Latest news with #AI-driven
Asahi Shimbun
a day ago
- Business
- Asahi Shimbun
Rising rice prices fueling consumer shift toward noodles, pasta
Udon and tempura rice bowl combo meals, priced at 399 yen before tax, at an Ito-Yokado store in Tokyo's Ota Ward on May 22 (Sho Ito) Japanese consumers have made a sharp shift away from high-priced rice to noodles and other cost-effective staples, the start of a possible sea-change in diets in the country, retailers and industry experts say. Supermarkets and convenience store chains have ramped up development and production of such non-rice items for price-conscious consumers as AI-driven market forecasts suggest rice will remain expensive in the years to come. Major supermarket chain Ito-Yokado Co., for example, expanded its range of combination meals that pair 'udon' noodles with rice bowls, or 'donburi.' While the ever-popular 'tendon'—steamed rice topped with assorted tempura—remains a mainstay, the company in March introduced several new options, such as 'sauce katsu-don,' featuring a breaded, deep-fried pork cutlet drizzled with a Worcestershire-style sauce, and 'karaage-don,' topped with crispy, deep-fried marinated chicken. These items are priced at 430 yen, including tax, and have been selling well. 'We're seeing noticeable shifts in consumer behavior and home dining habits,' said Masashi Nakatsubo, general manager of Ito-Yokado's prepared foods division. He said shoppers are gravitating toward noodle-based meals as a cost-effective alternative to expensive rice dishes. The company is not only accelerating development of combination dishes but is also enhancing its lineup of standalone noodle dishes to broaden their appeal. One standout is 'Bara-ten Himokawa Udon,' a regional specialty from Gunma Prefecture featuring wide, ribbon-like 'himokawa' noodles topped with assorted tempura. Introduced in March at the same price point of 430 yen, the dish has quickly become the chain's best-selling noodle item. 'Its novelty, affordability and generous portion size have really struck a chord with customers,' Nakatsubo said. Ito-Yokado continues to expand its product lineup in response to evolving consumer tastes, introducing such options as 'Neapolitan,' a Japanese pasta dish featuring spaghetti stir-fried in a sweet and tangy ketchup-based sauce. Priced at 430 yen, the dish is prepared in-house to keep production costs low and maintain affordability. This initiative is part of a broader industry trend, as major retailers pivot to diversify their ready-made meal offerings amid persistently high rice prices. In March, convenience store chain Lawson Inc. launched a new series of 'Yokubari Gattai Meshi' (generous combo meals,) which pair two popular dishes in a single container. Offerings such as 'Fried Rice & Chinese-style Yakisoba (stir-fried wheat noodles)' and 'Omurice (omelet combined with fried rice) & Neapolitan,' both priced at 743 yen, have been smash hits. Cumulative sales of these items have already surpassed 2 million units, prompting the company to roll out additional items later this month. In a related move, Lawson also debuted its 'Okazu-don!' series in March. These rice bowls feature a smaller serving of rice offset by hearty portions of noodles and side dishes, offering a well-balanced and satisfying meal. The concept has resonated with budget-conscious shoppers, and Lawson plans to expand the lineup. Other alternatives to rice, such as 'mochi-mugi' (glutinous Japanese pearl barley), a type of barley with a chewy texture due to its high beta-glucan content, are also gaining popularity. At Natural Lawson, a health-focused sub-brand with about 130 stores concentrated in the Tokyo metropolitan area, all chilled bento meals have included rice blended with mochi-mugi since March. High-end supermarket Seijo Ishii is also making adjustments. By the end of May, its popular 'Soup Rice Featuring Japanese Chicken Soboro (ground meat cooked and crumbled into fine, small pieces) and '16-Grain Mix and Four Beans' will incorporate mochi-mugi, in addition to the existing multigrain blend. POPULAR PASTA Such trends are expected to continue. 'Due partly to the ongoing rice shortage and rising prices, shipments of pasta and pasta sauces have seen significant growth,' Eiichi Suzuki, managing executive officer at major food manufacturer Nisshin Seifun Group Inc., said at a recent earnings briefing. The company estimates pasta sales for fiscal 2024 rose 3.4 percent year on year. 'Pasta's versatility in flavor and sauce combinations makes it an appealing choice for consumers looking to avoid mealtime monotony,' a company spokesperson said. In some supermarkets, where rice stock-outs have become common, customers are even being directed to the pasta aisle. At Pietro Co., a Fukuoka-based food manufacturer known for its pasta sauces, sales of pasta-related products surged by 30 percent year on year in fiscal 2024. 'The appearance rate of pasta on dinner tables rose by about 15 percent in February,' said Shinichi Miyagawa, representative director and senior managing director. 