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“Silicon Valley backlash won’t necessarily cause an exodus to Middle America” plus 6 more VentureBeat

“Silicon Valley backlash won’t necessarily cause an exodus to Middle America” plus 6 more VentureBeat


Silicon Valley backlash won’t necessarily cause an exodus to Middle America

Posted: 18 Feb 2018 12:10 PM PST


Peter Thiel is fleeing liberal Silicon Valley for … Los Angeles.

That’s according to a story from the Wall Street Journal this week, which reports that Thiel is planning to relocate to a home he bought in the City of Angels six years ago. Fifty staffers from Thiel Capital and the Thiel Foundation are also reportedly planning to move to Los Angeles.

Thiel was reportedly driven out, in part, by the liberal echo chamber he feels has developed in Silicon Valley. In San Francisco, nearly 90 percent of voters cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

A conservative and libertarian thinker who backed Donald Trump in the 2016 election, Thiel thinks Silicon Valley's hostility to non-liberal values isn't just bad for conservatives. He believes the political bias will harm Silicon Valley's ability to innovate, according to a local San Francisco TV station, which spoke with a source close to Thiel.

"SF is still important, but the most exciting future tech developments may come outside of it," the source told San Francisco's KPIX 5.

Thiel isn't alone in thinking that the Bay Area may not maintain its grip on groundbreaking tech startups for much longer. Liberal and conservative tech workers alike are expressing dissatisfaction with Silicon Valley, thanks to its homogeneous thinking and its ever-increasing cost of living.


VentureBeat’s Heartland Tech channel invites you to join us and other senior business leaders at BLUEPRINT in Reno on March 5-7. Learn how to expand jobs to Middle America, lower costs, and boost profits. Click here to request an invite and be a part of the conversation. 


Popular podcaster Tim Ferriss moved from San Francisco to Austin in order to escape what he called “a mono-conversation of tech that is near impossible to avoid.” Y Combinator president Sam Altman and Sequoia’s Michael Moritz also both drew criticism for blog posts saying that China’s tech community is better than Silicon Valley’s in welcoming controversial ideas and outworking the competition (though they are both staying in Silicon Valley).

Here at VentureBeat’s Heartland Tech channel, I write about emerging tech hubs in the U.S. While the news that some well-known investors and entrepreneurs are now looking outside of Silicon Valley for inspiration might excite entrepreneurs and in places like Provo and Pittsburgh, a handful of high-profile techies leaving the Bay Area is unlikely to move the needle all that much. The reason is simple: People are most likely to move to places where they already have connections.

Ferriss mentioned that he was already familiar with Austin's tech scene, having interviewed for a job at Trilogy Software after college. He also mentioned in a Reddit AMA that he's visited Austin every year since 2007. Thiel is likely planning to move to Los Angeles because he already has a house there, and because he is reportedly planning on launching a media startup, which would be right at home in Los Angeles.

Less well-known tech executives I've talked to in the past year that have moved or are planning to move out of the Bay Area often return to their roots. Kansas native Brian McClendon, creator of Google Maps, moved back to his home state to get involved in local politics. Married Google executives Steve and Mary Grove are moving from the Bay Area to Steve’s home state of Minnesota, while Mary plans to leave Google to work for Steve Case's Midwest-focused startup fund.

What leaders in emerging tech hubs should take away from the increasing criticism of Silicon Valley is this: If a city is waiting to recruit Bay Area tech workers and executives as soon as they express dissatisfaction with Silicon Valley, it's already too late. The areas that are most likely to attract Bay Area expats are cities like Austin, a place tech workers have likely been visiting for years, thanks to the annual SXSW festival, and other coastal hubs, like Los Angeles, New York, and Boston, or cities the tech workers originally hail from.

Instead of trying to lure these Bay Area transplants, focus on supporting the tech companies and workers that are already in your community — which many Heartland tech leaders are already doing. If your city is home to fast-growing tech startups, Bay Area tech workers and investors are more likely to come across it in their line of work. That way, when they are thinking about moving, your city is more likely to come up on their radar. Better yet, support those startups so that the next generation of tech workers doesn't feel like they have to move to the Bay Area to have exciting career opportunities.

