Vulnerable People and Places Blog

Photo by Patrick Hart Written by Patrick Hart In this, part two of I, Unemployed, I will take you through the frontline jobs in the publishing industry and explain how not even seasoned veterans of the trade will retain job security in the coming years . If the corporate desire for rapid profit growth exceeds a humanitarian desire to take time to implement these technologies in an ethical manner to stave off economic disaster, these positions will be at risk. Before that, let me quickly first define what AI models are at their basest root. AI models are programs that utilize artificial intelligence trained on immense amounts of data to analyze data, establish and recognize patterns, and solve queries on their own with minimal to no human interaction. Warehouse Workers and Drivers: The physical pivot point of the publishing business, books need to be moved from one point to another, stored and moved for sale in both a business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) capacity. ...

Photo by Patrick Hart Written by Patrick Hart Think about this for a second, across the breadth of human history, there have been many technological advances that allowed us as a species to flourish beyond life as nomadic tribes, as well as feed our innate propensity toward laziness. The wheel afforded humanity the ability to transport large amounts of goods and ourselves in fractions of the time and effort. Irrigation brought us agriculture, so we could settle and, by proxy, create complex societies, security, and art. The printing press led to the democratization of information, allowing what we know as a formal education to be more accessible to those less well off. And the industrial revolution was the start of our ability to mass produce goods, eventually bringing prices down for mass consumption.  On paper and long after the fact, these advances have been net wins for humanity once we eventually learn how to integrate our workforce in and around them. The assembly line, for i...

  Photo Credit: Chris Pietsch (University of Oregon SOJC) Homelessness is talked about throughout the United States and you can say that it is one of the biggest problems the country has. If it is, then why have the numbers not decreased? There are shelters that can take them in and also programs that can help the homeless get back on their feet, but it seems that even these aren't solving the problem.  Most of the time, people who become homeless, find it miserable and exhausting. They don't sleep in good conditions, showers are very limited, and being able to eat seems to be a commodity. They are shunned from the community to the point where they are kicked out in almost every spot of the world. So why is it that there are still many people that are homeless and stay homeless for a while, or even forever?  Homelessness and Jobs Don't Go Together People experiencing homelessness don't have the necessities to apply for a job since they might not have a clea...