a leading deep learning framework for Python, used by organisations such as CERN, Microsoft Research, NASA, Netflix, Yelp, Uber, and Google.

These were just several examples of episodes that I enjoyed myself.

The benefit of a podcast is that you can listen it basically anywhere, and can stop listening at any time. If you are not familiar with podcasts yet or with the listening experience they offer, maybe the Lex Fridman Podcast could be your first step into this experience.

You can find the episodes of the Lex Fridman Podcast here: https://lexfridman.com/podcast/

Or check out Lex Fridman’s Youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/lexfridman

The above sources have been used as sources for this post. 5/5 (7)

Please rate this

For All The Lazy Cooks Out There!

17

October

2018

5/5 (1) We all know that the manufacturing industry is utilizing robots on a mass scale for their production. They do the heavy lifting and are more capable in complex precision work than us. It seems like robots could solve anything, but could they also cook for us?

Apparently, one start-up asked the same question and made their goal to develop the first domestic intelligent cooking robot that can just do that. The company is called Moley and they already have a working prototype under development. Moley is capable of not just cooking but also cleaning, learning recipes and mimicking the actions of a master chef that can be utilized to improve the cooking process and the food experience.

This dream of a domestic robot that cooks for you while you are away and leaves no mess in your kitchen, sounds really promising and this is the case. Moley is attracting already a lot of culinary chefs and investor that that want to contribute into this technology to further improve its potential.

The industry for professional service robots is growing and sales rose from 2014 to 2015 by 25%, 32,939 units to 41,060 units, to a $ 4.6 billion industry. Furthermore, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) projects the unit sales for professional service robots to 332,200 units with a value of $ 23.1 billion for 2019.

Moley comes with a hefty price tag of approximately $ 15,000, however this does not include just the robot but also an entire purpose-built kitchen environment and utensils that the robot uses for cooking. Depending on the learning capability that utilizes AI, it could provide you also with food recommendations or come up with its own created recipes that are accustomed to your taste preference. The possibilities are endless here and I am personally very excited when this product will have its first commercial launch.

References:

Main

http://time.com/3819525/robot-chef-moley-robotics/

 

Please rate this

Robots Taking Over Surgical Procedures

25

September

2017

5/5 (2)  

 

 

Would you believe me if I said that in 5 years’ time the number of doctors in the world might be halved? Can you imagine being surgically operated by a robot? This sounds like something from a futuristic movie, however this in fact already happening.

Robotic assisted surgery (RAS) allows surgeons to perform a variety of complex procedures with more precision, flexibility and control than what was previously possible (Mayo Clinic, 2017). In 2000 Robotic surgery with the da Vinci Surgical System was approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Since this time, the use of robotic assistance in surgery has expanded exponentially (Kirkpatrick and LaGrange, 2017). This system includes a camera arm and mechanical arm each with surgical instruments attached to them. The surgeon sits behind a computer with a console which gives the surgeon a magnified 3D high-definition view.

So why would people rather be surgically operated by a robot than a professionally trained surgeon?

Robotic assisted surgery offers many advantages as it makes surgical procedures minimally invasive. Typical advantages include fewer complications, less pain and blood loss, quicker recovery, smaller scars and quicker procedures (Mayo Clinic, 2017).  Furthermore, the improved ergonomics and dexterity compared to traditional procedures allow for a shorter learning curve for surgeons (Kirkpatrick and LaGrange, 2017).

New robotic drill performs surgery 50 times faster than before. The University of Utah has created an automated machine which reduces a complicated cranial surgery from two hours to two-and-a-half minutes. (Yurieff, 2017)

Often times patients travel from afar in order to be treated or operated by certain specialized surgeons. With robotic surgery it may be possible to eventually complete surgical procedures from across the world. In this case patients in critical condition can stay at home, yet still receive the care from the best specialist surgeons in the world.

Aside from offering patient benefits, RAS offers many economic benefits for both the patient as well as the hospital. Due to less invasive procedures, patients are able to have shorter hospital days and are also able to return to their daily activities and work much faster. (Kirkpatrick and LaGrange, 2017)

So far robotic surgery sounds like a logical improvement, however there are also risks involved. As the current technology involves a robot as assistance, next to human error there is also the added risk of mechanical failure. There are possibilities that mechanical problems are experienced during the procedure, possibly causing the robotic arms not to respond as expected. Furthermore, the energy source from the robot machinery could potentially cause internal burn injuries from the cautery device (Kirkpatrick and LaGrange, 2017). There are possibilities that mechanical problems are experienced during the procedure, possibly causing the robotic arms not to respond as expected.

Overall, many professionals argue that the benefits of robot assisted surgery far outweigh the risks. As RAS is increasingly used in a widespread amount of surgeries around the world, techniques will be refined and developed.

Although robotic surgery offers advances in surgical practice, can you imagine the ethical issues around the topic? Think of equipment safety and reliability, information provision and patient confidentiality, just to mention a few.

In the future, will we ever have to go to hospitals? Currently robots are being used in the assistance of surgeries, however, their usage has increased exponentially in the past decade. The entire value chain of surgical procedures may become entirely robotized. Although this offers many surgical advances, it is vital to consider the risks associated with such robotization of a critical procedure.