How to weaponize our tech addiction: A ‘stickiness gap’ law

Posted: 18 Feb 2018 10:25 AM PST


No one's better than America at addicting people to empty pixels. We have the platforms, like Facebook, Netflix, iOS, free-to-play video games, and Reddit. We have the people, an elite army of incentivized coders, statisticians, psychologists, and marketers. And we have the machine learning algorithms to augment both. The result is a powerful weapon, proven to wreck human happiness and productivity. That's a good thing!

By introducing a modest piece of legislation, which I now propose, we can tilt that weapon away from our citizens and toward our unlucky economic foes. In the process, we'll guarantee American tech supremacy, forever.

Introducing the ‘stickiness gap’

The stickiness gap law mandates that every tech company of a certain size must make their products at least 20% more addictive to global audiences than they are at home.

Take Facebook, for example. We reap no benefit if American Facebook visitors and Indian Facebook visitors each lose 2 hours per day to the site. But if Americans lose 1 hour and 36 minutes per day and Indians keep losing 2 hours per day, that's a 24 minute edge! Multiply that 20 percent edge by every tech product, and we win productivity forever without having to sacrifice our work-life balance.

There's no need to stop at 20 percent, either. With tax incentives, the government can reward companies that outperform that baseline. I have full confidence that our talented researchers, augmented by artificial intelligence and roused by patriotism, could create stickiness gaps in excess of 99%. With the right incentives, some may even find it more profitable to block Americans altogether! (A stickiness gap of infinity triggers a Medal of Honor.)

Imagine what comes next. Our citizens would take classes and read books; theirs would salivate over empty notifications. Our comment sections would be thoughtful text; theirs memes and GIFs. Our LinkedIn would drop the pointless news feed; theirs would celebrate Half-Work-Birthdays. Our productivity would shoot up; theirs would stagnate or decline.

Contrast the stickiness gap with traditional cyber warfare, which is barbaric, blunt, and often counterproductive. If one of our hackers gets caught, their target will retaliate and there goes our energy infrastructure. But with the stickiness gap, we don't need subterfuge. Other nations will celebrate the arrival of "improved" features, like news feeds on refrigerators. "Those Americans are so charitable, giving us their best technology and keeping so little for themselves," they'll say. In response, we'll eat their economy.

Contrast the stickiness gap with venture capitalist Mike Moritz's recent suggestion that Americans need to double our work hours to compete with foreign challengers. Okay, that was fast!

You're wondering whether our tech companies can afford to decrease American stickiness. Wouldn't that lead to revenue decline? Maybe in the short-term, but increases in worker happiness and productivity will more than compensate. Eventually, our companies will gain market share against their zombified foreign competition. And with their recent tax cuts, they can afford it.

Tech is only the pilot program, and the stickiness gap scales like a balloon. If we apply it to our industrial food complex, we'll win in health and fitness too, which by the way, will also improve our economic advantage. It almost seems unfair to think of the devastation our purveyors of cancer-causing fried carbs will inflict on our hapless enemies and frenemies.

There's only one potential hiccup with this scheme. At the recent State of the Union, a camera spied a congresswoman hunched over her phone. Was she drafting a response? Attending to an urgent email? Checking her constituent's reactions? No, she was fixated on Candy Crush, a game created by a bunch of Brits. Maybe we've been beaten to the punch.

Adam Ghahramani is cofounder of bison.gg, an esports blockchain startup, and adviser to thevinx.network, tokenizing wine futures. He is a frequent contributor to VentureBeat. Find him at adamagb.com

As smart contracts get smarter, the rules of development will change

Posted: 18 Feb 2018 08:35 AM PST


If 2017 was the year of Bitcoin, 2018 will be the year of the smart contract.

Smart contracts — the self-executing coded contracts running on blockchain networks — enable decentralized apps (dApps) and the brand new economic models we are see emerging on blockchains. While it's difficult to gauge exactly how many smart contracts are already out there, State of the dApps lists more than 1,000 built on Ethereum, the most popular blockchain for dApp development.

If, as many believe, blockchain will eventually enable a decentralized version of the internet, a huge number of decentralized applications will need to be built — along with their associated smart contracts. The CryptoKitties smart contract may be working the Ethereum network hardest right now, but with a diverse range of industry use cases, we’ll see smart contracts that address all kinds of commercial situations. Some may be simple and straightforward, but, as blockchain adoption accelerates amongst enterprises, others will be more elaborate to address complex business needs.

