Will a robot takes your job?

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by learningsolutionsmag.com -- What if the robots were coming—not to take our jobs, but to help us do our jobs better? Virtual assistants, cropping up in homes and offices everywhere, already use AI (artificial intelligence) to automate mundane tasks. As cognitive computing evolves, natural language processing engines improve, and areas of AI are combined into new and creative applications, the ways that AI can boost performance on the job are innumerable. Rather than displacing human employees, these technologies could increase employee efficiency and improve productivity.

Chatbots take over repetitive tasks

Asking a phone or smart speaker to look up information, send a text or email, or set a timer is second nature to many people. In the office, smart assistants, on phones, tablets, or laptops, can arrange meetings, connect participants in conference calls, and send messages. In customer service, chatbots are ubiquitous, managing phone call routing and simple problem solving, and chatting with customers online—saving time that humans can spend on addressing the more challenging issues that arise. Chatbots have made inroads in eLearning as well, providing coaching, repetitive learning drills, training reinforcement, task reminders, and other services to new and experienced employees. These verbal assistants might be ready for a promotion, though; some chat-based tools already offer a deeper level of aid.

AI engine assists with onboarding

Universities across the US are turning to chatbots to assist with their equivalent to new employee onboarding: helping new students navigate the admissions process and get acclimated to college, which includes completing a raft of paperwork and administrative processes. In Artificial Intelligence Across Industries: Where Does L&D Fit, Guild research director Jane Bozarth describes AI-based tools that assist students with coursework and answer common questions. Many students never realize their “helper” isn’t human. Similarly, corporations are increasingly turning over some repetitive onboarding tasks to AI-based support tools. Companies that hire large numbers of employees can automate processes like reminding new employees to fill out a range of forms, teaching them about safety regulations and company policies, and getting them registered for various benefits. AI-based performance support can bolster training as well, with targeted quizzes, reminders, and questions. New Comcast sales reps get help from a chatbot to bolster the training they receive during ride-alongs with more senior employees, for example. The mobile training sends the new hires open-ended questions; they discuss their responses, and their observations from the day, with their managers or mentors.

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Christmas in Lebanon: ‘Jesus Isn’t Only for the Christians'

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By Vivian Yee and Hwaida Saad -- nytimes.com -- BEIRUT — The Iranian cultural attaché stepped up to the microphone on a stage flanked by banners bearing the faces of Iran’s two foremost religious authorities: Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, and Ayatollah Khamenei, the current supreme leader. To the left of Ayatollah Khomeini stood a twinkling Christmas tree, a gold star gilding its tip. Angel ornaments and miniature Santa hats nestled among its branches. Fake snow dusted fake pine needles. “Today, we’re celebrating the birth of Christ,” the cultural attaché, Mohamed Mehdi Shari’tamdar, announced into the microphone, “and also the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.” “Hallelujah!” boomed another speaker, Elias Hachem, reciting a poem he had written for the event. “Jesus the savior is born. The king of peace, the son of Mary. He frees the slaves. He heals. The angels protect him. The Bible and the Quran embrace.” “We’re celebrating a rebel,” proclaimed a third speaker, the new mufti of the Shiite Muslims of Lebanon, the rebel in question being Jesus.

The mufti, Ahmed Kabalan, went on to engage in some novel religious and political thinking: Christians and Muslims, he said, “are one family, against corruption, with social justice, against authority, against Israel, with the Lebanese Army and with the resistance.” The proclamations from the stage were applause lines — perhaps against the odds, given that the audience at the Iranian-sponsored event on Saturday consisted mostly of observant Shiites from the Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs of Beirut. Occasionally, the crowd chanted praise for the Prophet Muhammad. When a pair of Iranian bands flown in for the occasion began playing Assyrian and Persian Christmas carols, the audience clapped along. From its founding as an independent republic, Lebanon has walked a tightrope, not always successfully, with its Muslim and Christian populations making up most of the country’s 18 officially recognized sects. Sign up for The Interpreter Subscribe for original insights, commentary and discussions on the major news stories of the week, from columnists Max Fisher and Amanda Taub. Nearly 30 years after the end of a civil war in which Beirut was cloven into Muslim and Christian halves connected only by a gutted buffer zone, Lebanese from all different sects now commonly mingle every day at home, at work and in public. But few seasons frame the everyday give-and-take of religious coexistence quite like Christmas time in Lebanon.

