KACHARAGADLA

The future of work looks grim for many people. A recent study from Forrester estimated that 10% of U.S. jobs would be automated this year, and another from McKinsey estimates that close to half of all U.S. jobs may be automated in the next decade.  The jobs that are likely to be automated are repetitive and routine. They range from reading X-rays (human radiologists may soon have much more limited roles), to truck driving, to stocking a warehouse. While much has been written about the sorts of jobs that are likely to be eliminated, another perspective that has not been examined in as much detail is to ask not which jobs will be eliminated but rather which aspects of surviving jobs will be replaced by machines.  For example, consider the job of being a physician: It is clear that diagnosing illnesses will soon (if not already) be accomplished better by machines than humans. Machine learning is spectacularly effective when data sets are available for training and testing, which is the ca

The increasingly paperless business world requires many electronic signatures, and somebody to assure you the signatures are genuine. With more business conducted on the Internet than ever before, it makes sense that those sharing documents, agreements and contracts would also want the convenience of digital signatures or electronic signatures. That explains market research companies like  P&S Market Research  show continuing strong growth through 2023. They attributed this demand to "increasing use of digital signatures to reduce deception, growing government focus towards eliminating paperless work coupled with growing adoption of digital signature-based biometrics in various end-use industries, across the globe." With my business, we send out a  lot  of documents that need to be signed by our customers -- some days it's hundreds of documents. This makes it crucial for our  business  to automate this process. We've used countless companies to help u

User-centric firms should identify and track the core actions that can make or break their businesses. Traditionally, executives have used standard metrics, such as cash flow, inventory turns and operating income, to get a broad sense of the health of their firm. However, the game has changed with the rise of digital business models centered on the user. New metrics need to be devised based on the core user actions that drive value creation in such models. Threadless, an online T-shirt retailer, crowdsources its designs from a community of designers and curates the best designs through a social rating mechanism. Threadless relies on two core user actions: the upload of new designs by designers and the voting on designs by the Threadless community. A failure by the community to provide adequate feedback on designs would discourage designers from uploading new ones in the future, leading to a downward spiral. To ensure a healthy and scalable business model, Threadless needs to ac

In the 1800s, it was machine-powered looms that replaced human hand weavers. Today, digital technology is disrupting work for working people — blue- and white-collar alike — in every occupation. Advances in fields such as artificial intelligence and robotics are making it increasingly possible for machines to perform not only physical but also cognitive tasks, according to  a new report  on IT and the U.S. workforce, published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. But this story is probably not news to anyone anymore. Most of us are aware that as we enter this new Industrial Revolution, automation and digital devices are upending jobs, from cashiers to automotive assembly-line workers. Yet there is an upside, which we don’t hear as much about. While technology can jettison many existing jobs, it’s also constantly creating new jobs and new conveniences. Globally, career taxi drivers now compete for passengers with Lyft and Uber drivers, and new industries