The state of smart contracts

Smart contracts exist to automatically perform validation steps and encode the conditions of a physical contract. They need to be safe, secure, transparent, and capable of automating administrative activity and eliminating human error.

There's a lot of excitement about the potential for smart contracts to transform the way we work today. However, we're not there yet. To understand where we are, it's worth considering the smart contract at the heart of one of the biggest ICOs of 2017. Bancor, which famously raised $153 million in just three hours, has also infamously been referred to as a market maker written in “40 lines of code.” To be clear, Bancor's full application stack runs closer to runs closer to 60,000 lines of code — but its smart contract clocks in at 40.

What can you accomplish in 40 lines of code? Not much — which is fine, because Bancor's smart contract was designed to automate a relatively simple business use case: governing the financial terms of trading one token with another in a P2P environment.

Solving more complex use cases going forward will mean constructing more complex smart contracts.

Blockchain projects like Chronicled and Qtum already support access to trusted off-chain data sources (“oracles”) and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to allow off-chain events to trigger clauses in smart contracts. And future smart contracts may need to add code that enables greater privacy for the contents of the contract considering the radical transparency blockchain offers. Blockchain’s promise of immutability may also be up for grabs: Businesses wanting to be able to reverse transactions will need to this complex capability into their smart contracts.

Now, instead of 40 lines of code, we could be talking about tens of thousands. And each additional line of code carries with it an additional portion of risk: that between business case and code, some meaning has been lost; that the smart contract will not execute as the developer intends or as the business stakeholder demands; and that money will be irretrievably lost. The more complex the use case, the greater the volume of code. The greater the volume of code, the greater the risk of failure.

Greater volumes of code also mean greater processing power requirements — and a corresponding reduction in speed of execution. This is already an area of concern for the enterprise market, which expects high-volume and high-speed processing power as a basic requirement, not a bonus feature. Unlike the cloud, blockchain isn't able to simply expand and contract to meet capacity demands. The more load the blockchain has to handle, the slower it performs. (Although, there are a number of new protocols under development that hope to crush that limitation.)

Smarter smart contracts

One way of heading off mistakes is for smart contract developers to work more closely with legal experts. While developers might prefer the “if this, then that” logic of computer code, this sort of collaboration is the only way to build smart contracts that deal with nuanced and subjective areas of the commercial world.

Smart contracts will also need to use big data flows from IoT devices. This convergence has already begun, most notably with IBM and Maersk joining up to create a blockchain-enabled global shipping platform. Current smart contracts cannot handle the large volumes of data from multiple different "oracles" that is needed to automatically execute complex agreements. Instead, IBM and Maersk, and anyone else wanting to exploit the convergence of IoT and blockchain, will need to build these new, more complex smart contracts from scratch.

Finally, in addition to legal expertise and big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning will be crucial ingredients in future smart contracts. The sooner AI is introduced, the sooner computers will be able to learn what the most important data is and where the flaws in a smart contract exist. Eventually, AI could go beyond eliminating the manual human verification processes and take over the negotiation and development stages of smart contracts too.

While a number of companies are already exploring the convergence of blockchain and AI, AI-as-a-Service solutions like those from IOTA, Ocean Protocol, and SingularityNet may have the edge. By eliminating the need to invest in home-grown AI technology, which is both expensive and complex, these providers offer "AI training" services to any blockchain company.

The developer question

Smart contract development is going to hit some breakers this year because of the small developer pool available with the right skills.

You won’t find many programmers proficient in Solidity, Ethereum’s contract-oriented programming language. Even the most well-known and well-funded blockchain projects are struggling to recruit. Simplicity is gradually being introduced as a language for Bitcoin-based smart contracts, but it will inevitably take time to bed in. Of course, there are alternatives. NEO smart contracts support languages like C# and Java, with Python support planned for the future.

With this range of languages, standardization of smart contract protocols will be important if they are to proliferate and become smarter. Standardization will also support the progress of developers who are currently working in the “walled garden” of one chain but will need to work in a multi-chain environment more and more.

While that's something the industry as a whole can work towards, for now, individual developers should try to keep things simple, taking the time to understand what does and doesn't belong in the smart contract.