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This is the new Microsoft

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By Dave Gershgorn -- qz.com -- Microsoft has a real shot to end the year as the most valuable public company in the world. That wasn’t the case a year ago, and it would have seemed absurd five years ago, when the company was being leapfrogged by burgeoning behemoths like Amazon and Google. The last time Microsoft was the most valuable company in the world was 2000, before being eclipsed by GE in the dot-com bust. But Microsoft is back. Its place as “most valuable public company” isn’t one that was earned on the back of red-hot earnings report or a disruptive product—Microsoft has a drastic market sell-off of its competitors, a clear vision, and aggressive sustained growth to thank for the title. Its stock is up 20% from the beginning of the year.

It’s a signal to the company—and the world—that Microsoft isn’t just the maker of Windows and Microsoft Office anymore. Microsoft’s growing cloud business, in which it rents server space and enterprise software to other companies, is a bright spot on its quarterly earnings reports, with more than 20% growth year over year, according to company filings. Azure, the aspect of the cloud business focused on artificial intelligence and software deployment, is growing in the high double digits every quarter, with 74% year over year growth as of October’s earnings report. Microsoft’s cloud business now has a $27 billion run-rate. This new emphasis on cloud computing has also given Microsoft the opportunity to pivot its consumer and business products to subscription-based services, because the business model relies on cloud storage of documents and incremental updates to the software. Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics 365, its suite of businesses tools, are now both sold as subscriptions, which means more recurring revenue rather than companies buying the software once and not paying again for years. These software packages naturally tie into Microsoft’s other cloud services, giving it the opportunity to sell more storage space or integrated software.

These business tools are still paying the bills—cloud revenue counts for less than a third of the company’s total revenue as of October. Productivity and business tools brings in a third, and the last third is made of a cocktail of other revenue, including Microsoft’s growing hardware business, which consists of Xbox and Surface. Gaming revenue grew 44% year over year in October, mostly from software like games and Xbox Live subscriptions. And Microsoft’s own computers are finally getting their time in the sun. While the Surface line of computers had received lukewarm reception from tech reviewers in the past, the Surface Laptop 2, Surface Go, and Surface Book 2 all got glowing reviews in 2018. It’s hard not to point toward Nadella as the impetus of these changes. After being CEO for four years, the stock price has soared and the company has focused on high-growth revenue streams like the cloud. Windows, which represents Microsoft’s software dominance in a bygone age, has been sidelined. Even the culture, which under previous CEO Steve Ballmer was hostile towards other platforms and operating systems, has changed. Nadella uses an iPhone on stage (gasp), and this year bought GitHub, a forum for code, for $7.5 billion. It’s a nod to a more intersectional Microsoft, one that’s more interested in code of all kinds, rather than promoting just its own platform. This comes two years after Nadella made Microsoft’s largest deal ever, its $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn. The year ahead looks bright for the 43-year-old company. It’s likely to hit the coveted $1 trillion in market cap, which Apple and Amazon both touched for a short while in 2018. And with a level of enviable sustained growth, 2020 might look just as bright.

The best HR is invisible

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By Lars Schmidt fastcompany.com --  There was a time not long ago when “getting HR involved” generally meant diffusing an employee relations issue. Twentieth-century HR was all about control, enforcing compliance around hiring, training, development, performance, talent management, culture, holiday parties, facilities, and more. The HR function was generally reactive rather than strategic. Times have changed. The rise of 21st-century HR has given birth to a new breed of HR executive, with a much broader skill set, who is leading the transformation of what’s possible in the field and reinventing HR as a data-driven strategic function critical to an organization’s success. This shift removes some of the us versus them friction that framed HR as an outlier to the business functions and embraces a new approach based on partnership, accountability, and shared outcomes. You can trace the tipping point of this shift back to the creation of one particular position: the HR business partner role. Rather than keeping HR isolated as a centralized team, this model embedded HR practitioners inside the business functions they support, allowing them to integrate more deeply into business units. These embedded relationships allowed HR executives to have a much clearer view on an organization’s health, turnover risks, and culture shifts–enabling them to be more proactive in addressing challenges and developing people strategies more closely aligned with the organization’s mission and goals.

