From the sound of it, in-person meetings and events may still be a long way off for many Canadians
Tech
Nearly three out of four Canadians say virtual conferencing tools an 'excellent' alternative to interacting in person – Sarnia and Lambton County This Week
A student takes online classes at home, with his companions, using the Zoom APP during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in El Masnou, north of Barcelona, Spain April 2, 2020.
OTTAWA – In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly three out of four Canadians say virtual conferencing tools are an “excellent” alternative to interacting with people in person.
From the sound of it, in-person meetings and events may still be a long way off for many Canadians.
According to a survey produced by Leger Opinion (LEO) for the Association for Canadian Studies (ASC), 72 per cent of Canadians agreed with the statement that videoconferencing is an excellent alternative to interacting with people.
Asked how they feel about the experience of videoconferencing, a staggering 84 per cent of Canadian — including 94 per cent of Quebecers — responded “positive.”
Those numbers are surprising to ASC president Jack Jedwab in a time when the phenomenon of “Zoom fatigue” — the impression of feeling overly drained after a period of meeting over a videoconferencing tool such as Zoom — is increasingly documented.
“I didn’t expect that at all actually. Because, anecdotally, you hear from a lot of people saying they miss interactions with people or miss seeing people to the extent they did before the pandemic. But I think we’ve become accustomed to this idea of communication through videoconferencing,” Jedwab said in an interview.
“I don’t feel like I’m seeing Zoom fatigue in this data,” he said. “I think we’re going to see this large group, that has become accustomed to using headsets along with videoconferencing, maintain the habit.”
We’re actually creating a generation who will grow up interacting on Zoom
The survey, which polled 1,517 adult Canadians randomly recruited from LEO’s online panel between July 24 and 26, aimed to see how much Canadians are using videoconferencing tools like Zoom or Skype during the pandemic, as well as their feelings about the experience.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic early this year, most governments around the world exhorted their citizens to self-isolate at home as much as possible and avoid any unnecessary contact with others.
Since then, the use of videoconferencing platforms has exploded. Zoom saw its daily number of meeting participants jump from 10 million in December 2019 to 300 million in April. A competing platform, Microsoft Teams, recorded a 70 per cent rise in daily active users between March and April.
Nearly half (49 per cent) of Canadians said they used videoconferencing tools more than they used to before the pandemic, whereas only 16 per cent said they used them just as often or less.
Another 34 per cent declared they don’t use videoconferencing platforms at all, but Jedwab says age is a significant factor in determining if one’s use of the tools increased or not during the pandemic.
For example, 70 per cent of Zoomers — a nickname given to people born in the late 1990s and that was until now unrelated to the platform Zoom — reported an increased use of tools like Teams since the beginning of the pandemic.
“The baby Zoomers are using these platforms to a much more greater extent than the baby boomers,” who were by far the most likely to never use videoconferencing tools, Jedwab explained. “We’re actually creating a generation who will grow up interacting on Zoom.”
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Age, but also concern about catching COVID-19, is also a significant factor when it comes to the reason for using a platform like Zoom, as well as the time spent videoconferencing in a day.
Whereas work was the most common use for Canadians aged between 35 and 44 years old, personal reasons such as staying in touch with friends or family was the main driver for a majority of Canadian users over the age of 55.
Younger Canadians are also more likely to spend more time on video calls. For example, 57 per cent of adults under 25 said they spend over one hour per day on videoconference platforms, compared to 26 per cent of respondents between 45 and 54 years old.
One in 20 (5 per cent) of young adults said they spend six hours or more on video calls, though Jedwab suspects online schooling may be the main reason.
Unsurprisingly, the survey data also shows a strong correlation between anxiety about catching COVID-19 and the use of videoconferencing tools.
“The people that really like videoconferencing are the ones who are more stressed about going outside their house. The ones who least like videoconference are the ones who are not that stressed about going outside their house. They don’t want to live on Zoom” regardless of the pandemic, Jedwab said.
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Artificial intelligence‘s recent rise to the forefront of business has left most office workers wondering how often they should use the technology and whether a computer will eventually replace them.