The demand for decentralized apps is only going to grow over the coming year. And smart contracts will need to get smarter quickly to support those apps. I expect 2018 to be the year we see a move towards setting the standards and guidelines for the development of these contracts, including who developers work with to develop the application logic, what language they code in, and how they design their code for an environment where mistakes are extremely costly. This is no longer the era of “agile” development and failing forward; foresight and accuracy are key.

Craig Sproule is CEO of Crowd Machine, maker of a decentralized app building and execution network.

5 ways mobile games can avoid a sophomore slump

Posted: 18 Feb 2018 07:15 AM PST


It is hard enough for a game to become a hit in the App Store or Google Play these days; it’s harder still to maintain that success. With today's steep competition, it's more challenging than ever for players to find your new game – and those developers lucky enough to survive learn that success doesn't get any easier after the game's first year.

The good news is that the blueprint for success in a game's sophomore year already exists. It comes from companies like Supercell, Zynga, Miniclip, Kiloo, and others (even if their playbook doesn't work 100 percent of the time). This playbook involves a different set of strategies than what worked for a game in year one, and sometimes, you need an entirely different approach. The developer's focus must shift from growth to retention and engagement — one that changes the way a company allocates budget, invests in technology, and even structures its org chart.

These are not insignificant changes. But to sustain success beyond year one, a mobile game must make critical evaluations. The lifecycle of its gamers will have changed. The dynamics of its virtual economy may have shifted. And what worked for acquiring users in the beginning isn't likely to cut it in the future. To adjust to all of these changes and maintain success into a game's sophomore year, here are five basic tenets that game developers should adhere to.

Focus on what works

In the early days of mobile gaming, most developers took a portfolio approach to game design, launching a multitude of titles spanning myriad categories. As the industry began to mature and certain genres bubbled to the top, a popular approach was to take existing, proven game mechanics and "reskin" them to duplicate a hit, thus flooding the app store with clones. Later on, developers could launch sequels or trilogies in order to capitalize on the success of an initial hit.

Today, developers are much more likely to focus on nurturing an existing hit and extending its life, rather than launching sequels or an entirely new game. Simply because launching a new app is both expensive and risky. The resources and budget required to properly test and launch a new title are so significant, that many publishers are instead doubling down on existing hits and looking to iterate on what has been proven to work. This is not only a safer bet, but it allows publisher to nurture an already engaged audience, rather than having to dedicate significant UA spend to cultivate a new one.

But to survive its sophomore year, a game still needs plenty of attention, and developers that don't allocate enough resources towards maintaining their winners shouldn't expect to see it maintain success very long. Focusing on one game might require killing off production of another – or maybe even sunsetting lesser-performing titles. Even the largest gaming powerhouses have learned that the amount of resources required to sustain a game beyond its initial success requires an extremely strong focus on that one title.

Create compelling barriers to exit

For a game to avoid the sophomore slump, it must focus on maximizing retention. One the best ways to do that, simply put, is to make it difficult for users to leave. Once a user has invested enough in a game, they are less likely to switch to a competitor. The game becomes part of their everyday routine, and soon they can't imagine life without it. But fandom can turn to boredom in the blink of an eye, so it's important for developers to create smart barriers to exit.

One way to detract gamers from leaving is to implement plenty of social hooks. Games that feature clans, player-vs.-player (PvP) content, chats and other social connections tend to do well because the game becomes a conduit to social interactions. Providing a platform for gamers to connect not only nurtures a sense of community for the title, but also encourages competition and provides a platform for users to highlight their accomplishments. Another obvious barrier to exit is monetary investment. Once a gamer has invested money in a game, they're much more likely to stick around. Any investment they've made in terms of personalizing their profile, building up resources, collecting cards, etc. will make it that much less likely they'll leave.

Consistently deliver new content

The only way to get sustain player engagement for months (or even years) on end is to continually feed their appetite for new content. If a game offers a limited number of levels or ability to progress, there will inevitably come a point where players reach the finish line and must decide whether they want to replay or quit. More often, they'll choose the latter.

As a game enters its sophomore year, the developer must ensure that players never run out of things to do. This is why a dedicated LiveOps team becomes even more important as a game matures. In today's landscape, the best way to capitalize on a hit is to support the game by continually adding new content to keep players engaged.

