August marched forward with a steady drumbeat of new highs, which was uncharacteristic for the month historically, and therefore a surprise to many investors. The S&P 500 rose 1.9 percent for the month, which included setting fresh records in the final stretch, including the S&P’s 20th record close of the year on Aug. 28. The Dow added 3.2 percent in August, and the Nasdaq gained 1.6 percent. The Nasdaq’s poorer performance was mostly weighed down by profit-taking in the semiconductor sector, after Nvidia’s blowout quarter of AI semiconductor chip sales failed to meet the market’s increasingly lofty expectations. Sometimes good news just isn’t good enough when stocks are priced for perfection.

Speaking of perfection, gold decided to join the party in earnest. The “barbarous relic,” as renowned economist John Maynard Keynes called it, touched $3,533 per ounce on Sept. 2, making fresh all-time highs as investors sought refuge from an increasingly uncertain world. When the 30-year Treasury bond flirts with 5 percent (as it did in early September) and questions swirl about central bank independence, even traditionalists start eyeing alternatives. Gold’s 42 percent year-to-date surge tells you everything you need to know about diminishing confidence in paper currencies, including in the world’s reserve currency, the U.S. dollar.

Never mind that gold pays no dividend, costs money to store, and has historically been a lousy investment over long periods. In uncertain times like these, it’s sometimes about return of capital rather than return on capital. When investors pay up for ballast during an equity rally, one should pay attention.

Under the surface, market breadth improved. Small caps finally showed some spark, with the Russell 2000 up about 7 percent in August, as investors looked for alternatives to the increasing price to earnings multiples of large cap growth stocks. That broadening mattered on days when AI hardware leaders slipped; it kept the tape resilient even as high-expectation names took a breather.

Nevertheless, market leadership still hinged on AI infrastructure. Nvidia’s $4 trillion in market value milestone reached in July set the tone coming into August. The market’s growth pulse held up enough, even as tech leadership wobbled on the last trading day of August.  The backdrop for markets making new highs has been earnings doing the lifting and continued confirmation of massive AI capital spending, not just multiple expansion. Around month-end, however, a mixed read-through from AI-linked earnings began to impact much of the tech sector, resulting in a tech sell-off on the first trading day after the Labor Day weekend. The lesson is as old as the tape: when expectations tower, even good news can be “not good enough.”

Rates, meanwhile, reminded everyone they’re still a main character in the valuation chapter, since they offer investors an alternative to cash and equities. The U.S. 30-year Treasury bond yield pushed toward 5 percent to start September, amid a heavy calendar of new issues to fund deficits and a global bond selloff related to concerns about U.S. Federal Reserve independence. When the long bond flirts with 5 percent, dependable cash flows matter more to traders and investors, and narratives about company growth prospects, less, often resulting in a rotation out of stocks and into bonds. Such a rotation brings money out of equities, lowering their prices, which then results in bond yields coming down, and a cycling back into equities as their returns again look more attractive. All asset classes continue to be fed by years of expansionary fiscal and monetary policies, fueling an excess supply of global liquidity.

The Federal Reserve’s annual late August retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, typically offers global central bankers a chance to pontificate about esoteric monetary policy while enjoying some fly fishing. This year, it turned into political theater. A weaker than previously reported jobs report had led to the unprecedented firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In part due to this revised data, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled that rate cuts might finally be on the horizon, suggesting “the time has come for policy to adjust.” The market loved it, with the S&P jumping 1.5 percent that day. But the celebration was soon tempered by relentless political pressure on the Fed.

Which brings us to the latest elephant in the room: the attempt to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook. President Trump’s move to fire Cook over unsubstantiated mortgage fraud allegations represents the first such attempt by a president to manipulate the Board of Governors in the Fed’s 111-year history. Cook, for her part, isn’t going quietly. She is suing to keep her job, arguing that unproven allegations don’t constitute “cause” for removal under the Federal Reserve Act. As this column is being written, the matter is tied up in the courts, where it belongs.

The markets have absorbed plenty of political theater this year, but this takes the cake. The Federal Reserve’s independence isn’t just some quaint tradition; it’s the bedrock of a sound global monetary system. Uncertainty about possible political manipulation of the debt markets, interest rates, the value of the U.S. dollar and liquidity caused global investors to start to look for alternative investments to U.S. Treasuries. And nervous markets are volatile markets.

