Most New Zealanders are still confident their jobs will be safe from advances in technology over the next decade, according to the latest findings of an ongoing research project into attitudes around the future of work.
Dr David Brougham from the Massey Business School and Professor Jarrod Haar from AUT surveyed 500 New Zealand employees earlier this year and found that 80 per cent of participants did not think their job could be automated.
The results did not deviate significantly from data collected in 2015 and 2016, despite extensive media coverage of the issue over that time.
Dr Brougham will discuss his research findings at Massey University’s Big Issues in Business seminar series, ‘Robots vs Humans – the future of work’, which will take place in Auckland, Wellington and Palmerston North in June.
He says there is an “interesting cognitive bias” going on when you look at the gap between the number of New Zealanders who are aware of the potential threat of automation and the number who think it will affect them personally.
“We found that half of the people we surveyed had seen media coverage of the issue and only seven per cent said they think that technology will lead to an overall decrease in the number of jobs. Yet only 20 per cent felt that their own job would be affected.”
View technology as workplace competition
Dr Brougham says New Zealanders are aware that smart technology, artificial intelligence, automation, robotics and algorithms will change many of today’s jobs – 50 per cent had seen the issue covered in the media – but the majority remained unconcerned.
“Seventy-one per cent of our survey participants said they don’t discuss these issues with their work colleagues and 79 per cent have not actively researched how technology might affect their job in the future.
“Cognitive bias can play a role here, but it is also very hard to predict the future and make plans around something that ‘may not’ happen. And while the full automation of your job may be unlikely, several parts of the job might be, so it’s hard for employees to know how that will impact on their employment situation.”
Dr Brougham says that while the impact of technology on the future of work cannot really be known, there is no doubt that many of today’s jobs will either disappear or develop into something quite different.
“The key message is that looking at the developing technology in your line of work as a potential competitor is going to become a factor when planning your career and considering future training opportunities,” he says.
Big Issues in Business – event details
Dr Brougham will be joined at the Big Issues in Business ‘Robots vs Humans – the future of work’ events by Flow Software chief executive Chipp Dawson and Glenn Andert, head of enterprise innovation at Creative HQ.
These industry and academic experts will discuss the likely in-demand skills in an automated workforce, what individuals can do to future-proof their careers and how businesses can transform to remain relevant.
For full event details – including dates, times and venues – or to register to attend visit: http://bit.ly/RobotvsHumans
| A Maasey University release || June 6, 2017 |||
The Government accounts for the ten months to 30 April 2017 show a surplus of $2.5 billion, although about $1 billion of that is due to timing differences that are expected to reverse out in May, Finance Minister Steven Joyce says.
“While the accounts for the year-to-date are $1.6 billion stronger than was forecast at the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update, the bulk of this change is due to a timing difference of company taxes,” Mr Joyce says. “Treasury and Inland Revenue expect most of that to reverse in May, and at this stage Treasury expects the 2016/17 accounts to be broadly as forecast.”
Core Crown revenue was $1.1 billion higher than expected for the ten month period, while Core Crown expenditure was $400 million less than what was expected.
Net debt is currently at 24 per cent of GDP.
“It is important not to take too much from a single month’s figures particularly because of the timing differences noted by the Treasury,” Mr Joyce says. “However the accounts overall do underline the Government’s improving fiscal position as a result of our strong economic plan.
“It is only by having this strong economic plan that we get to make the sort of choices we were able to make in the recent budget, and only a strong economic plan will give us the capacity to make more positive decisions into the future.”
| A release from the Beehive || June 6, 2017 |||
Air New Zealand was named Australasia’s Leading Airline for the ninth year in a row at the prestigious World Travel Awards announced in Shanghai, China, early yesterday morning.
The airline has also been named the inaugural winner of Leading Airline Brand 2017 for Australasia.
Air New Zealand Chief Executive Officer Christopher Luxon says it’s fantastic to be recognised by the industry and public yet again as leading the way in Australasia.
“This latest award is further recognition of the outstanding efforts of Air New Zealanders to create a world class company that our nation can be proud of. We have invested significantly over recent years to improve the customer experience on the ground, inflight and through digital channels and it is terrific to see this paying off with numerous awards and all-time high satisfaction scores,” Mr Luxon says.
| An Air New Zealand release || june 6, 2017 |||
Live and let live communitarism has failed - - so will other naïve and ineffectual containment policies
The last round of London attacks draws attention again to what politicians and top-level law enforcement officials understand to be the only solution to religiously-inspired assassinations. This is that the relatives of perpetrators are returned to their countries of origin.