Acquire better users

As a game evolves, its user acquisition strategies must evolve with it. The goal should no longer be to focus exclusively on growth — but on the right type of growth. In the beginning, developers generally focus on volume, but as they gain more insight into those players that engage and pay for items, they can focus their acquisition efforts on these audiences by employing more precise and lookalike targeting.

But with more tailored targeting, should come more tailored messaging. A/B test various creatives and copy to determine what works best for each audience and optimize accordingly. Consider also which types of ad formats will deliver the highest quality users – for instance, video trailers and pay-per-engagement ads can help drive more qualified users who come to the game knowing more about it.

Evolve monetization strategies and business models

In a free-to-play game's first year, achieving success requires a very delicate balance between monetization and user experience. But as a game enters its second year, the developer is armed with more information on which monetization strategies work best and for which audiences. These insights enable the developer to be smarter, yet more aggressive, in year two. This may entail integrating additional ad placements, or experimenting with new formats or limited time currency promotions.

In year two it's also important for developers to re-evaluate their overall business model. For example, if a game has a healthy user base but is failing to sufficiently monetize through IAP, they should consider how to best integrate low-friction ad formats to monetize their non-paying users. This could include inserting interstitial video during natural breaks in the game or presenting users with a rewarded video during a critical pinch point (such as when additional energy is needed or to unlock a speed-up).

Considerably successful apps may also want to consider whether it's worth moving to a subscription model, particularly if the publisher can offer a depth of content that is sufficiently desirable. Whatever the case, revenue models should be consistently re-evaluated to ensure that they provide the highest possible value to the publisher as the app evolves over time.

Take advantage of new platforms or territories

Year two is the best time to expand your boundaries and explore how taking advantage new platforms or territories could pay off for your game. Taking your game to a streaming site like Twitch or YouTube. Streaming content is not only a great way to nurture community, its "one to many" approach also exponentially increases the number of eyeballs on your app.

And if you've already gained a foothold in your primary market, year two is an ideal time to explore the possibility of expanding into other geos. But be cautious with your approach – as the formula to win in one region does not immediately equate to success in another. Consider whether it makes sense to self publish or to partner with a publisher that offers local market expertise. Research CPI costs and soft launch your app in a country or two where the barriers to entry are lower. Ensure that device penetration rates are sufficient for the platform that you want launch to and take a look at what competitors or similar apps have done to introduce their game to the region. And finally, take into consideration whether you are planning to localize your content out of the gate or initially reach a primarily English-speaking audience. If the latter, you'll want to test your app in a country with a high percentage of English speakers.

The App Store launched over nine years ago, and in that time the mobile gaming industry has evolved tremendously. While developers were smart to experiment with different titles in the early days of the industry, today many have found that the safest, and often most profitable, bet is to invest in and expand upon those that have proven to work, just as they would treat any other type of media property with a sustainable audience. Sustaining a game into year two is never easy, but by consistently testing, iterating, and exploring new ways to deliver and expand upon a game's existing content, developers should be armed with the right tools to avoid the sophomore slump.

Benjamin Chen is currently the senior vice president and general manager, developer relations, at Tapjoy, the maximum impact platform for mobile advertisers and app developers.

How do developers hook U.S. mobile gamers? Achievements and progress tracking

Posted: 18 Feb 2018 06:00 AM PST


When designing or localizing your mobile game for international release, it is critical to examine whether or not it's a good fit for what people in local markets want to play on their mobile devices.

As we've seen with megahits like Japan’s Monster Strike, what achieves overwhelming success in one country might falter when released in another — simply because it's offering an experience that doesn't resonate with what the new audience is looking for.

To provide a better understanding of how and why North American players play mobile games, EEDAR examined player interest in 33 different types of gameplay experiences and motivations.

Response data for this analysis comes from 3,000 adults and 1,000 teenagers who were asked to rate their interest in 33 mobile gameplay experiences that included elements associated with competition, cooperation, challenge/excitement, immersion, strategy, customization, progression achievement, and completion. These ratings were then ranked by most – and least – compelling gameplay motivations for the North American mobile market to give insight into what factors are most appealing at a market level.

When it comes to mobile gaming in North America, single-player experiences associated with progression, completion, and achievement most consistently drive play.

Looking at these motivations, it's easy to see that active mobile gamers in North America are motivated by moving through a game's levels and improving upon their previous performances. The key question, however, is why?

