Tag: Services

Balancing Thailand’s healthcare resources: ageing, declining population, and medical tourism

Balancing Thailand's healthcare resources: ageing, declining population, and medical tourism

It’s been known for decades that Thailand is the home to the world’s most capable doctors and healthcare staff who can offer the best services, unlikely to be found anywhere else. Many famous Thai doctors have received their medical training in Western countries at renowned medical schools and institutions. They have accumulated their knowledge and experience along with the most advanced technology and techniques in healthcare. Coming back home from overseas studies, they have been able to gain more experience and reputation in their practice as specialists in many fields. There is still a lot of room to grow […]

Reskill to survive: Tech firms retrain staff on war footing

Reskill to survive: Tech firms retrain staff on war footing

Employees are being taught “new IT” skills such as digital, cloud and security, with artificial intelligence at the core. MUMBAI | NEW DELHI: Indian IT and IT services companies, including the ones that have been in the news for layoffs , are reskilling employees on a war footing.

Companies such as Accenture , Infosys NSE -0.13 % , Cognizant , Tech Mahindra NSE -0.46 % , Mphasis NSE -1.39 % , among others, are making an effort to reskill and prepare employees for the future.

Accenture has reskilled 85% of its technology workforce in India in the last three years. Employees […]

A New, Higher Minimum Wage Hurts Everyone

A New, Higher Minimum Wage Hurts Everyone

(Tethysimagingllc/Dreamstime.com) The House just recently passed the Wage Act to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. In the midst of their self-congratulatory back slapping, comments like "it’s an important step towards creating an economy that works for everyone" were tossed around. But is that statement true?

Yes, it is true that surviving on $8 or $9, or even $10 an hour, particularly in expensive metropolitan areas like New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco, is difficult if not impossible. But raising the minimum wage is not going to provide a pathway out of poverty for workers making so […]

How Automation Makes Life – Not Just Work – More Human

Robotic process automation (RPA) is one of the most transformative technologies of the century, allowing enterprises to eliminate tedious tasks, freeing workers to focus on the higher-value, strategic work that only humans can do, and dramatically increasing efficiency and reducing costs in the process.

Businesses have long recognized the potential of RPA to transform the future of work, with the global market emerging as an estimated $100 billion opportunity according to KeyBanc Capital Markets. Gartner further estimates that by 2020, 40 percent of large enterprises will have deployed RPA software.

However, why should the benefit of RPA be confined to the […]

How artificial intelligence will do our dirty work, take our jobs and change our lives

How artificial intelligence will do our dirty work, take our jobs and change our lives

Fifty years after the moon landing, a new Irish Times series looks on what the future holds for us and the next generations. Here, part 1 explores how artificial intelligence will change our lives in the next half-century

At its crudest, most reductive, we could sum up the future of artificial intelligence as being about robot butlers v killer robots.

We have to get there eventually, so we might as well start with the killer robots. If we were to jump forward 50 years to see what artificial intelligence might bring us, would we – Terminator-style – step into a […]

Why Are Politicians Looking At Universal Basic Income?3 min read

Why Are Politicians Looking At Universal Basic Income?3 min read

In a 2018 poll, nearly half of Americans supported the idea of a Universal Basic Income program. This model that was created in hopes to increase equality and reduce poverty has been gaining popularity over time, dating back as early as 1516 with Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’ philosophy. Following More’s ideas on the benefits of a minimum income, Thomas Paine proposed a plan in 1796 to provide a basic endowment for all adults over 21 years of age. And if those names don’t ring a bell, in 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. was convinced that a guaranteed income is a […]

What do automation and artificial intelligence mean for Africa?

What do automation and artificial intelligence mean for Africa?

During the last four decades, manufacturers all over the world have outsourced production to countries with lower labor costs. American, European, and Japanese firms moved a lot of their production to developing Asia and Latin America, first helping countries like Malaysia and Chile, then others like China and Mexico, and then others like Vietnam and Bangladesh. Today, Chile and Malaysia are high-income economies, China and Mexico have become upper-middle, and Vietnam and Bangladesh have reached lower-middle-income. Africa’s turn was supposed to be next. But the latest round of technologies seems to be dealing Africa’s economic prospects a serious blow. […]

The real minimum wage is $0 (zero, nothing, nada) per hour

The real minimum wage is $0 (zero, nothing, nada) per hour

High minimum wages just help force a West Coast restaurant chain into bankruptcy , and it has already closed multiple locations. This means that a growing number of the chain’s workers will not be earning the legally mandated minimum wage of $15 an hour — and many earned more — but the economically realistic $0 per hour. In other words, nothing. Or for the multicultural and diverse politically correct crowd…nada. That’s Spanish for…nothing. And many only Spanish immigrant (both legal and illegal) speakers work in the food service and restaurant industries.

And that’s only a small example of the real-life […]

I, robot

I, robot

If you visit a website called willrobotstakemyjob.com, you can discover the probability of automation, at some point in the future, rendering your job either obsolete or safe. Since the Gazette is for lawyers, I can save you the bother – it is 4%.

This compares with a mere 0.8% for priests, 11% for journalists, 67% for bus drivers, and 94% for accountants and auditors, which perhaps goes a long way towards explaining why the ‘Big Four’ auditing and accountancy firms are making inroads into the legal space!

The calculation is based on a methodology developed by Oxford University researchers looking at […]

What Happened to Weirton? Part 5: Moving Forward

What Happened to Weirton? Part 5: Moving Forward

A crowd of attendees at the Festival of Nations at the Millsop Community Center in Weirton If someone had a crystal ball, they could tell you exactly what the future holds for Weirton. Sadly, there are no magic tools to make this a short story. But, with a bit of help from the gift of gab, I’ll tell you about the current trajectory of the area.

As it’s already been established, Weirton Steel offered a seemingly unbreakable backbone of employment, high wages, and community identity to the city and the nearby stretch of the Ohio Valley. The mill helped Weirton […]