Contemporary HR is more focused on providing strategic value to drive business outcomes. The focus is less on control and ownership, and more on understanding and aligning the people strategy to business goals, supporting and empowering the employees to do their best work. Here is a look at several organizations with HR practices that reflect this shift in approach.

Square

In ultra-competitive Silicon Valley, the battle for talent is legendary. If hiring, talent development, and retention aren’t priorities for the executive team, you have little chance of success. Few know this better than Bryan Power, a veteran HR executive who led global people teams at Google, Square, and Yahoo. Early in his career, Power worked for a product executive at Google who assigned strategic HR outcomes to each of his direct reports–hiring to one person, talent management to another, employee communications to a third, etc. This created a structure that made each leader accountable for the development of the global organization. Later, at Square, Power implemented a similar ownership mentality as the company designed programs and built processes to scale out of the startup phase. Like most fast-growing tech companies, Square had many new managers who were quickly expanding into leadership roles for the first time. Power understood that their success would be largely driven by his team’s ability to get them trained as managers as quickly as possible. He also understood that for these new managers to take this development challenge seriously and invest the right amount of time and commitment, it had to be driven by the top. So Power and his team enlisted the company’s top executives including Square’s CEO and key members of the executive team to teach manager training modules. “When managers think of these people challenges as their own issues to resolve, rather than issues for HR to solve,” Power says, “that ownership and accountability transforms the organization.”

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Why Blockchain is Hard

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by Jimmy Song -medium.com -- The hype around blockchain is massive. To hear the blockchain hype train tell it, blockchain will now:

Solve income inequality Make all data secure forever

Make everything much more efficient and trustless

Save dying babies

What the heck is a blockchain, anyway?

And can it really do all these things? Can blockchain bring something amazing to industries as diverse as health care, finance, supply chain management and music rights? And doesn’t being for Bitcoin mean that you’re pro-blockchain? How can you be for Bitcoin but say anything bad about the technology behind it? In this article, I seek to answer a lot of these questions by looking at what a blockchain is and more importantly, what it’s not. What is a blockchain? To examine some of these claims, we have to define what a blockchain is and herein lies a lot of the confusion. Many companies use the word “blockchain” to mean some sort of magical device by which all their data will never be wrong. Such a device, of course, does not exist, at least when the real world is involved. So what is a blockchain? Technically speaking, a blockchain is a linked list of blocks and a block is a group of ordered transactions. If you didn’t understand the last sentence, you can think of a blockchain as a subset of a database, with a few additional properties.

The main thing distinguishing a blockchain from a normal database is that there are specific rules about how to put data into the database. That is, it cannot conflict with some other data that’s already in the database (consistent), it’s append-only (immutable), and the data itself is locked to an owner (ownable), it’s replicable and available. Finally, everyone agrees on what the state of the things in the database are (canonical) without a central party (decentralized). It is this last point that really is the holy grail of blockchain. Decentralization is very attractive because it implies there is no single point of failure. That is, no single authority will be able to take away your asset or change “history” to suit their needs. This immutable audit trail where you don’t have to trust anyone is the benefit that everyone that’s playing with this technology is looking for. This benefit, however, come at a great cost.

