#automation

#automation

Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be constantly marching forward across nearly every industry. While food service is an area that has long relied on human touch (be it via skilled cooks or friendly faces interacting with customers), it too is facing a new wave of AI-powered technologies. These innovations are often sold as being a means to improve working conditions by increasing efficiency and reducing stress - particularly in hectic fast food kitchens -

It feels like an episode of The Jetsons come to life, but the truth is that the AI boom has officially entered the physical world. Most of us interact with artificial intelligence through screens- Gemini drafts our emails, ChatGPT summarizes our docs-but behind the scenes, engineers are racing to give AI hands and feet. Robots already pack boxes in warehouses and make guacamole in fast-food kitchens. Soon, they will be washing dishes, taking care of pets, and performing your manicure.

On a six-block walk I pass at least a half dozen, each with their own vibe: one focused on chai, another inside a yoga studio, a Starbucks that's surprisingly busy for late afternoon downtown. I passed them all up to get to one shop in particular, where a barista named Jarvis would address me by name and make me a thoroughly decent latte with rose-flavored syrup - nothing out of the ordinary in Seattle.

Customer service in the UK has a problem. According to recent survey data, almost half of UK customers have experienced poor customer service over the past year. That's not a minor data point, but rather a warning sign. Long wait times, unhelpful responses, and automated loops that dead-end are just the beginning, and they erode customer trust quickly. While many businesses have invested heavily in digital tools and AI to help address these problems, that comes with its own drawbacks.

Feeling overwhelmed isn't a time-management problem - it's a leverage problem. But understanding smart AI strategies can get you out of the weeds and back to focusing on the kind of work that actually helps your business grow. You'll learn how to turn AI into an invisible team working behind the scenes to support your business without adding more tools, noise or complexity.

Threat hunting is in flux. What started as a largely reactive skill became proactive and is progressing toward automation. Threat hunting is the practice of finding threats within the system. It sits between external attack surface management (EASM), and the security operations center (SOC). EASM seeks to thwart attacks by protecting the interface between the network and the internet. If it fails, and an attacker gets into the system, threat hunting seeks to find and monitor the traces left by the adversary so the attack can be neutralized before damage can be done. SOC engineers take new threat hunter data and build new detection rules for the SIEM.

Results of the survey, conducted in April, have been compiled into GitLab's 2024 Global DevSecOps Report, which was announced June 25. Among the findings, 78% of respondents said they are currently using AI in software development or plan to in the next two years, an increase from 64% of respondents who said they were using or planning to use AI in development last year.

"This has been said a thousand times before, but allow me to add my own voice: the era of humans writing code is over," Dahl wrote. "Disturbing for those of us who identify as SWEs, but no less true. That's not to say SWEs don't have work to do, but writing syntax directly is not it."

Land Gorilla said the integration combines the Encompass Partner Connect framework with the company's artificial intelligence tools. Using automated workflows and AI-based document processing, the system maps construction budget data directly to loans, reducing the need for manual data entry and streamlining draw management. This is a major step forward for construction lending, said Sean Faries, CEO of Land Gorilla.

The biggest success so far of generative artificial intelligence in the enterprise is AI coding tools that assist programmers. Startups such as Cursor, Replit, Lovable Labs, Harness, Windsurf, Augment Code, All Hands AI, and Microsoft, with its Visual Studio with GitHub Co-pilot, all offer programs that can drastically reduce the hand-coding humans need to do. And so I wondered: Could a newbie like me, with limited programming knowledge, talk my way through creating an app?

What if you could create a cinematic ad so stunning, so polished, that viewers would swear it cost tens of thousands of dollars, only to reveal it was made for mere cents? Below, Robo Nuggets breaks down how AI is transforming ad production, making high-quality, professional-grade content accessible to everyone, regardless of budget or experience. Imagine producing a complete ad, complete with custom visuals, music, and voiceovers, for under $3.

"Our customers don't live in front of a laptop day in and day out; they live in the dirt," Hootman said. "The ability to get the insights and take the action that they need while they're doing the work is very important to them."

"It's hard to find a game company here today that isn't using AI in some way. At the very least, companies are using either ChatGPT or Gemini."

Many current gig economy jobs are at risk of automation as AI usage expands, Tim Fung, founder and CEO of Airtasker, said in an interview with Business Insider. Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash are already making some deliveries using self-driving vehicles. Fung estimated that human ride-hailing drivers could be eliminated within three to five years. AI is also likely to replace many data science, coding, and engineering workers in the near term, Fung said.

This notion masquerading as a truism sounds good. We like it. We want it to be true. It alleviates the need to worry about what AI is doing to our profession. It assures we will all have jobs in the future gazing out the window and thinking all day. And getting paid vast sums of money to do so. It's in every press release and white paper from vendors.

Programming with AI is still in its infancy, and yet it has already redefined what programming will be about in the immediate future. As a programmer, you are going to interact with a frigging robot that writes code on your behalf. What was science fiction yesterday is now a new reality, and it raises many questions. I won't pretend to have any answers here, just assorted thoughts.