 

 

References

Kirkpatrick, T. and LaGrange, C. (2017). Robotic Surgery: Risks vs. Rewards | AHRQ Patient Safety Network. [online] Patient Safety Network. Available at: https://psnet.ahrq.gov/webmm/case/368/robotic-surgery-risks-vs-rewards- [Accessed 25 Sep. 2017].

Mayo Clinic. (2017). Robotic surgery. [online] Available at: http://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/robotic-surgery/basics/definition/prc-20013988 [Accessed 18 Sep. 2017].

Yurieff, K. (2017). New robotic drill performs skull surgery 50 times faster. [online] CNNMoney. Available at: http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/01/technology/robotic-drill-surgery/index.html [Accessed 25 Sep. 2017].

 

Please rate this

Who wants to be a Supersoldier? On human enhancement.

2

October

2016

No ratings yet. It’s a myth that human augmentation is anything new. Since the first humans picked up sticks and rocks and started using tools, we’ve been augmenting ourselves. The tools have simply gotten smaller and less cumbersome to use. That has always been the trend, and that will continue to be the trend. From rudimentary objects like rocks and sticks, through forged steel and circuit boards, and onward to gene therapies – the common thread is transhumanism; to constantly and fundamentally transform the human condition.

What is like to be a cyborg?

There’s a big gulf between the fantasy vision of cyborgs, and the current reality of being dependent on an implant or a prosthetic in day-to-day life. If we’re to separate the two, we ought to pay close attention to those who are living in that world already. Quietly, almost without anyone really noticing, we have entered the age of the cyborg, or cybernetic organism: a living thing both natural and artificial. Artificial retinas and cochlear implants (which connect directly to the brain through the auditory nerve system) restore sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf. Deep-brain implants, known as “brain pacemakers”, alleviate the symptoms of 30,000 Parkinson’s sufferers worldwide.

Source: Euro-Technoprogressives (2009)

This idea of transformation is often cast as risky. In science fiction, stories abound that technological enhancement will lead to a society of haves and have-nots. So does transhumanism offer a stark choice of evolve or perish? Some would express fear that emerging augmentations would create an arms race, that threatens to leave behind those who choose not to be augmented, but this assumes everyone will seek to compete with everyone else.

Creation of a supersoldier?

One of the weakest links in armed conflicts-as well as one of the most valuable assets-continues to be the warfighters themselves. Hunger, fatigue, and the need for sleep can quickly drain troop morale and cause a mission to fail. Fear and confusion in the “fog of war” can lead to costly mistakes, such as friendly-fire casualties. Emotions and adrenaline can drive otherwise-decent individuals to perform vicious acts, from verbal abuse of local civilians to torture and illegal executions, making an international incident from a routine patrol. And post-traumatic stress can take a devastating toll on families and add pressure on already-burdened health services. We want our warfighters to be made stronger, more aware, more durable, more maneuverable in different environments, and so on. The technologies that enable these abilities fall in the realm of human enhancement, and they include neuroscience, biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence, and more.

While some of innovations are external devices, such as exoskeletons that give the wearer super-strength, our technology devices are continually shrinking in size. The military technology getting the most public attention now is robotics, but we can think of it as sharing the same goal as human enhancement. Robotics aims to create a super-soldier from an engineering approach: they are our proxy mech-warriors. However, there are some important limitations to those machines. For one thing, they don’t have a sense of ethics-of what is right and wrong-which can be essential on the battlefield. Where it is child’s play to identify a ball or coffee mug or a gun, it’s notoriously tough for a computer to do that. This doesn’t give us much confidence that a robot can reliably distinguish friend from foe, at least in the foreseeable future.

 

Source: Tylley and Woollaston (2015)

In contrast, cognitive and physical enhancements aim to create a super-soldier from a biomedical direction, such as with modafinil and other drugs. For battle, we want our soft organic bodies to perform more like machines. Somewhere in between robotics and biomedical research, we might arrive at the perfect future warfighter: one that is part machine and part human, striking a formidable balance between technology and our frailties.

Ethical concerns

Our ability to “upgrade” the bodies of soldiers through drugs, implants, and exoskeletons may be upending the ethical norms of war as we’ve understood them.

There are serious moral and legal risks to consider on this path. The Royal Society released its report ” Neuroscience, Conflict and Security.” This timely report worried about risks posed by cognitive enhancements to military personnel, as well as whether new nonlethal tactics, such as directed energy weapons, could violate either the Biological or Chemical Weapons Conventions. In changing human biology, we also may be changing the assumptions behind existing laws of war and even human ethics. If so, we would need to reexamine the foundations of our social and political institutions, if prevailing norms can’t stretch to cover new technologies.

Sources:

Swain F. (2014), Cyborgs: The truth about human augmentation. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140924-the-greatest-myths-about-cyborgs

House A. (2014), The future is android. http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/the-future-is-android

European Technoprogressives (2009), Human enhancement technologies. http://euro-technoprogressives.50webs.org/ETP-HET.html

Lin P. (2012), More than human? The Ethics of Biologically Enhancing Soldiers, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/more-than-human-the-ethics-of-biologically-enhancing-soldiers/253217

Tyley J. and Woollaston V. (2015), Rise of the super soldier. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3150927/Rise-SUPER-SOLDIER-Liquid-armour-indestructible-exoskeletons-weapons-never-miss-future-warfare.html

Please rate this