In analyzing the strongest and most common motivations, it's important to note that 8 out of the top 10 all roll up under three motivational metafactors: Progression, Achievement, and Completion. All elements associated with these factors were generally seen as positive by mobile gamers (rating over 0 in all cases).

By contrast, motivations relating to multiplayer (whether competitive or cooperative) or in-game social interactions appear nowhere in the top 10. In fact, they rank much closer to the bottom of the battery of 33 gameplay experiences.

This is not to say that games which rely heavily on multiplayer cannot find an audience in North America (titles such as Clash Royale provide evidence to the contrary), but it suggests that games that leverage this approach will be more limited in their potential audience overall – unless they make intelligent choices about the market they're launching into. EEDAR's research suggests that, where essentially 100% of NA gamers will respond favorably to elements that push them to Progress and/or Achieve, only 30% or so are going to be specifically interested in engaging with other players.

Driving engagement and success with a predominantly multiplayer experience on mobile, then, requires careful incorporation of elements that show quantifiable progression, help players to set personal goals, and reward individual achievement. Emphasizing these elements will help attract a broader audience who is less interested in competition.

The core of Clash Royale's gameplay may be built around competitive multiplayer, but players can make and appraise meaningful single-player progress as they advance through arenas. This distinction is key to reaching the broadest amount of mobile gamers in North America.

Heather Nofziger, Ph.D, is the head of consumer research at EEDAR and serves as an expert game design/economy consultant specializing in the mobile market. 

Fears of bots in the workplace are likely overblown

Posted: 17 Feb 2018 10:19 PM PST


Journalists have used a lot of ink, both real and digital, to discuss the potential of AI to eliminate jobs. Autonomous vehicles, machines that read X-rays and search for new drugs, and algorithm-driven bots that respond to customer service inquiries are all manifestations of powerful new forms of automation. This fuss has led to a lot of hand-wringing and has spurred increasingly serious discussions of the need to provide guaranteed minimum incomes for when there may not be sufficient jobs to go around. But interestingly, all of this could come to pass.

Many headlines suggest that AI and related technologies will lead to a jobless future. A recent article on NBC News describes just this possibility. A Forbes story reports that analyst firm Forrester predicts automation will take nine percent of U.S. jobs in 2018, partly offset by a two percent growth in jobs supporting the "automation economy."

The tremendous amount of automation over the last decade is well documented, especially in manufacturing. A study by McKinsey Global Institute indicates that due to AI and automation, the world will see a transition on the scale of the early 1900s when much of the global industry switched from farming to factory work. It only stands to reason that there should be increasing unemployment now.

Yet, in the United States at least, levels of unemployment are near historic lows. Corporate earnings are up and even wages, which were the remaining area of weakness from the Great Recession, have started to grow. Summing up 2017, career outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that job cuts in the U.S. economy were the lowest annual total since 1990. Moody Analytics’ Chief Economist Mark Zandi recently said, “Given the strong January job gain, 2018 is on track to be the eighth consecutive year in which the economy creates over 2 million jobs. If it falls short, it is likely because businesses can’t find workers to fill all the open job positions.” It's not only in the U.S., as major economies worldwide are universally experiencing a wave of growth.

Why is there not a scarcity of jobs now?

Is this job growth a temporary condition with waves of AI-induced unemployment just around the corner? That could be. Many AI technologies are still at an early stage of development so their impact so far has been minimal. Nevertheless, AI projects are a high priority. In a recently commissioned poll of IT professionals by real-time database provider MemSQL, 61 percent of respondents said that machine learning and AI are their companies' most significant data initiative for 2018.

We’ve yet to reach an AI-induced tipping point. The timing of the business cycle also plays a role. As a story in The Atlantic notes, most job losses occur during periods of recession when "firms let excess workers go and learn more about labor-saving technology to maintain their profits."

Hold on, it's coming

A PwC study describes three overlapping waves of automation into the 2030s — the algorithm wave, the augmentation wave, and the autonomy wave. The study notes that in the first algorithm wave, lasting to the early 2020s, automation will take relatively few jobs. The more impactful waves come in succession from the mid-to-late 2020s and into the mid-2030s. In their view, automation will impact 30 percent of jobs during this timeframe.

