Author: automata

Why Agriculture Could Be Automated Before Other Industries

Why Agriculture Could Be Automated Before Other Industries

[Photo: Rasmus Landgreen via Unsplash] In 1870, agriculture was a source of employment for about half the U.S. workforce; now just 2% of the population produces food for a living, according to government figures. As large machines have increasingly done the work of ploughing and harvesting crops and tending to livestock, farms have become ever more human-free. And what of the future? They may provide barely any jobs at all. The new age of farm machines include weeding robots , self-driving tractors , and crop- spraying drones . The drivers: higher productivity, an aging human workforce (principal farmers are […]

The United Nations claims automation will take 2/3rds of jobs in developing nations

The United Nations claims automation will take 2/3rds of jobs in developing nations

What a fitting time. Seeing as America just elected the least qualified party to handle the automation problem in America as well as a candidate promising the return of automatable jobs, we now know the sights and conflict are poised to wreck the fuck out of the developing world. They have it worse than many first world societies, where the concerns are one in three jobs are dissolved. All figures, assuming the worst of them pose true, are concerns for social conflict, insecurity, and instability.

Have some more darkly sobering news today . Some excerpts… Industrialization has historically been […]

Trump promises to bring back manufacturing jobs, but robots won’t let him

Trump promises to bring back manufacturing jobs, but robots won’t let him

For Americans struggling with stagnant wages, under- or un-employment, one of Donald Trump’s most appealing campaign promises was to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.

Navigating the complexities of policy, tariffs and geopolitics would make that hard enough already for the president elect. But technology will make this promise nearly impossible to fulfill.

Why? Because manufacturing jobs are increasingly done by robots, not people.Robotics have already helped reduce reliance on labor overseas for manufacturers in automotive, electrical and electronics industries, according to a fresh policy report from the United Nations Conference on Trade & Development. And automation does allow manufacturers […]

Tech world, you are also to blame for the rise of Donald Trump

Tech world, you are also to blame for the rise of Donald Trump

NEW YORK, UNITED STATES – NOVEMBER 9: Supporters of President-elect Donald Trump of Republican Party, gather in front of the Midtown Hilton Hotel where Trump will make his victory speech as the results of the 2016 Presidential Election became clear in New York, NY, USA on November 9, 2016. Republican nominee Donald Trump won victory against Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton on US presidential election. Photo by Volkan Furuncu/Anadolu Agency/ Opinion: We are largely here because internet technology may have improved global communication, but it has decimated American jobs. Let this be a wake up call

Two months ago, […]

Will automation render labour useless?

As the industrial revolution gradually took hold in England and other parts of Europe, machines increasingly came to replace manual labour. Not everybody was happy at this development, especially those who lost their means of earning bread and butter.

One group, later to be called the ‘Luddites’, resorted to violence and broke up machines that were intended to replace manual labour. Since that time, any anyone who casts aspersions on technological advancement and its effects on labour has been labelled Luddites.

Since the Industrial Revolution, Luddism has been kept in check largely owing to the fact that the requirement for human […]

Grave new world: Robots do the work, humans get the money

Grave new world: Robots do the work, humans get the money

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. File photo. Image by: STRINGER / REUTERS The billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX says rapid changes to the workforce from automation are likely to force us to introduce a "universal basic income" in which people will have to be supported by a stipend instead of working for a living.

Musk has been vocal in his warnings about the potential downside of the rise of the robots. He has invested millions in OpenAI, a project to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits mankind, rather than destroys it, and last week he said it was only a matter […]

Supply Chain News: Are Manufacturers Waiting for the Next Recession to Deploy All the Robots?

There have clearly been tremendous, almost mind-boggling improvements in robotic technology in recent years. Yet, the impact on employment in the US thus far – especially in the manufacturing sector – has been modest at best to date. Despite the rise of robotic capabilities over the period since the recession year of 2009, US manufacturing employment is up slowly but steadily, though tailing off just a bit in the past year, as can be seen in the chart below from the St. Louis branch of the Federal Reserve bank.
The gray vertical bars in the chart indicate recessions, and […]

Robots, Not the Chinese, Are Taking American Factory Jobs

Robots, Not the Chinese, Are Taking American Factory Jobs

Factory production in America has maintained a steady growth over the past few decades, making the country No. 2 in the world just behind production powerhouse China. However, as machines begin to take over and do much of the manufacturing work, factory jobs have declined significantly.

Since 1979, when manufacturing employment peaked in the United States, it has lost more than 7 million factory jobs due to an increase of the use of robots in factories, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Meanwhile, critics such as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump have often blamed low-wage foreign workers from Mexico and […]

Elon Musk lays out his argument for universal basic income

Elon Musk lays out his argument for universal basic income

Enlarge Tesla CEO Elon Musk says universal basic income will be necessary as automation takes… more Tesla CEO Elon Musk says universal basic income will be necessary as automation takes over jobs. Tesla CEO Elon Musk says automation will likely put so many people out of work that the government will have no choice but to adopt universal basic income, paying every person a monthly stipend large enough to cover their living expenses with no strings attached.

“I think that there’s a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation […]

It’s the one thing Trump and Clinton agree on – and it’s probably a fantasy

It’s the one thing Trump and Clinton agree on – and it’s probably a fantasy

On Sept. 8, 2010, General Motors workers cheer as the first Chevrolet Cruze compact sedan off the assembly line, at the GM factory in Lordstown, Ohio. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta) If there’s one thing Americans agree on, it’s collective nostalgia for the days when workers actually made things — when American factory workers earned good wages helping to crank out cars, refrigerators, furniture and other goods for consumers in the U.S. and around the world. So it’s no surprise that politicians are also united in pledging to bring those manufacturing jobs back to America, as both Donald Trump and Hillary […]