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Horoscope 2019 - 2020: Check out what the new year has in store for your zodiac sign

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by timesnownews.com -- The new year is just a few days away, but curiosity about what’s in store for us in 2019 has already started building up. If you had a good 2018, you’ll want the same in 2019, and if this year did not present too many good things to you, then you’ll definitely expect 2019 to be better. Whatever the aim, who wouldn’t want a glimpse into. If you wish to know more about your 2019, check out your astrology predictions here on the basis of your zodiac signs:

Aries: People born in this zodiac will see an increase in desire and energy to do greater things. Come March, you will be obsessed about reaching greater heights. This may lead to greater success, but if you take the wrong steps, it can also create havoc. This is the year you should take advice from elders/teachers and parents. Your father is your source of strength and his ideas should guide. The first half of the year will be focused on the home front, addressing many challenges. For those who are planning to buy real estate or vehicles, you may do it in the first half of the year. The first half will also see people focusing energy on learning - be at work or personal life. The second half will help you take bold decisions and can place you in brute illusion. It will impact ones’ mind and the challenge will be to take the right decisions. People born in this zodiac will see sudden growth or losses and based on their actions, the results will follow. All is not gloomy as Jupiter will help you protect your losses significantly. Your obsession about buying a home, new cars etc will just increase and even if you own these things, you will still yearn for better. By the last quarter of the year, you may even indulge in gambling to achieve faster gains. Seek guidance from your father and elders, though you prefer to seek knowledge from the divine.

Taurus: Romance has taken over your life, and you will fall madly in love. Your partner will have a hard time keeping up with your emotions. In the first half of the year, those who are single will seek companionship. Those who are married will focus on building their bond with their spouse. The second half of the year will be exciting and can even witness sudden marriages. For some, it may even be unconventional marriages. The year will also keep you emotionally charged up and it is good to divert your attention to your partner. The decision is in your hands to take some wise decisions. Be calm and relaxed and meditate. Try to keep a lookout on your health-related matters, especially related to eyes. Old ailments may resurface, though most of them may not be life-threatening. You will see a lot of sudden occurrences in your family and those in a family business will see a lot of events that can propel great success. People in the entertainment business like music, arts will see good growth in their career.

Gemini: The first half of the year looks good and those who are single will try to get married or plan to start a relationship. It is best to lie low on the relationship front as your partner will fail to understand your intentions. You will be too emotional this year and with your natural airy mindset, you will come out as a romantic with no aim or sincerity in love and relationship. On the work front, beware of your colleagues. This is the year in which you will see a lot of smearing on you. But people who follow the right path will eventually come out unscathed. People in the field of communication, sales, and marketing, travel and tourism will do good or find a lot of interesting challenges thrown at them and those who do well will see very good results. Take care of your health as old ailments may resurface and you will find it hard to manage and keep them under control. Try not to make risky investments as chances of failure is high. Meditate and focus on your goals and thoughts and channel your energy into positive ideas.

Cancer: You will fall in love easily and may even get married, but try to have a balanced view of your relationship. For those who want to study further, this is a good time to consider upgrading your skills. Your enemies will try to come and take you with all guns blazing and you will surely knock them out with ease. So, do not worry on those fronts, but your downfall will be when you tend to speculate or enter risky investments or matters pertaining to legal. You have a high chance of failure and should be very careful before signing any document. Your health issues may be masked, and you should pay attention to your health. It is good to be proactive and manage your health and keep yourself fit but just do not overdo it. Your love life will be exciting. The second half will push you towards a more speculative mindset and that is where you need your partner’s support to tide over the phase. Overall, 2019 should be a decent year and you will slowly start planning for your future.

Leo: You may fall in love hopelessly and those who are single, have high chances of getting a partner by the end of the year. Spend time with your partner and those in marriage, this year will be great on the home front. You will see your family and your spouse are fully supportive of you. Your children will be a source of joy and you will see they are doing well this year. For those who want to take a risk - be in work, business or any investments - trust your instinct and work sincerely towards the goal and you will get very good results. However, those who want to take shortcut, you will learn good life lessons as Saturn will ensure and control your illusionary approach. Losses are expected in financial investments in the last quarter of the year, but it will not be too big a loss to put you off balance. Overall a positive year for you.