It's the latter two phases that prompt the greatest worries. It's not hard to imagine a million out of work truck drivers and others taking to the streets. The political and economic consequences are potentially dramatic. One announced candidate for President of the United States in 2020 is already championing these concerns. As reported by The New York Times, Andrew Yang – a former tech executive – is warning of the coming robot apocalypse. Yang notes that it was the congressional districts in several states where the highest concentration of automated manufacturing jobs that swung the 2016 presidential election.

Countervailing forces

There has always been job displacement as waves of technical innovation remake the economy. An example is the transition from the horse economy to cars, which is well-documented in a LinkedIn post by Brad Smith, president and chief legal officer at Microsoft. The industry that sprang up around cars was far larger than that of horses, yet there were surprising and unpredictable consequences stemming from the transition including the impact on agriculture. Smith notes that the reduced demand for horse feed contributed to an agricultural depression in the 1920s, which worsened even further during the Great Depression. A weak agricultural sector dragged down the entire U.S. economy in the 1930s.

But the question is whether this time will be different. As the NBC News article points out, AI technology aims to replace the human mind, not simply make industries more efficient. Nevertheless, the PwC study asserts that AI, robotics, and related technologies should "generate enough new jobs to broadly offset the potential job losses associated with automation." Economist Beesen argues this is often the case, citing that automation has largely taken over the discovery of legal documents, yet jobs for paralegals and legal-support workers grew faster than the overall labor force. He goes on to note other examples and says he believes these are not exceptions since automation lowers the cost of delivered goods and services, which in turn attracts more customers leading to overall growth and demand.

This fits with a Deloitte study reported by The Guardian that argues the debate has been skewed toward the job-destroying effects of technological change, which we can more easily observe than its creative aspects. The study further claims that based on data from the last 140 years, technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed. The possibility that AI and automation will lead to more jobs than they eliminate is echoed by Gartner, an analyst firm. They stated that AI-related job creation will reach two million net-new jobs by 2025.

Will this time be different?

AI and related technologies will certainly change or eliminate many of today's jobs, but these technologies will also create entirely new positions and industries. The transition to the AI economy will be uneven and as with the Great Recession, it's clear that many people will be left behind. In fact, McKinsey estimates that between three and 14 percent of the global workforce will need to switch occupations over the next 10-15 years. And it's true that unpredictable consequences from these shifts could emerge.

Enlightened leadership from our institutions of government, business, unions, and education will all have a critical role to play in helping people through this transition. Even more so because the impact of automation usually hits hardest on those least able and equipped to deal with it. As with the shift from horses to cars, the AI transition could be very hard for some

But the grave concerns of AI leading to a jobless future are greatly overblown. AI will likely follow the route of previous instances where significant innovations have led to a period of temporary job loss, followed by recovery, then transformation with new jobs and industries.

Gary Grossman is a futurist and public relations and communications marketing executive with Edelman.

Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is what Microsoft promised

Posted: 17 Feb 2018 02:33 PM PST


Microsoft is bringing back of the Age of Empires series, and it is starting with an updated version of the original game for $20 on February 20. This celebrates the 20th anniversary of the real-time strategy hit, and it also should prepare fans for the upcoming Age of Empires sequel that Microsoft has in the works.

I’ve spent some time with Age of Empires: Definitive Edition on Windows 10, and Microsoft has delivered on its promise to update the game for modern audiences without stripping away what made Age of Empires so popular in the first place. Microsoft has previously reworked the sequels, and now it is giving a more thorough makeover to the first game. Most noticeably, this includes major improvements to the visuals, but it also includes a number of quality-of-life improvements. The only thing that is completely intact is underlying core gameplay.

When you first boot into an Age of Empires match, you’ll see that Microsoft redid all of the art and animations. It has also re-recorded the soundtrack, introduced new voice acting, improved multiplayer features, and revised the user interface.

One change that I think serves as an example of how Age of Empires: Definitive Edition has changed is build queues. That concept wasn’t in the original version, so you had to do a lot more babysitting of your buildings. Definitive Edition integrates that improvement so well that it ends up feeling like someone that was always a part of the game.

I’m not sure how much time I’ll spend with Age of Empires: Definitive Edition going forward. It’s nice to enjoy a throwback like this without having to struggle to get it working on a modern system, but RTS games have come a long way — and I’m more interested in learning what Age of Empires does next.

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