Britain continues to be the Western nation most confused by this terrorism and this is characterised by a number of symbolic responses such as putting symbolically out into the streets armed police and soldiers when the authorities know that the lethal problem is part of a society woven into the British way of life and submerged there, writes our European correspondent.
The reason that the mass summary deportation of the relatives and families is known to be the only solution is that the attackers themselves welcome their pending status as martyrs. It is also known that their belief in tribalism and therefore family means that they fear their blood relatives especially getting caught up with and paying the price of their own lethal zealotry.
Britain, much more than any other EU zone country has applied what is known as communitarism to its refugee influx. This means that these communities are left substantially to practise their own way of life wherever they happen to settle in the UK.
This contrasts with the breeding grounds for the zealotry in Europe which are much more fractionated and are therefore much more removed from replicating the traditional family-tribal way of life.
There is however a security benefit of communitarism.
It means or should mean that in law enforcement terms that for refugee settlements of any duration relatives are much more likely to become aware of developing zealotry.
Britain has been confused also by a number of stereotypes about this now manifestly accelerating zealotry.
These have seen perpetrators and likely perpetrators given identi-kit personas of which poverty, alienation, and absence of opportunity have been to the fore.
These stereotypes in turn have been reinforced by a mesh of other such semi-comforting mantras such as that all the killers are young, male, and have some kind of justified underpinning grievance for massacring civilians.
In fact the evidence proves that these killers can just as easily by wealthy, privileged by society, well past youth, and female.
At the base of the entire pattern of attacks is the British horror of putting into the public forum anything at all to do with religion and the way in which it is calculated to inspire what is known in Britain as terrorism, but which religious scholars view as a history of ad hoc attacks by the inspired on anyone within killable reach.
So there is little new in all this , a notion that many in Britain in places of authority, and who should know better, rigorously cling to.
Spontaneous murderous attacks with whatever weapon is closest at hand is a familiar theme in the context of this historic religious zealotry.
The issue now is the length of time, and the length of the casualty list, that must pass before the only known and workable response is implemented in the form of sending back to their original countries the relatives of the known perpetrators.
This reprisal is quite simply the only counter-fanaticism strategy that is within the grasp of the British authorities.
Its border statistics have been proved as being wanting. Even if these are in fact performing to specification, the surveillance and apprehension response they are supposed to engender is flawed.
In the nations from which the refugees have poured over three generations law and order is maintained by the secret police.
What was once a touching policy toward religious zealotry has itself become a lethal problem in itself.
The British have always had a kind of reverse pride in failing to understand the East in practical terms.
The critical time line now is the one centred on how long this failure to grasp reality can continue.
| From This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Tuesday 6 June 2017 |||
Emirates has celebrated World Environment Day by showcasing an environmentally friendly aircraft cleaning technique that has enabled the airline to save millions of litres of water every year.
Emirates uses the ‘aircraft drywash’ technique to clean its aircraft. As indicated by the name, little or no water is involved in cleaning the aircraft, which is in contrast to conventional methods of aircraft cleaning which typically use thousands of litres of water per wash.
During the course of every flight, an aircraft accumulates dust and grime on its external surface. In addition to making the aircraft look dirty and less appealing, the dirt that accumulates on the aircraft surface also increases the fuel it consumes by making the aircraft heavier and less aerodynamic.
Traditionally aircraft are cleaned by using highly pressurised water between four to five times every year. However, on an average this technique uses more than 11,300 litres of water to clean one Airbus A380 aircraft and more than 9,500 litres of water to clean a Boeing 777 aircraft every time.
Since early 2016 Emirates has been using an aircraft drywash technique to clean its fleet of over 250 aircraft, including the A380s that serve New Zealand five times daily.
In this technique, a liquid cleaning product is first applied manually to the entire external surface of the aircraft. Clean microfibre fabric is then used to remove the cleaning product which has dried to a film, removing the dirt along with it and leaving the aircraft clean and polished. The aircraft is left with a fine protective film allowing the painted surface to retain a longer gloss and shine. It takes a crew of 15 staff about 12 hours to clean an A380 and about nine hours to clean a Boeing 777 aircraft.
Watch a video of an Emirates Airbus A380 undergoing a drywash at the Emirates Engineering hangar in Dubai.