'The impact of rice price hikes was certainly a contributing factor.' Even simple noodle condiments are experiencing a surge in demand. Kikkoman Corp.'s 'Gumen' series of six ready-made noodle sauces with flavorful toppings saw sales climb more than 10 percent in March and April compared with the same period last year. A standout performer was the 'Gumen Hakata Mentaiko Udon,' featuring spicy marinated pollock roe ('mentaiko'), which more than doubled its sales from the previous year. PROLONGED HIGH RICE PRICES Tasuku Kashiwamura, a senior researcher at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute Inc., used AI-driven modeling to forecast retail rice prices per 5 kilograms from 2025 through 2027. His analysis points to a 55-percent likelihood that rice prices could surpass 4,500 yen by 2027. There is also a 30-percent chance of a steady and prolonged price increase. In a more optimistic scenario, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said during a recent Diet session that rice prices should stabilize or fall back into the 3,000 yen range. Kashiwamura's AI model showed there is just a 15-percent probability of this happening. He cautioned that sustained high prices may prompt consumers to reduce their rice consumption, shift to lower-priced brands, or increasingly turn to alternative staples. 'If the food service industry begins to pass these costs on to consumers, we could also see a decline in dining out,' he said. (This article was written by Sho Ito, Masaki Hashida and Shinya Matsumoto.)
The Star
2 days ago
- Business
- The Star
AI's arrival at work reshaping employers' hunt for talent
Predictions of imminent AI-driven mass unemployment are likely overblown, but employers will seek workers with different skills as the technology matures, a top executive at global recruiter ManpowerGroup told AFP at Paris's Vivatech trade fair. The world's third-largest staffing firm by revenue ran a startup contest at Vivatech in which one of the contenders was building systems to hire out customisable autonomous AI "agents", rather than humans. Their service was reminiscent of a warning last month from Dario Amodei, head of American AI giant Anthropic, that the technology could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years. For ManpowerGroup, AI agents are "certainly not going to become our core business any time soon," the company's Chief Innovation Officer Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic said. "If history shows us one thing, it's most of these forecasts are wrong." An International Labour Organization (ILO) report published in May found that around "one in four workers across the world are in an occupation with some degree of exposure" to generative AI models' capabilities. "Few jobs are currently at high risk of full automation," the ILO added. But the UN body also highlighted "rapid expansion of AI capabilities since our previous study" in 2023, including the emergence of "agentic" models more able to act autonomously or semi-autonomously and use software like web browsers and email. 'Soft skills' Chamorro-Premuzic predicted that the introduction of efficiency-enhancing AI tools would put pressure on workers, managers and firms to make the most of the time they will save. "If what happens is that AI helps knowledge workers save 30, 40, maybe 50% of their time, but that time is then wasted on social media, that's not an increase in net output," he said. Adoption of AI could give workers "more time to do creative work" – or impose "greater standardization of their roles and reduced autonomy," the ILO said. There's general agreement that interpersonal skills and an entrepreneurial attitude will become more important for knowledge workers as their daily tasks shift towards corralling AIs. Employers identified ethical judgement, customer service, team management and strategic thinking as top skills AI could not replace in a ManpowerGroup survey of over 40,000 employers across 42 countries published this week. Nevertheless, training that adopts those new priorities has not increased in step with AI adoption, Chamorro-Premuzic lamented. "For every dollar you invest in technology, you need to invest eight or nine on HR, culture transformation, change management," he said. He argued that such gaps suggest companies are still chasing automation, rather than the often-stated aim of augmenting human workers' capabilities with AI. AI hiring AI? One of the areas where AI is transforming the world of work most rapidly is ManpowerGroup's core business of recruitment. But here candidates are adopting the tools just as quickly as recruiters and companies, disrupting the old way of doing things from the bottom up. "Candidates are able to send 500 perfect applications in one day, they are able to send their bots to interview, they are even able to game elements of the assessments," Chamorro-Premuzic said. That extreme picture was not borne out in a survey of over 1,000 job seekers released last week by recruitment platform TestGorilla, which found just 17% of applicants admitting to cheating on tests, and only some of those to using AI. Jobseekers' use of consumer AI tools meets recruiters doing the same. The same TestGorilla survey found almost two-thirds of the more-than-1,000 hiring decision-makers polled used AI to generate job descriptions and screen applications. But a far smaller share are already using the technology to actually interview candidates. Where employers today are focused on candidates' skills over credentials, Chamorro-Premuzic predicted that "the next evolution is to focus on potential, not even skills even if I know the skills you bring to the table today, they might be obsolete in six months." "I'm better off knowing that you're hard-working, that you are curious, that you have good people skills, that you're not a jerk – and that, AI can help you evaluate," he believes. – AFP
