Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

These Industries Are Most 'At Risk' For AI Automation BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, JUN 30, 2023 - 09:20 PM Since the release of tools like ChatGPT, artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to permeate industries worldwide, transforming the way we work and live. To gain insight into this rapidly evolving landscape, Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu and Sabrina Lam - using data from MSCI - has ranked U.S. industries by their estimated share of employment that could be exposed to AI-driven automation. Data and Highlights This analysis comes from a March 2023 report published by Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research. The authors estimated automation exposure for over 900 U.S. jobs using the O*NET occupational database, which provides details on the types of tasks each occupation conducts. Exposure estimates were then weighted by the employment share of each occupation, and aggregated to the industry level. Industry Estimated Share of U.S. Employment Exposed to AI (%) Office and...

Carbon Footprint Of Lab-Grown Beef "Orders Of Magnitude" Worse Than Traditionally Raised: Study BY TYLER DURDEN WEDNESDAY, MAY 31, 2023 - 05:45 PM A new study from the University of California, Davis, has found that lab-grown, or "cultivated" meat's environmental impact is likely to be "orders of magnitude" higher than retail beef based on current and near-term production methods. The preprint study, which has yet to undergo peer review, concludes that the energy needed and greenhouse gasses emitted during all stages of production of lab-grown meat is far greater than traditionally raised beef. Researchers conducted a life-cycle assessment of the energy needed and greenhouse gases emitted in all stages of production and compared that with beef. One of the current challenges with lab-grown meat is the use of highly refined or purified growth media, the ingredients needed to help animal cells multiply. Currently, this method is similar to the biotech...

Wendy's Plans New Underground Delivery System for Mobile Orders BY TYLER DURDEN WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2023 - 04:00 PM Fast food chain Wendy's is testing new technology to automate its stores. This is more bad news for human workers as automation and artificial intelligence invade the fast food industry. Wendy's announced a new partnership with Pipedream, a hyper logistics company, to pilot-test the first underground autonomous robot system that will allow food from the kitchen to be sent to designated parking spots via an underground network of pipes. "The partnership marks another bold step for Wendy's in driving industry innovation as it strives to serve digital-forward customers with greater ease, speed, and accuracy," Wendy's wrote in a press release. "We know that serving orders quickly and accurately leads to increased customer satisfaction. "Pipedream's Instant Pickup system has the potential to unlock greater mobile order speed...

Experiment contradicts Einstein and reveals ‘spooky quantum action’ with superconducting qubits 30 meters apart Story by Raúl Limón • May 11, 2023 6PM EDT Physicist James Trefil once said that quantum mechanics is a “place where the human brain will simply never feel comfortable.” This discomfort happens because nature, at a microscopic scale, obeys laws at odds with our perception of macroscopic reality. These laws include superposition (a particle can simultaneously be in different states, like Erwin Schrödinger’s live and dead cat), and quantum entanglement at a distance. Albert Einstein described the latter as “spooky action at a distance,” a principle allowing particles separated by distance to respond instantaneously and behave as a single system. A spectacular experiment that defies the speed of light was recently published in Nature by an international team of scientists led by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, collaborating with Spain’s Institute of...

AI Is About To Be Everywhere Authored by Aden Tate via The Organic Prepper blog, May 10, 2023 Do you remember when drones were first released to the commercial market? There was a lot of talk about the privacy implications of them, and more than one case of where people were flying them over other peoples’ property, looking in peoples’ windows, and more of the like. Now, drones are firmly entrenched in modern society and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon. They’ve not only been incorporated into militaries throughout the world, but they’re now in search and rescue operations, used for photography, security, and more. During Covid, Baltimore PD even wanted to use them to enforce social distancing. You probably don’t even think about it anymore. Now enter AI. AI is already all around you, but most recognize that ChatGPT ushered in a new era of AI. Right now, we’re all in the same stage that we were when drones were first released – theorizing about potential fears, costs, and wh...

Wendy's Unveils Google-Powered AI Chatbot At Drive-Thru BY TYLER DURDEN TUESDAY, MAY 09, 2023 - 09:00 PM Wendy's is reportedly developing an artificial intelligence chatbot powered by Google's natural-language software designed to automate drive-thrus. The Wall Street Journal spoke with Wendy's Chief Executive Todd Penegor, who said the fast-food chain's chatbot would be rolled out in June at a company-owned restaurant in Columbus, Ohio. The Wendy's drive-thru chatbot "will be very conversational," Penegor explained. He said, "You won't know you're talking to anybody but an employee." Wendy's software engineers have been working with Google to build a large language model to understand words, popular expressions, and phrases in various dialects and accents when a customer orders. It'll understand acronyms unique to Wendy's, like "JBC" for a junior bacon cheeseburger. "Google Cloud's generative...

Scientists just made a massive breakthrough on an alternative to lithium-ion batteries: ‘These batteries are essential’ Story by Laurelle Stelle • May 6, 2023 Researchers have recently discovered a way to make an efficient battery out of zinc — an inexpensive, commonly found metal — instead of the rare metals used in lithium batteries. Most rechargeable batteries today are lithium-ion batteries, which include other metals like cobalt and nickel, Tech Xplore reports. As electric vehicles (EVs) and large-scale energy storage get more common, we’ll need more and more of those metals — but because they’re uncommon, the costs are often massive. Many researchers are working on cheaper battery options to reduce or replace these metals. One Chinese company has created a car powered by a sodium battery, and a University of Maryland researcher has invented a partly biodegradable battery made of zinc and crab shells. Researchers have even found not one but two ways to store energy in ordinary...