There are multiple advantages to using the drywash technique. The first is that there is little use of water to clean the aircraft. When consolidated over its fleet of 260 aircraft, Emirates saves over 11 million litres of water every year. Additionally the waterless aircraft wash technique ensures that the aircraft remains cleaner for a longer period of time thereby reducing the number of times the aircraft has to be washed to about three times a year, and also reducing the aircraft’s fuel consumption because of less accumulation of dirt.
Operationally, it is possible for other maintenance work to be carried out on the aircraft in parallel during a dry wash which is not possible when the aircraft is being washed with water due to the sensitivity of instruments to water.
Emirates is committed to being an environmentally responsible airline and operates one of the world’s youngest and most fuel efficient fleet of aircraft. In addition to the adopting drywashing for its aircraft, the airline has adopted a number of other energy efficiency initiatives across its operations.
Engineering and MaintenanceEmirates uses an innovative foam wash technique for cleaning aircraft engines that allows the airline to save about 200 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year across its fleet. Other initiatives include the installation of a one megawatt array of solar photo voltaic panels at the state of the art Emirates Engine Maintenance Centre in Dubai. The panels generate over 1,800 megawatt-hours of electricity every year, helping save around 800 tonnes in carbon dioxide emissions. Emirates Engineering has also installed energy saving LED lights triggered by motion sensors substantially reducing electricity consumption.
Inflight ProductsEmirates has introduced sustainable blankets produced from 100% recycled plastic bottles. Using patented ecoTHREAD™ technology, each blanket is made from 28 recycled plastic bottles. It is estimated that by the end of 2019, Emirates ecoTHREAD™ blankets would have rescued 88 million plastic bottles from landfills.
A Greener TomorrowThrough its ‘A Greener Tomorrow’ programme, Emirates has provided funding to non-profit organisations across the world who work to conserve and safeguard their local environments. Funds for the initiative are raised entirely through the Emirates Group’s internal recycling programmes. For more information, read the Emirates Group Environmental Report 2016-17 here.
| A press release from Emirates || June 6, 2017 |||
Around 540 million years ago there was a rapid burst of evolution known as the Cambrian Explosion. One hypothesis for this is that the evolution of vision started an arms race. Complex vision improved the ability of animals to navigate and identify objects; it is now regarded as the most important sense. In industry, machine vision is being incorporated to develop industrial processes further, identify areas of improvement and enable intelligent locomotion within robotics.
Here, Jonathan Wilkins, marketing director at obsolete industrial parts supplier EU Automation, discusses the role of machine vision in the factory of the future.
Machine vision is an image processing technology that enables automated object scanning within a set field of view. Plant operators can mount cameras on production lines or cells for real-time process control, product inspection and sorting and robot guidance.
The technology enables robots to interpret their visual surroundings, which can allow them to move around independently. Visual information can be used to recognize the environment and make decisions which are not directly programmed.
Making conclusionsA camera does not see in the same way as the human eye, but machine vision systems use pattern detection software to examine data and draw conclusions based on prior knowledge.
This technique is particularly useful when inspecting the quality of raw materials and final products for component flaws or defects. For example, if a problem is found, a part can be redirected or the process can be corrected to resolve the issue.
As well as flaw detection, machine vision can be used to ensure operations are traceable using identification tags. A camera can read the tags, allowing the information to be used to direct the product or to register which parts are at what stage of the supply chain.
Smart cameras and sensors can digitalize and transfer information, decoding what they capture and removing the need for human interpretation. The machine can then decide whether the information needs communicating to a central control system. These are low cost, easy to use systems that are often a good option for those looking to streamline automated manufacturing.
Smarter factoriesMachine vision is central to the idea of the smart factory, which is based upon a self-organized system comprising of a communicating network and an intelligent exchange of information. Acting as the eyes of the factory, image processing systems based on industrial cameras can compute information that was previously done by manual testing. This reduces human error and enables robots to react flexibly to information for production control.
Because image processing equipment captures, gathers and exchanges data, it is a key technology for interconnected production processes. This data can be transmitted to the value chain, but also used to trigger intelligent actions.
The technology can be used to examine the state of production machines for wear and tear. This information is useful for maintenance and can alert a plant manager of the need to order a replacement industrial component before it breaks.
With machine vision systems decreasing in size and increasing speed, accuracy and resolution, the popularity of these systems could grow drastically over the next few years, similar to the Cambrian Explosion.
| An EUAutomation release || June 6, 2017 |||
We’ve all been there, driving down a one-lane street, backed up behind a cyclist that blocks our ambition of hitting the speed limit. Seriously, bikes limp along at 10 mph and hit what—30 mph—max? Well, no. How does 90 mph sound?