The whole episode reminds one of another axiom: the market hates uncertainty. And in this situation, markets have uncertainty in spades.

With all this drama, you might think it’s time to head for the exits. Not so fast. Yes, we’re in uncharted territory with record valuations, political interference in monetary policy, and geopolitical tensions that would make a Cold War diplomat nervous. But that’s precisely when discipline matters most. The market has climbed a wall of worry for 16 years now, through pandemics, wars, banking crises, and more political drama than Shakespeare could have imagined. Those who stayed the course have been rewarded. Those who tried to time the market based on headlines have mostly been wrong.

The advice in this column remains boringly consistent: maintain a diversified portfolio of quality companies with strong balance sheets and sustainable competitive advantages. Volatile markets always provide opportunities. And don’t let politics drive your investment decisions. Markets do not move in straight lines, but they have rewarded discipline and time invested.

As for gold hitting new highs? Sure, it’s nice to see the gold bugs finally having their day. But remember, over the long term, stocks in growing, cash generating companies have trounced gold by a wide margin.

The road ahead will be bumpy. Between Fed independence under assault, valuations stretched, numerous and growing court challenges to White House edicts and a year of special elections promising more fireworks than the Fourth of July, volatility is virtually guaranteed. But volatility is the price we pay for long-term returns.

Stay invested. Stay diversified. The market will do what it does, regardless of what any of us think about it or politics. Excess global liquidity is still spiking the punch bowl. Our job is to stay the course and take advantage of opportunities when the market serves them up.

William Rutherford is the founder and portfolio manager of Portland-based Rutherford Investment Management. Contact him at 888-755-6546 or wrutherford@rutherfordinvestment.com. Information herein is from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. Investment involves risk and may result in losses.

The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed in the preceding commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Daily Journal of Commerce or its editors. Neither the author nor the 91��Ƶ guarantees the accuracy or completeness of any information published herein.

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By PAUL WISEMAN
AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Imagine a customer-service center that speaks your language, no matter what it is.

Alorica, a company in Irvine, California, that runs customer-service centers around the world, has introduced an artificial intelligence translation tool that lets its representatives talk with customers who speak 200 different languages and 75 dialects.

So an Alorica representative who speaks, say, only Spanish can field a complaint about a balky printer or an incorrect bank statement from a Cantonese speaker in Hong Kong. Alorica wouldn’t need to hire a rep who speaks Cantonese.

Such is the power of AI. And, potentially, the threat: Perhaps companies won’t need as many employees — and will slash some jobs — if chatbots can handle the workload instead. But the thing is, Alorica isn’t cutting jobs. It’s still hiring aggressively.

The experience at Alorica — and at other companies, including furniture retailer IKEA — suggests that AI may not prove to be the job killer that many people fear. Instead, the technology might turn out to be more like breakthroughs of the past — the steam engine, electricity, the internet: That is, eliminate some jobs while creating others. And probably making workers more productive in general, to the eventual benefit of themselves, their employers and the economy.

Nick Bunker, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, said he thinks AI “will affect many, many jobs — maybe every job indirectly to some extent. But I don’t think it’s going to lead to, say, mass unemployment. We have seen other big technological events in our history, and those didn’t lead to a large rise in unemployment.

Technology destroys but also creates. There will be new jobs that come about.”

At its core, artificial intelligence empowers machines to perform tasks previously thought to require human intelligence. The technology has existed in early versions for decades, having emerged with a problem-solving computer program, the Logic Theorist, built in the 1950s at what’s now Carnegie Mellon University. More recently, think of voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. Or IBM’s chess-playing computer, Deep Blue, which managed to beat the world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

AI really burst into public consciousness in 2022, when OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, the generative AI tool that can conduct conversations, write computer code, compose music, craft essays and supply endless streams of information. The arrival of generative AI has raised worries that chatbots will replace freelance writers, editors, coders, telemarketers, customer-service reps, paralegals and many more.

“AI is going to eliminate a lot of current jobs, and this is going to change the way that a lot of current jobs function,” Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said in a discussion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in May.

Yet the widespread assumption that AI chatbots will inevitably replace service workers, the way physical robots took many factory and warehouse jobs, isn’t becoming reality in any widespread way — not yet, anyway. And maybe it never will.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers said last month that it found “little evidence that AI will negatively impact overall employment.” The advisers noted that history shows technology typically makes companies more productive, speeding economic growth and creating new types of jobs in unexpected ways.

