Author: automata

Need to reset economic thinking

Need to reset economic thinking

Peter Lyons. We are living in an age of rising inequalities on a variety of fronts, writes Peter Lyons.

My friend got her "proposed restructuring" letter two years ago. In the mumbo jumbo terminology of modern management, her position was being "disestablished". She had been in customer services with the firm for more than 10 years on a middle income. It took her six months to find alternative work. In her own words, she had been living in a bubble and hadn’t realised how tough the labour market had become. Salaries offered for similar roles had dropped significantly with […]

Automation May Undermine President Trump’s Jobs Reshoring Plan

Automation May Undermine President Trump’s Jobs Reshoring Plan

One of Donald Trump’s campaign promises was to bring back manufacturing jobs by renegotiating trade deals which have been disadvantageous to American workers and also by improving the business environment generally.

On Thursday, the Trump jobs strategy was discussed on the Fox Business channel, including renegotiating NAFTA and rejecting the Trans Pacific Partnership. Returning manufacturing can certainly be accomplished, and is already occurring to a degree (“reshoring”) due to a troublesome and growing trend that went undiscussed during the campaign — automation, in the form of robots and more advanced software . A robot-assisted American in a reshored factory might […]

Robots endanger up to two-thirds of emerging economy jobs

Robots endanger up to two-thirds of emerging economy jobs

Photo: Shutterstock Photo: AP Robots could be set to displace millions of jobs across the globe with industries favouring a digital revolution at the expense of human workers, according to a report from the United Nations .

Artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace is most prevalent in the automotive and electronic industries and countries with a particular focus on exports, such as Mexico and developing economies in Asia, are identified as the “most exposed” to an AI influx, according to a policy brief by the UN Conference on Trade and Development published this week in conjunction with research from the […]

Trump can’t resuscitate the Rust Belt, and his voters may well know it

Trump can’t resuscitate the Rust Belt, and his voters may well know it

So much for the new economy. Donald Trump’s path to the White House ran through a handful of old economy states whose voters are presumably now counting on the Republican president-elect to bring back all those auto, steel and coal-mining jobs that once powered their region.

What are the odds of that?

During the campaign, Mr. Trump identified the North American free-trade agreement as the main source of the Rust Belt ills. This struck a chord with working-class voters in Michigan, a state that hadn’t voted Republican in a presidential election since 1988, and which strongly backed President Barack Obama (who […]

Why Bringing Factories Back Won’t Save Manufacturing Jobs

Why Bringing Factories Back Won't Save Manufacturing Jobs

To working class Americans, President-elect Donald Trump offered an attractive vision for the country’s future — a pledge to restore factories that had been outsourced to foreign nations and, in doing so, bring back manufacturing jobs.

The issue is that, regardless of where the factories are located, they’re increasingly automated. The jobs didn’t necessarily disappear because the factories relocated or because illegal immigrants took them over; they disappeared because the jobs have largely been automated in the modern manufacturing world. This meme reveals the problem with Trump’s promise to workers in the manufacturing industry.

Though the manufacturing industry has experienced […]

Great Trump job hoax

US President-elect Donald Trump made his appeal to the electorate mainly based on how the US economy is treating certain classes of workers. For example, Trump dismisses out of hand the claim that global warming/climate change is being caused in a large part by the burning of fossil fuels and accuses China of perpetrating a great hoax on the world.

Hence he promises that workers who lost their jobs, say, in coal mines because of climate change issues, will be reinstated and the mines reopened. Also, he will build a wall between Mexico and the US to prevent illegal immigrants […]

Robots endanger millions of jobs worldwide, Asian economies “most exposed”

Robots endanger millions of jobs worldwide, Asian economies

Robots could be set to displace millions of jobs across the globe with industries favouring a digital revolution at the expense of human workers, according to a report from the United Nations.

Mexico and Asia ‘most exposed’

Artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace is most prevalent in the automotive and electronic industries and countries with a particular focus on exports, such as Mexico and developing economies in Asia, are identified as the "most exposed" to an AI influx, according to a policy brief by the UN Conference on Trade and Development published this week in conjunction with research from […]

Robots threaten 2/3 jobs in developing world, could save first-world economies – UN

Robots threaten 2/3 jobs in developing world, could save first-world economies – UN

Get short URL Donald Trump could realize his dream of bringing manufacturing jobs back to America if the country adopts the latest innovations in robotics. Yet the impact of “reshoring” on low-skill jobs in certain developing countries could be disastrous, the UN warned.

Citing World Bank data, a brief from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) claims that up to two-thirds of all jobs in the developing world could be replaced by automation, which is becoming increasingly prevalent in car-making and electronics. © Unctad.org Robots could put more than 1mn Brits out of work by 2030 – […]

Carl Wernicke: The Economy & Automation

Carl Wernicke: The Economy & Automation

Credit IHMC Last weekend I visited the clean energy festival downtown. I met the owner of a Tesla, the innovative electric car. He giddily described a phone app that opens his garage, starts the car and backs it out into the driveway.

But just wait, he said. Soon the car will be able to drive him to work, then head out on its own to work for Uber all day before returning to ferry him home.

That points to the economic challenge facing our new president.We are facing a rapid acceleration of a current trend: the replacement of human workers with […]

From Socks to BMWs: Robot Revolution to Impact Industries Differently

From Socks to BMWs: Robot Revolution to Impact Industries Differently

Artificial intelligence Could this be our future? A world where robots carry out jobs to the same level as, if not a hundred times better, than human beings?

Workplace automation is a reality and replacing humans with machines has been going for some time now. This global trend, caused by the onset of the Fourth Industrial Revolution of the mid-twentieth century, where humans made way for AI, is rapidly picking up.

Word Economic Forum (WEF) experts say that in 2020 there will be seven million jobs less than there are now due to automation. Oxford University experts warn that 20 […]