Those were among the highlights of a recent study conducted by the workplace communications platform Slack. After conducting in-depth interviews with 5,000 desktop workers, Slack concluded there are five types of AI personalities in the workplace: “The Maximalist” who regularly uses AI on their jobs; “The Underground” who covertly uses AI; “The Rebel,” who abhors AI; “The Superfan” who is excited about AI but still hasn’t used it; and “The Observer” who is taking a wait-and-see approach.
Only 50% of the respondents fell under the Maximalist or Underground categories, posing a challenge for businesses that want their workers to embrace AI technology. The Associated Press recently discussed the excitement and tension surrounding AI at work with Christina Janzer, Slack’s senior vice president of research and analytics.
Q: What do you make about the wide range of perceptions about AI at work?
A: It shows people are experiencing AI in very different ways, so they have very different emotions about it. Understanding those emotions will help understand what is going to drive usage of AI. If people are feeling guilty or nervous about it, they are not going to use it. So we have to understand where people are, then point them toward learning to value this new technology.
Q: The Maximalist and The Underground both seem to be early adopters of AI at work, but what is different about their attitudes?
A: Maximalists are all in on AI. They are getting value out of it, they are excited about it, and they are actively sharing that they are using it, which is a really big driver for usage among others.
The Underground is the one that is really interesting to me because they are using it, but they are hiding it. There are different reasons for that. They are worried they are going to be seen as incompetent. They are worried that AI is going to be seen as cheating. And so with them, we have an opportunity to provide clear guidelines to help them know that AI usage is celebrated and encouraged. But right now they don’t have guidelines from their companies and they don’t feel particularly encouraged to use it.
Overall, there is more excitement about AI than not, so I think that’s great We just need to figure out how to harness that.
Q: What about the 19% of workers who fell under the Rebel description in Slack’s study?
A: Rebels tend to be women, which is really interesting. Three out of five rebels are women, which I obviously don’t like to see. Also, rebels tend to be older. At a high level, men are adopting the technology at higher rates than women.
Q: Why do you think more women than men are resisting AI?
A: Women are more likely to see AI as a threat, more likely to worry that AI is going to take over their jobs. To me, that points to women not feeling as trusted in the workplace as men do. If you feel trusted by your manager, you are more likely to experiment with AI. Women are reluctant to adopt a technology that might be seen as a replacement for them whereas men may have more confidence that isn’t going to happen because they feel more trusted.
Q: What are some of the things employers should be doing if they want their workers to embrace AI on the job?
A: We are seeing three out of five desk workers don’t even have clear guidelines with AI, because their companies just aren’t telling them anything, so that’s a huge opportunity.
Another opportunity to encourage AI usage in the open. If we can create a culture where it’s celebrated, where people can see the way people are using it, then they can know that it’s accepted and celebrated. Then they can be inspired.
The third thing is we have to create a culture of experimentation where people feel comfortable trying it out, testing it, getting comfortable with it because a lot of people just don’t know where to start. The reality is you can start small, you don’t have to completely change your job. Having AI write an email or summarize content is a great place to start so you can start to understand what this technology can do.
Q: Do you think the fears about people losing their jobs because of AI are warranted?
A: People with AI are going to replace people without AI.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Tuesday that it would provide up to $325 million to Hemlock Semiconductor for a new factory, a move that could help give Democrats a political edge in the swing state of Michigan ahead of election day.
The funding would support 180 manufacturing jobs in Saginaw County, where Republicans and Democrats were neck-in-neck for the past two presidential elections. There would also be construction jobs tied to the factory that would produce hyper-pure polysilicon, a building block for electronics and solar panels, among other technologies.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on a call with reporters that the funding came from the CHIPS and Science Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022. It’s part of a broader industrial strategy that the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, supports, while Republican nominee Donald Trump, the former president, sees tariff hikes and income tax cuts as better to support manufacturing.
“What we’ve been able to do with the CHIPS Act is not just build a few new factories, but fundamentally revitalize the semiconductor ecosystem in our country with American workers,” Raimondo said. “All of this is because of the vision of the Biden-Harris administration.”
A senior administration official said the timing of the announcement reflected the negotiating process for reaching terms on the grant, rather than any political considerations. The official insisted on anonymity to discuss the process.
After site work, Hemlock Semiconductor plans to begin construction in 2026 and then start production in 2028, the official said.
Running in 2016, Trump narrowly won Saginaw County and Michigan as a whole. But in 2020 against Biden, both Saginaw County and Michigan flipped to the Democrats.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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