Tag: academic

Facing The Unknown Future Of Work As AI Changes The Rules Of Business

Facing The Unknown Future Of Work As AI Changes The Rules Of Business

Even as we read about the first layoffs blamed at least in part on automation, there is still cause for optimism. While easily automated jobs may fall by the wayside, it’s important to remember that new jobs managing and leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) technology are being created.

Titles like edge computing release manager, edge stream researcher and AI analytics executive did not exist until very recently. Earlier this year, I hired a vice president of AI and robotic process automation. How many of us thought even ten years ago that a role like this would be so central for business […]

‘The UK is a long way behind in terms of productivity’: Mike Wilson, BARA

Chairman of the British Automation and Robot Association (BARA) Mike Wilson discusses the ‘underperforming’ state of the UK’s manufacturing robot industry. He says without an increased commitment to automation, it will find itself with bigger problems on its plate than Brexit.

“The UK is a long way behind in terms of productivity,” says Mike Wilson of the British Automation and Robot Association (BARA). “The increased use of robotics is an important element of addressing that shortfall.” Wilson is the chairman of BARA, an organisation that represents “the supply chain for robot and automation products into the UK”. Its membership consists […]

Listen, RBA, to Money Morning Readers

Listen, RBA, to Money Morning Readers

There you have it…

Last week, we found out why ScoMo defeated the Bill Australia couldn’t afford.

Voters went with the Liberals for economic reasons.In a JWS Research survey of 1,000 voters, 39% of them said economic issues were a key factor for their vote.One Morrison voter later said, ‘ Bill Shorten is no prime minister. ’‘ He would have sent us broke. He had no clue what climate change would cost or how long to charge an electric car. He looked incompetent. ’While I agree with the passionate voter, I’m not so sure Morrison had — or has — much […]

The Future Of Work

The Future Of Work

Envision a world where everyone is employed, everyone is happy with their work, and we coexist with artificial intelligence (AI) in our everyday life. What does that image look like? What jobs do you picture humans performing?

Such a utopian equilibrium may not be easy to visualize, but we are looking at a transition that is taking shape as I write.

Our ever-changing world with its unprecedented technological advances is creating a whirlwind of possibilities and challenges. One of the most deeply troubling questions is whether automation and AI might eventually replace every human activity imaginable. Glooming headlines shape the perception […]

Chip off the new block: Blockchain and the building sector

Chip off the new block: Blockchain and the building sector

What does blockchain mean for the construction sector? Will it change the ways in which we manage building assets? How will distribution and supply be altered by new digital technologies? Academics from the University of Auckland, Dermott McMeel and Alex Sims, have begun researching just such questions. Federico Monsalve sat down with them to glean an early indication of their process and thinking.

Federico Monsalve (FM): How did your interest in the applications of blockchain to the construction industry begin?

Dermott McMeel (DM): It is partly because, before being a researcher, I was an architect. My father was […]

Robots and us

Robots and us

Photo: Getty Images The robots are not at the gates and the future of work could be great, Kinley Salmon says. So why are others not so chipper? And what does Trump, Kaitangata and the demise of the middle class have to do with how we will live when automation takes over? Bruce Munro investigates.

In late-June, 1970, as Joyce Kempton stood in the fading light at the Balclutha bus stop waiting for her fiance, Sid Beck, to pick her up in his Mark II Zephyr, she was acutely aware of the air of concern pervading her hometown, Kaitangata.

Joyce […]

Most of America’s rural areas are doomed to decline

Most of America’s rural areas are doomed to decline

This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID highsm.13159. Since the Great Recession, most of the nation’s rural counties have struggled to recover lost jobs and retain their people. The story is markedly different in the nation’s largest urban communities.

I’m writing from Iowa, where every four years presidential hopefuls swoop in to test how voters might respond to their various ideas for fixing the country’s problems.

But what to do about rural economic and persistent population decline is the one area that has always confounded them all.The facts are […]

Opinion Bill Shorten’s promise of a living wage is both realistic and necessary. But it’s not enough

Opinion Bill Shorten's promise of a living wage is both realistic and necessary. But it's not enough

It ought to be possible to replace Australia’s minimum wage with a higher "living wage" without putting people our of work, but more will be needed. Opposition leader Bill Shorten will instruct the Fair Work Commission to replace the minimum wage with a higher “living wage” if Labor are elected to power. Image from Wikimedia/Matt Roberts, ABC. If elected, Labor has promised to ask the Fair Work Commission to substantially increase the minimum wage, at present pegged at A$18.93 per hour or $719.20 per week .

It says the intervention is justified because under current rules, the commission is required […]

The difference between a job and work

The difference between a job and work

Work satisfies a deeper urge than livelihood which, if denied, takes a significant political and social toll. AMONG the words that have infiltrated the vocabulary of common sense during the recent past, none is as egregious as ‘aspiration’. Its rampant use in the economic and political spheres has dented public awareness of reality. In the sphere of economics, in terms of both policies and propaganda, the use of ‘aspiration’ in various combinations and contexts has pushed aside common sense knowledge about life’s necessities. Things have come to a point where something as important as the need to work in […]

Bill Shorten’s promise of a living wage is both realistic and necessary. But it’s not enough.

Bill Shorten’s promise of a living wage is both realistic and necessary. But it’s not enough.

Today we kick off a four part election series on wages, industrial relations, Labor and the union movement. In the first, University of NSW professor Andreas Ortmann examines Labor’s proposal to have the Fair Work Commission award a so-called “living wage” instead of a minimum wage. You can read a comparison of Labor and the Coalition’s industrial relations policies here .

If elected, Labor has promised to ask the Fair Work Commission to substantially increase the minimum wage, at present pegged at A$18.93 per hour or $719.20 per week .

It says the intervention is justified because under current rules, […]