06Jun

By an overwhelming majority, IT professionals like working from home.

In a survey released last week by the tech careers site Dice, 67% of the respondents said they like or like very much working from home. Only 10% were negative.

Dice began surveying IT professionals a few weeks ago about how they were coping with the coronavirus crisis. The survey probes their feelings on a variety of issues besides working remotely: their workload, their sense of job security, and their connectedness to colleagues, family, and friends.

The second survey, released May 11, shows little has changed since the first survey in April.

Workloads have remained fairly consistent. Between the two surveys, the percent of those saying their workload increased by twice or more declined slightly, though 34% still say it’s heavier than it used to be.

Fewer are saying they don’t like working from home at all, a sign that like other professionals, technologists are growing accustomed to remote work. That sentiment is reflected in their response to a question about how the pandemic is changing what they feel is important in a job. In the first survey, 66.7% said remote work. In the follow-up survey, that percentage jumped to 72.5%.

Regardless of how they feel about remote work, a majority agree the isolation is making them less connected to colleagues and friends. On the flip side, 36% say it’s made them feel more connected to family.

There is a growing sense of unease about job security. In the current survey, 73% said COVID-19 is making job security / stability more important in a job. Two weeks earlier, 70% said that.

Worries over job stability showed up even more clearly when they were asked about their individual job security. In April, 57% were confident about their job; 19% said they had total job security. Only 4% said they had no job security.

Two weeks later, those fearing they had no security at all increased to 5%, while those claiming total security dropped to 15%.

That’s likely why the percentage of those planning to look for a new job increased between the two surveys. While 69% have no plans to job hunt, 31% said they intend to start in the next two weeks. In the first survey, 27% said that.

Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash

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Anthropic Unveils Claude 3: Redefining AI Chatbots with Enhanced Capabilities

Anthropic, the AI startup backed by Google and with substantial venture capital, has just introduced the latest iteration of its GenAI technology: Claude 3. This announcement marks a significant advancement in AI capabilities, positioning Claude 3 as a formidable competitor even against OpenAI’s GPT-4.

Advanced Capabilities

According TechCrunch, “Claude 3, as Anthropic’s new GenAI is called, is a family of models — Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Opus, Opus being the most powerful. All show “increased capabilities” in analysis and forecasting, Anthropic claims, as well as enhanced performance on specific benchmarks versus models like ChatGPT and GPT-4 (but not GPT-4 Turbo) and Google’s Gemini 1.0 Ultra (but not Gemini 1.5 Pro).”

Multimodal Functionality

One notable feature of Claude 3 is its multimodal functionality, enabling it to analyze both text and images. This capability, like some iterations of GPT-4 and Gemini, allows Claude 3 to process various visual data such as, “…photos, charts, graphs and technical diagrams, drawing from PDFs, slideshows and other document types.” TechCrunch went further to note, “In a step one better than some GenAI rivals, Claude 3 can analyze multiple images in a single request (up to a maximum of 20). This allows it to compare and contrast images, notes Anthropic.” However, Anthropic has imposed limits on image processing to address ethical concerns, “Anthropic has disabled the models from identifying people…”

Claude 3’s Limitations

While Claude 3 showcases remarkable advancements, it’s not without limitations. TechCrunch reported that, “…the company admits that Claude 3 is prone to making mistakes with “low-quality” images (under 200 pixels) and struggles with tasks involving spatial reasoning (e.g. reading an analog clock face) and object counting (Claude 3 can’t give exact counts of objects in images).” Anthropic promises frequent updates to Claude 3, aiming to enhance its capabilities and address existing limitations. These updates will include improvements in following multi-step instructions, structured output generation, and multilingual support, making Claude 3 more responsive and adaptable to user needs.

As Anthropic continues to innovate and expand their offerings, the company remains dedicated to fostering a transparent and responsible approach to AI development. With substantial backing and a clear roadmap for future enhancements, Anthropic is poised to share the future of AI-driven solutions and pave the way for transformative advancements in various domains.

If you’re looking to take your career to the next level be sure to check out our IT page.

Businesses Are Seeing The Value of Blockchain Sample

Now organizations in sectors well beyond the pioneers in finance are investing in blockchain to protect data, decentralize processes and facilitate asset and data transfer.

“It’s an appealing model for many sectors, promising transparency and trust as it helps make value exchange possible,” says a SmartBrief article. Although focusing mostly on the financial sector, which is where blockchain found its earliest uses, the article mentions the steady creep of the technology into other industries and even slowly becoming commoditized as “blockchain as a service.”

“Amazon and Microsoft both currently offer BaaS, and enterprises as well as startups are taking advantage of it,” says SmartBrief. Citing a Gartner survey of CIOs, the article notes that “60% expected their firms to start or continue adopting blockchain-based technology between now and 2023.”

Earlier this year, Deloitte issued a blockchain trends report. Besides describing the evolving technology and the features each different approach offers, Deloitte found that some of the fastest growth in blockchain investments was coming in such unexpected industries as professional services – a sector that includes the staffing and employment industry – and energy and resources. In each of those 38% and 43% respectively of the firms surveyed were spending at least $5 million each on blockchain initiatives.

Not unexpectedly, the largest percentage of businesses investing in blockchain were in technology, media and telecom.

“More organizations in more sectors — such as technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, health care, and government — are expanding and diversifying their blockchain initiatives,” Deloitte observes.

Like the financial sector, life sciences and health care deal with highly sensitive medical data they must protect or face legal consequences. Those two sectors are where blockchain “can have a more immediate and meaningful impact,” says Deloitte. They are in an industry, the report explains, “In which data transparency, speed of access, immutability, traceability, and trustworthiness can provide the information necessary for life-altering decisions.”

Interestingly, Gartner assigns a similar importance – not life or death, but still vital – to blockchain’s value to media.

“Organizations and governments are now turning to technology to help counter fake news, for example, by using blockchain technology to authenticate news photographs and video, as the technology creates an immutable and shared record of content that ideally is viewable to consumers,” Gartner said.

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