They cited a study this year led by David Autor, a leading MIT economist: It concluded that 60 percent of the jobs Americans held in 2018 didn’t even exist in 1940, having been created by technologies that emerged only later.

The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks job cuts, said it has yet to see much evidence of layoffs that can be attributed to labor-saving AI.

“I don’t think we’ve started seeing companies saying they’ve saved lots of money or cut jobs they no longer need because of this,” said Andy Challenger, who leads the firm’s sales team. “That may come in the future. But it hasn’t played out yet.”

At the same time, the fear that AI poses a serious threat to some categories of jobs isn’t unfounded.

Consider Suumit Shah, an Indian entrepreneur who caused a uproar last year by boasting that he had replaced 90 percent of his customer support staff with a chatbot named Lina. The move at Shah’s company, Dukaan, which helps customers set up e-commerce sites, shrank the response time to an inquiry from 1 minute, 44 seconds to “instant.” It also cut the typical time needed to resolve problems from more than two hours to just over three minutes.

“It’s all about AI’s ability to handle complex queries with precision,” Shah said by email.

The cost of providing customer support, he said, fell by 85 percent.

“Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely,” Shah posted on X.

Dukaan has expanded its use of AI to sales and analytics. The tools, Shah said, keep growing more powerful.

“It’s like upgrading from a Corolla to a Tesla,” he said. “What used to take hours now takes minutes. And the accuracy is on a whole new level.”

Similarly, researchers at Harvard Business School, the German Institute for Economic Research and London’s Imperial College Business School found in a study last year that job postings for writers, coders and artists tumbled within eight months of the arrival of ChatGPT.

A 2023 study by researchers at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University concluded that telemarketers and teachers of English and foreign languages held the jobs most exposed to ChatGPT-like language models. But being exposed to AI doesn’t necessarily mean losing your job to it. AI can also do the drudge work, freeing up people to do more creative tasks.

The Swedish furniture retailer IKEA, for example, introduced a customer-service chatbot in 2021 to handle simple inquiries. Instead of cutting jobs, IKEA retrained 8,500 customer-service workers to handle such tasks as advising customers on interior design and fielding complicated customer calls.

Chatbots can also be deployed to make workers more efficient, complementing their work rather than eliminating it. A study by Erik Brynjolfsson of Stanford University and Danielle Li and Lindsey Raymond of MIT tracked 5,200 customer-support agents at a Fortune 500 company who used a generative AI-based assistant. The AI tool provided valuable suggestions for handling customers. It also supplied links to relevant internal documents.

Those who used the chatbot, the study found, proved 14 percent more productive than colleagues who didn’t. They handled more calls and completed them faster. The biggest productivity gains — 34 percent — came from the least-experienced, least-skilled workers.

At an Alorica call center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, one customer-service rep had been struggling to gain access to the information she needed to quickly handle calls. After Alorica trained her to use AI tools, her “handle time” — how long it takes to resolve customer calls — fell in four months by an average of 14 minutes a call to just over seven minutes.

Over a period of six months, the AI tools helped one group of 850 Alorica reps reduce their average handle time to six minutes, from just over eight minutes. They can now field 10 calls an hour instead of eight — an additional 16 calls in an eight-hour day.

Alorica agents can use AI tools to quickly access information about the customers who call in — to check their order history, say, or determine whether they had called earlier and hung up in frustration.

Suppose, said Mike Clifton, Alorica’s co-CEO, a customer complains that she received the wrong product. The agent can “hit replace, and the product will be there tomorrow,” he said. ” ‘Anything else I can help you with? No?’ Click. Done. Thirty seconds in and out.”

Now the company is beginning to use its Real-time Voice Language Translation tool, which lets customers and Alorica agents speak and hear each other in their own languages.

“It allows (Alorica reps) to handle every call they get,” said Rene Paiz, a vice president of customer service. “I don’t have to hire externally” just to find someone who speaks a specific language.

Yet Alorica isn’t cutting jobs. It continues to seek hires — increasingly, those who are comfortable with new technology.

“We are still actively hiring,” Paiz says. “We have a lot that needs to be done out there.”