Techday NZ
2 days ago
- Business
- Techday NZ
Post-pandemic hiring finds footing as AI transforms tasks, not jobs
The global labour market is emerging from several years of upheaval, but economists at LinkedIn and OpenAI say a new force—generative AI—is beginning to reshape the nature of work in ways that are uneven across sectors. Speaking at the OpenAI Forum, Dr Karin Kimbrough, Chief Economist at LinkedIn, said, "Right now, I would say the labour market's actually reflecting a lot of macro cyclical effects," rather than widespread AI-driven displacement. She noted the hiring boom of 2021-2022 has since cooled, with companies largely holding onto talent and new hiring remaining cautious. "The labour market's looking for normalcy," Kimbrough said. "There's more competition than there was before, but not so much that people can't find a job." However, this overall stabilisation masks significant disparities. "If you are in what is considered like the knowledge worker space, it might be a lot more competitive for you right now to find the role that you want," she explained. By contrast, "The world is your oyster if you work in [retail, healthcare, or construction] industries." Kimbrough attributes these trends to structural factors and post-pandemic realignments, not solely to AI. "We are seeing just a huge demand and increase in roles \[in healthcare]. So we're seeing the number of roles open up—it's not just that people are looking for a role and are able to find one." While job loss due to AI remains a common fear, Kimbrough emphasised that, at this stage, "It's not elimination so much that we're seeing. It's more just people are adjusting, desperately trying to upskill so they can stay relevant." What is being displaced, she explained, are specific tasks within roles. "It's how they're spending their time in that role that is changing." Ronnie Chatterji, Chief Economist at OpenAI, agreed, saying that workers are "rotating from certain tasks to other tasks" rather than seeing their roles eliminated entirely. LinkedIn's data supports this, with increased emphasis on "AI literacy" - the ability to use AI tools effectively. "One of the fastest growing in-demand skills on the platform by employers is conflict resolution," Kimbrough added. "They're rising in tandem with the demand for AI literacy." Surprisingly, it's workers in more disrupted sectors - such as communications and marketing - who are most aggressively updating their profiles to signal AI capabilities. "They need to signal it because the last thing they want to do is be fighting over a job either because an AI could already do half of it or because someone else can do the other half... with AI." For early-career professionals, the post-pandemic hiring slowdown has been particularly acute. "It's been materially harder for new grads in the last year or so to find a role," Kimbrough said. "Employers are looking at their talent roles being full. Again, no one has quit." However, historical data offers some reassurance. "What we found... was that people catch up," she said. "In the first couple of years of their career, maybe they don't progress as fast, but eventually they catch up." She advised graduates to focus on agility, a willingness to learn, and human skills like communication and collaboration. "Even more important [than AI literacy] is communication skills, collaboration skills... leadership." Kimbrough also spoke about international labour markets, pointing to India as particularly dynamic: "A very young, well-educated, and very dynamic, large domestic economy." Yet she highlighted the challenge of making AI tools locally relevant, citing "accessibility of the digital divide and the relevance" as critical barriers to adoption. Adoption also varies widely by sector. Education, for example, lags significantly behind industries like finance or healthcare in hiring AI-literate talent. "Even so, we see them growing at really rapid rates. Is itIt's just not at the same rate." Kimbrough revealed a shift in hiring strategies, noting that employers have reduced backfilling of vacated roles. Instead, they are prioritising new roles, particularly those related to AI. "If you are working in the AI space... you are just in a position of choice," she said, listing roles such as AI engineer, consultant, and researcher as the fastest-growing on LinkedIn. However, she noted that such an opportunity is not uniform: "If you are in other roles... it's been a little bit more challenging." The evolving job landscape also means career paths are becoming less linear. "It's far more organic, it is far more skills-based," Kimbrough said. "AI is so powerful, it's going to allow you to pivot into many more options for roles." Even at the executive level, LinkedIn data shows leaders now emerge from more diverse backgrounds. "So it's okay to have a broader base," she said. "If the thing you have your heart set on isn't working, go do something else and just get started." The discussion painted a nuanced picture: a stabilising labour market shaped more by macroeconomic tides than AI disruption, at least for now. But as AI adoption deepens, agility, skills signalling, and adaptability may well define success across all sectors.