Virgo: This year is a golden year and you should take full advantage of it. You will feel bold and strong to take tough decisions. It is a good time to take risks to move forward. Your family and home front will be good, and you will find a lot of support. The year will also be good for your siblings who will look up to you for direction. Give them enough support so that they can also progress equally well. If you want to buy a new home or a vehicle, the second half of the year will be better. For those who are in trade or business or even work, you will see a sudden jump in your career, especially in the second half of the year. You will have good health and wealth will be flowing from all directions. Your wife may also earn good money. Those in the legal profession, accounting or finance industry will do even better.

Libra: This year will be interesting, and it will give mixed results for people of this zodiac. The year will be interesting on many fronts. For those who are spiritually guided, 2019 will be enriching as you will experience enriching spiritual experiences and journey. Those who are not spiritually inclined will find solace from taking advice from elders, especially from father. You will tend to break the order, which is not in your nature, and hence, there will be conflict. You would like to focus on family and work but will be able to focus on only one aspect, and it will be frustrating because you will see success in both areas. Those who are in debt will try to reduce it and those who are doing well will increase their bank balances significantly. This year you will take short trips.

Scorpio: The first half of the year will be towards understanding your true strength and knowing yourself. Be careful with extravagant expenditures, as it may put you in severe financial strain. Try not to take legal matters in your hand. It is better to avoid any investments and partnerships that involve risky legal matters. The second half will see strong growth or sudden explosion of gains. You should focus on your family during the first half of the year. You need to give attention to your family wealth and ensure it is not squandered away. You will be spending a lot of your time and resources to build burnt bridges and in many ways, you will find the true meaning of love and relationship by the end of the year. Foreign travel is on the cards for those seeking higher learning or better career growth. You will make more money overseas this year. In many cases, you may even move overseas. Workwise, you will face some minor hurdles, but you will be on top of most of the work and may even see a sudden grown in your career during the second half of the year.

Sagittarius: Your spouse will be moody and can create problems. But if you communicate well and win his/her confidence, you will see the best support from your spouse. Likewise, with your business partner. People born in this sign will be under the influence of Sade sati (Saturn impacting its full 7/12 years). This is generally seen as an inconvenient time and people are generally worried and concerned with many getting conned by many quake naysayers. However, ignore and work towards growth and you can see good results. However, if you chose to lie low, it is also good if you don’t indulge or trouble your spouse and business partners. You better stay grounded if you lack diplomacy skills. Those who plan to get married may find a suitable partner and the marriage will last long.

Capricorn: Those who have gone the extra mile in career will see success in all aspects. Your finances will improve significantly. You will overcome your detractors and you will be able to face your adversaries strongly. You will see a lot of support from your siblings and they will be helpful when you need them. You will also see good luck in your family business and overall a good time. The second half of the year will help you get closer to your spouse and may even take you for a long vacation. Even if you are hit with legal matters, you will surely come out of it successfully. By the end of the first half, things will become more prominent and it is good to take professional advice before entering in any legal matters. Overall a good year that will keep you happy and content with no major challenges.

Aquarius: You will see romance and love flowing through you and the beauty is you will be able to express the same feeling to your partner. This is also the time to impress your superiors with your passion, intelligence, and ability and it will be noticed by people of the opposite sex as well. You will have the chance to travel overseas for higher learning or work and your relationship with your spouse and father will get better. Your financial situation will be good, and you will enjoy a lot of success and growth. Aquarians in creative fields will flourish. Creative skills will enhance your dimensions and will open new doors. Health problems may get the better of you during the first quarter. You will be blessed with the fortune of children if you are married or those who are single will find a partner. This is the time you will also develop an interest in speculative trading and investments. Try to avoid risky gambling.

Pisces: You will grow professionally and will become wiser, but you will need to work more on the home front to gain support from your family members. The year will give a good result on your career and will see some concrete results. You will also see success in spiritual growth and will find yourself more inclined to higher learning. Your father will be a constant source of guidance. Your health may be a cause of concern and it is good to keep active. It is better to delay purchasing a new house or vehicle at least until the second half of the year. Overall a very good year from a career point of view.

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