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By Sarah Jameson
Wealth of Geeks

In a traditionally male-dominated sector, where women make up less than 10 percent of the workforce, the construction industry is experiencing a transformative shift, signaling changes to come. The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the rise of modern construction practices are emerging as powerful catalysts for this shift.

These innovations are dismantling long-standing barriers and ushering in a new era of opportunities for women, challenging the norms in a field that has been slow to evolve.

David Jason Gerber, a University of Southern California professor whose research focuses on advanced technology in construction, told Patrick Sisson of The New York Times, “The construction industry is the largest in the world, in terms of dollars spent, yet we are the least productive in terms of technological adoption and productivity gains.”

This observation underscores the significance of the ongoing transformation.

Groundbreaking advancements by AI and modern construction methodologies are not merely bridging the gender divide, but are also fostering a wave of innovation and efficiency, reshaping the foundation of the construction industry, and paving the way for a more inclusive, progressive future.

AI, Modern Building Practices Leveling The Playing Field

Historically, the construction industry has been a man’s world, with physical strength being a key determinant of success. This focus on physical strength tended to overshadow the myriad of talents and abilities women could offer, limiting their employment and career advancements in the industry.

However, the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and modern building practices, such as modular buildings, is significantly altering this landscape and leveling the playing field.

Tim Taylor, director of research at the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER), said, “Modern construction does not depend on human muscle power; we use hydraulic power, pneumatic power, mechanical power, and electrical power to do the ‘heavy lifting’ so to speak.”

These changes open up opportunities for women to use their talents and make a meaningful impact in the construction sector.

This shift in focus allows women to leverage their organizational skills, attention to detail, and teamwork, which are invaluable in enhancing project outcomes.

AI, with its ability to automate tasks, analyze data, and optimize processes, further complements the strengths that women bring to the industry. It promotes a more inclusive environment where diverse skill sets are recognized and valued, allowing women to thrive and assume leadership roles.

In essence, integrating AI into modern building practices is reshaping the construction industry, breaking down traditional barriers, and recognizing women’s diverse strengths.

This evolution not only fosters gender diversity but also drives innovation and excellence in the field, as women’s unique perspectives and skills become integral to the success of construction projects.

Elevating Women With Training and Skill Enhancement

AI can transform how training and skill development unfold in the construction industry. The combination of AI and virtual reality (VR) is revolutionizing workforce training by creating immersive, interactive, and personalized experiences. This synergy is particularly effective in industries like construction, where practical skills and hands-on experience are vital.

By crafting lifelike construction scenarios using augmented reality (AR) and VR, AI offers women a fast track to gaining hands-on skills and knowledge in a comfortable, managed classroom setting.

This speedy learning curve equips women with vital skills and paves the way for their seamless integration into a broad spectrum of roles within the construction workforce.

This rapid skill acquisition brings women up to speed in an industry where men have accumulated on-the-job experience over decades.

This VR training, supported by AI, accelerates the learning process, with a PwC study indicating that VR trainees learn four times faster and are 275 percent more confident in applying new skills compared to traditional methods.

This accelerated learning process, facilitated by AI, is not just about equipping women with the tools of the trade; it’s about fostering an environment where their perspectives and talents are valued, as well as creating a diverse, inclusive workspace where everyone, regardless of gender, can contribute and climb the ladder of success.

Tackling Challenges, Championing Gender Equality

The path to achieving gender balance in construction still comes with its fair share of challenges.

The white paper from , titled ” In Her Own Words: Improving Project Outcomes,” illuminates the under-representation of women in the construction sector and offers strategies to boost their hiring and continued employment.

The paper emphasizes that tackling urgent matters like discrimination, sexual harassment, and uneven hiring practices is crucial for equality in the construction field.

The document also highlights the necessity for equal training opportunities, just treatment, and a unified push to promote women to leadership roles in the office and in the field, thus cultivating a culture of equality and regard.

The Future of Women in Construction

The fusion of Artificial Intelligence and modular construction is building the foundation for a construction industry that’s more balanced and inclusive.

These technological advancements are opening avenues that were once inaccessible to women, breaking down obstacles, and fostering innovation and inclusivity.

With the construction industry’s ongoing commitment to diversity and investment in forward-thinking education and training programs, women are stepping into critical roles.

They bring distinct perspectives and invaluable skills to the table, steering the industry towards a horizon characterized by advancement and ingenuity.

This article was produced by and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.

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