IAE Blog

“There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” (Henry Louis “H.L.” Mencken; American journalist, essayist, editor; 1880-1956.)

I am a regular reader of New Scientist, a weekly British magazine that covers a wide range of science-oriented topics. I think it is a very good publication. The following short article is quoted  from the In Brief section of a recent issue (New Scientist, 6/6/2018). It provides a frightening glimpse into the growing artificial intelligence capabilities and possible uses of computers.

From time to time I encounter an article that provides valuable insight into how computer-based automation is affecting employment throughout the world. Here is a recent example of an article about the Swedish banking industry. Quoting from (The Download, 7/30/2018):

Casper von Koskull, the CEO of Sweden based Nordea Bank, predicts that the banking industry will slice its workforce in half over the next 10 years. Last year, Koskull announced his company would cut 6,000 jobs in favor of automation.

The world faces changes in employment patterns being brought about by continuing progress in technology. The table given below presents (rank ordered) desirable university graduate job skills in Europe (Pathak, 2/11/2016). Since there is a steady increase in worldwide competition to hire highly qualified college graduates, such lists tend to be useful to employers throughout the world. They also are of interest to students and educational systems throughout the world.

As I looked at these two lists, I noticed that there is considerable change from what employers were looking for in 2015, and their more recent thoughts on what they are looking for in the near future. Employers hiring university graduates are looking for smart, well-educated employees who have a track record of having the ability to learn new things and make creative use of their brains to solve complex problems.

All of my readers know about police investigators collecting fingerprints from crime scenes, and the very large collections of fingerprints and other crime-related data on file. In the United States, the National Crime Information Center is a repository that stores and shares information from law enforcement agencies throughout the country (NCIC, 2018). Quoting from the NCIC website:

The first IAE-pedia entry in the What the Future Is Bringing Us series was published on December 1, 2008. It included some articles that were published on the Web in 2007. My goal was to look at forecasts for likely changes in technology that were “coming down the pike” and consider some of their possible educational implications.

Less than three weeks ago, I began writing What the Future is Bringing Us: 2018. Access the current 2018 entries and those from the past 10 years in References and Resources at Moursund (January, 2018). This means that current readers can look back over the past ten years, and think about some of these old forecasts. What follows are three of the entries from What the Future Is Bringing Us: 2007. That IAE-pedia page contains information about some forecasts made in 2007 and some made in early 2008.