Tag: robot

The Future Of Customer Service Is Humans And Machines Working Together

The Future Of Customer Service Is Humans And Machines Working Together

The robots are coming, and they are going to take our jobs. A simplification, perhaps – but if one were looking to find the simplest statement explaining the narrative following the era of automation, that would probably be it. In a world where customers can order on mobile, use a touchscreen or talk to an AI-based bot, the service industry will no longer need human workers, because machines will be able to do all of those jobs.

And while there are grains of truth mixed into that rather apocalyptic employment narrative, it gets a lot more wrong than it gets […]

OPINION | Jamie Dimon’s timely warning

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SOCIALISM is now woker than a two-for-one Che Guevara T-shirt sale, with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dominating the party’s imagination.

In a rare calling-out of this bogosity, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warned shareholders that “socialism inevitably produces stagnation, corruption and often worse.” He was echoing Winston Churchill’s observation that socialism allows for “the equal sharing of misery.” Why is it only capable of generating misery?Because under socialism, politics rather than productivity drives employment. Technological innovation is suppressed. Long ago, an Israeli explained to me that under socialism — Israel’s economic system until 1985 — you would always hire […]

Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang Is Wrong About the Future of Work

Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang Is Wrong About the Future of Work

Last evening, I attended a rain-soaked rally in New York City for long-shot Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang , a 44-year-old entrepreneur who is running on a platform based on three main ideas: a universal-basic income (UBI), Medicare for All, and what he calls "human-centered capitalism." He’s funny, smart, and forward-looking. Although he has effectively zero chance of becoming president (then again, who thought Donald Trump would ever win?) and his vision is built upon flawed premises (more on that in a moment), the conversation he’s trying to start is worth taking seriously, if only because his fear of […]

Back To The Future: Why We Must Look To The Past To Understand The Future Of Work

Back To The Future: Why We Must Look To The Past To Understand The Future Of Work

Not a day passes without a news article about the future of work. From the rise of AI and automation to the growing awareness of the need to reskill the global workforce to questions about what it means to lead in the new world of work, the future of work has become an integral part of the news cycle given its profound and widespread impact on all facets of society.

Yet, what seems to be lost in all these conversations about what is new is an interesting phenomenon where we are seeing the reversal of over 200 years of evolution […]

The good life after work

The good life after work

To manage the latest wave of automation, we must have ends that are more compelling than merely wanting more products and services. Robert Skidelsky Almost all ‘robots are coming’ stories follow a tried-and-true pattern. ‘Shop Direct puts 2,000 UK jobs at risk’ screams a typical headline . Then, quoting from authoritative reports from prestigious institutes and think tanks, the article in question usually alarms audiences with extravagant estimates of ‘jobs at risk’—that is, percentages of workers whose livelihoods are threatened by high-tech automation. To quote another representative example : ‘A new report suggests that the marriage of [artificial intelligence] […]

Workers should fear “so-so” innovations the most of all

After what was perhaps the biggest technological revolution in human history, workers ended up better off overall, even though many lost their jobs. This is something to keep in mind when considering the future of work.

In the 19th century and early 20th century, improvements in plows, tractors, and combine harvesters put millions of farmworkers out of a job. In the US, the number of people working agriculture fell from about 12 million in 1900 to just over 3 million in 1970 , even as the total population almost tripled over that time. (Most other rich nations followed a similar […]

White House 2019 economic report puts a shine on AI and its meaning for the future of work: Top takeaways

White House 2019 economic report puts a shine on AI and its meaning for the future of work: Top takeaways

Policy makers are asked to worry deeply about how workers will deal with the costs of reskilling if they aren’t paid for the duration of the reskilling period or their wages aren’t enough to pay the tuition. Artificial intelligence

Donald Trump

Future of Work Jobs Machine Learning Reskilling Tech on Capitol Hill Upskilling White House This article is part of new series ➝ Tech on Capitol Hill. The White House has put a brand new shine on its artificial intelligence (AI) game devoting 42 pages of its latest annual economic […]

Amazon’s New Robot Can Pack More Than 600 Boxes Per Hour

Amazon’s New Robot Can Pack More Than 600 Boxes Per Hour

Amazon has installed new robots in its facilities that can pack hundreds of objects per hour and has considered rolling the technology out across its factories. The robots can wrap packages inside boxes it custom-assembles to fit each item. While the robots cost over a million dollars each, Amazon expects to recover the costs within two years.

A new report claims that Amazon has considered rolling out the machines at dozens of warehouses, removing an estimated 24 positions with each rollout. Reuters notes that Amazon is interested in cutting humans out of the warehouse process altogether to save on labor […]

Maybe the robot will do you a favor and snatch your job

Maybe the robot will do you a favor and snatch your job

Recently, Amazon floated the idea that it would be fully automated in a decade: Not all of the 125,000 people who work at Amazon warehouses have to worry about losing their jobs to robots — not for 10 years or so, anyways.

On Tuesday, Scott Anderson, director of Amazon Robotics Fulfillment, led reporters on a tour of the company’s Baltimore warehouse during which he said it would be “at least 10 years” before Amazon could entirely automate the fulfillment process. When we read further into the story, of course, we find it’s not so simple. Robots are especially bad […]

Mining jobs are gone and won’t come back

Mining jobs are gone and won’t come back

About 2,100 mine workers are going to lose jobs following the announcement by Mopani Copper Mines to close its Mindolo North and Central shafts in Kitwe.
According to MUZ president Joseph Chewe 600 direct Mopani employees would lose jobs as a result while 1,500 workers employed by contractors will also lose jobs.
“It’s a worrisome trend which has now engulfed Mopani. Retrenchment is coming day-by-day. If you look at the lifespan of Mopani, the last 19 years, they have offloaded quite a huge number into the streets so they must be responsible not to always to cause misery to […]