Int'l Business Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Int'l Business Times
Tech Boom Powers US Stock Futures Ahead Of GDP Update
U.S. stock futures are surging as investors weigh the impact of tech earnings against upcoming economic data. According to Reuters, futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.4%, Nasdaq‑100 futures climbed 0.5%, and Dow futures ticked up 0.3% in early trading Thursday. This rally follows a truce in the Israel‑Iran conflict, which eased geopolitical tensions and lifted risk sentiment across markets, Investopedia reported. The strength of tech was front and center: Micron Technology's bullish revenue forecast—boosted by surging AI-driven data center demand—sent its shares up 1.3% pre-market, while Marvell and AMD also rallied around 2–3%. Notably, Nvidia hit a new all-time high, briefly becoming the world's most valuable company with a market capitalization of approximately $3.77 trillion. Microsoft, Nvidia's teammate in the AI arms race, similarly marked fresh peaks, underscoring the sector's leadership role. Economic data this morning painted a mixed picture: the Commerce Department confirmed a first-quarter GDP contraction of 0.5%, deeper than initially thought, attributed mainly to a surge in imports ahead of tariff hikes. However, jobless claims declined, hinting at a resilient labour market, as reported by Reuters. While markets digest this duality, Federal Reserve Chair Powell has urged patience on rate cuts—though President Trump is reportedly exploring a replacement before the term ends, adding political uncertainty. Nonetheless, futures now price in roughly 63 basis points of easing by year-end, with the first cut anticipated around September. Investors are now eyeing Friday's release of the Personal Consumption Expenditures report, the Fed's preferred inflation measure, for clues about monetary policy direction. In the meantime, tech earnings continue to steer the market, offering a cushion against macroeconomic ambiguity heading into the second half of 2025.
Axios
3 days ago
- Business
- Axios
Exclusive: Most companies aren't ready for AI-powered threats
Technology and security leaders at major companies have unrealistic expectations for what their AI security plans should look like, a new survey from Accenture finds. Why it matters: If companies aren't aware of the AI security threats they're up against, they're not going to be able to defend against them. By the numbers: 36% of the 2,286 security and technology executives who Accenture surveyed said that AI is outpacing their security capabilities. Only one in five execs said they're confident in their ability to secure their generative AI models against cyber risks. Yes, but: Accenture estimates that 90% of those companies lack the security standards they need to defend against present-day, AI-driven threats. Accenture surveyed executives who work at companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue. The firm also sanalyzed each of the companies' security practices to determine their AI threat readiness. The big picture: Fending off the emerging wave of AI security challenges will require companies to be proactive and adaptable. Security executives have already found they need to revise their AI-focused playbooks as often as every six weeks. Between the lines: While leaders play catch-up on their AI security plans, companies are plowing ahead in adopting AI anywhere they can. 86% of executives said they are planning to increase their AI investments this year. Yes, but: Protecting against most AI security problems doesn't require cyber pros to completely reinvent the wheel. Accenture recommends companies develop a security governance framework, which will help with concerns around data leaks and privacy. Companies should also invest in AI-driven cybersecurity tools to help automate specific processes and proactively defend against attacks.