That’s right. Thanks to the engineering minds of Aerovelo and its bike, Eta, cyclists could theoretically complain about passing that big bead on your high performance vehicle.
Aerovelo Cofounders Cameron Robertson and Todd Reichert lead their team of University of Toronto (U of T) engineering students and alumni to design, simulate, optimize, build and pilot this escape pod-encased bike into the history books.
After breaking its own human-powered land speed record a few times over, this little tear drop settled on an impressive 144.17 kph (89.59 mph).
“It was a culmination of years of effort,” said Robertson. “There was a lot of excitement and relief that we have taken a good path and all the choices we made showed it could be done. With Eta’s design, we showed the range of improvement. In 2000 to 2015, there wasn’t much change to the [human-powered land] speed record. It incremented 10 mph in 15 years, from 73 to 83 mph. The rate of technological change was small; it was incremental improvements. In the span of two years with Eta, however, we incremented [the record] by 6.5 mph.”
Continue to the full article published by engineersrule.com May 24, 2017 |||
British Prime Minister Theresa May called for international regulation of the Internet to combat terrorism at a news conference Sunday as reported by the Daily Caller yesterday. “We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed,” May said.
“Yet that is precisely what the Internet and the big companies that provide Internet-based services provide,” May continued. “We need to work with allied democratic governments to reach international agreements that regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremist and terrorism planning.”
| A The DailyCaller release || June 6, 2017 ||| Watch video here
Ports of Auckland has successfully moved two 1,100 tonne cranes to ready Fergusson Container Terminal for bigger ships and automation.
Fergusson Terminal has five cranes. The two older, smaller cranes were lifted off their rails so the three newer, larger cranes could be positioned at the north of the terminal, where they will be able to work bigger ships. This massive job was done in between customers at the busy terminal.
Ports of Auckland's CEO Tony Gibson paid tribute to the company's highly skilled engineering team who worked closely with crane manufacturing company ZPMC to carry out the project. "We run a very busy terminal, so getting this job done quickly and with minimum disruption to shipping was essential. It's a bit like doing knee surgery at half-time and then getting your player back on the field for the second half," he said.
The relocation means that the cranes are now positioned well to work on the bigger ships calling Auckland's port. This means a more efficient container terminal and a port that can cater to Auckland's growing freight demand.
"More people in Auckland means more imports and more shipping. This work is one part of our investment in the automation of our container terminal which will meet that growing demand. This phase of automation gives us enough capacity to handle the freight for an extra million people in Auckland – 30 to 40 years of capacity," says Mr Gibson.
Partial automation of the Fergusson container terminal will be a game-changer for Auckland's port, ensuring extra terminal capacity without reclamation. The technology will allow the port to handle up to 1.7 million TEU each year (1 TEU = 1 20ft container equivalent); enough to support an Auckland population of around 2.7 million. Future technology will give the port additional capacity to serve a regional population of 5 million – more than three times the current population.
| A POA release || May 31, 2017 |||
Trade Minister Todd McClay says the OECD Trade and Economic Ministers Council Meeting in Paris this week will be an important opportunity for New Zealand to show continued leadership on trade liberalisation.
Mr McClay leaves today for the two-day event where he will meet with ministers from over 40 countries.
“The theme of this year’s meeting is ‘Making Globalisation Work’ and it fits well with the priorities outlined in Trade Agenda 2030, the Government’s new trade strategy,” Mr McClay says.
“Those priorities include wanting all New Zealanders to share in the economic benefits of trade. Protectionism stops this from happening, making it more difficult for Kiwis to compete internationally.
“It’s simple - more trade means more jobs for New Zealanders and a more prosperous standard of living. That’s why the Government continues to fight hard for better access to overseas markets for our goods and services.”
While in Paris, Mr McClay will meet bilaterally with a number of other trade ministers including European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström. Mr McClay expects to also hold talks with newly appointed US Trade Representative Ambassador Lighthizer, prior to a visit to Washington later this month.
“I will be pushing hard for the start of trade negotiations with the EU when I meet with Commissioner Malmström. We've made good progress, but it's important we launch negotiations with Europe this year to level the playing field for Kiwi exporters,” Mr McClay says.
| A release from the Beehive || June 06, 2017 |||