Author: automata

The Skills Delusion

The Skills Delusion

LONDON – Everybody agrees that better education and improved skills, for as many people as possible, is crucial to increasing productivity and living standards and to tackling rising inequality. But what if everybody is wrong?

Most economists are certain that human capital is as important to productivity growth as physical capital. And to some degree, that’s obviously true. Modern economies would not be possible without widespread literacy and numeracy: many emerging economies are held back by inadequate skills. John Andrews views the country’s civil war in the context of the Middle East’s strategic disarray, assessing how Shlomo Ben-Ami, Christopher Hill, […]

Players For Hire: Games and the Future of Low-Skill Work

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. Summary

In this whitepaper I will use trends from automation and video game revenue models to make the following predictions about the future of low-skill work.
> Within five years, some game companies will be paying players in some way to play their games. This will be in the form of small points-based incentives that can be liquidated in the form of purchasing power. Within […]

Looming threat! Automation threatens 69 per cent jobs in India, says World Bank

Looming threat! Automation threatens 69 per cent jobs in India, says World Bank

Mechanisation and technology have disrupted traditional industrial production, upended manual jobs and call time on the work that has been done by generations of families. WASHINGTON: Automation threatens 69 per cent of the jobs in India , while 77 per cent in China , according to a World Bank research which has said that technology could fundamentally disrupt the pattern of traditional economic path in developing countries.

"As we continue to encourage more investment in infrastructure to promote growth, we also have to think about the kinds of infrastructure that countries will need in the economy of the future. We […]

Two digital worlds

Two digital worlds

Much of the American election rhetoric has focused on the ongoing competitiveness and trade agreements with other countries, notably China, as well as those associated with the Trans Pacific Partnership. India and the US are on opposite sides of a digital divide — and it is not in the way you would expect. India is experiencing a digital deluge in its political and policy discourse whereas the US political and policy establishment is passing through a digital desert. This is odd because one always thinks of America as the centre of all things digital. Consider, first, developments in India. […]

Shaking hands with the robot

Shaking hands with the robot

Title: Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines Authors: Thomas H Davenport and Julia Kirby Publisher: Harper Collins Price: ₹899 An optimistic take on the impact of automation and artificial intelligence on work

Have you read a financial report by the Associated Press recently? Chances are that a non-human brain conceived and wrote it. AP — one of the biggest news agencies in the world — publishes more than 3,000 articles every quarter using an content-automation programme, Wordsmith. This ‘robot’ runs on technology from US-based big data analytics and language generation company Automated Insights.

Employment […]

Upgrading skills ‘key to mitigating impact of job automation in OECD countries’

Upgrading skills 'key to mitigating impact of job automation in OECD countries'

What impact has technological change had on job markets since the computer revolution of the 1980s, and how will machine learning and robotics impact on the future of work?

A new report from Carl Frey, Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment, and his colleague Thor Berger, gives a comprehensive overview of the subject of job automation as it affects OECD countries, and considers how policymakers might prepare for its potential impact.

The report for the OECD, Digitalisation, Deindustrialisation and the Future of Work , provides a systematic review of the literature examining the impact of digitalisation on […]

How Technology Can Defuse the Demographic Time Bomb

How Technology Can Defuse the Demographic Time Bomb

As people live longer and working age populations face hardship, technology could help ease the growing dependency burden. Society is currently faced with two converging phenomena. On the one hand, rapidly aging populations are supported by a shrinking working age population. On the other, those in work are increasingly being replaced by machines as result of the technological revolution. Yet these subjects are rarely discussed together, which is surprising given that technology has important implications for work and employment and the problem of old-age dependency is, as a matter of fact, a problem of work and production. As a […]

Automation nation: The robots are coming

Automation nation: The robots are coming

Andrew Wade, senior reporter

In a week where the Tories made ludicrous proposals for foreign workers that echoed the 1930s, I had the pleasure of attending a couple of conferences where people actually spoke intelligently.

Among the speakers at the FT’s Future of Manufacturing Summit on Tuesday was Rodney Brooks, founder and CTO of Rethink Robotics. The company’s Baxter and Sawyer robots are at the forefront of a new wave of industrial automation, where machine learning and artificial intelligence are embedded, and new tasks can be taught without the need for complex programming. Rodney Brooks (Credit: Rethink Robotics) […]

The Biggest Worry We Have About Our Jobs Is Not Immigration, It’s Irrelevance

The Biggest Worry We Have About Our Jobs Is Not Immigration, It's Irrelevance

The biggest worry Americans have about their jobs isn’t immigration; it’s irrelevance.

In a new Pew Research report , 80 percent of survey respondents said outsourcing hurts American workers, and 54 percent said continual training will be "essential" to advancing their careers, including more than 60 percent of the youngest workers.

"It’s a positive story on the impact of skills and up-skilling on the American workforce," said Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce chief economist, Nicole Smith. The report found that employment growth is most rapid in high-skill jobs and in ones where continued training is imperative, in fields […]

The Missing Political Debate Over the Digital Economy

The Missing Political Debate Over the Digital Economy

This U.S. presidential election season is leading us to rethink a lot of norms. But while it feels like a lot of our political conventional wisdom is getting turned on its head, one thing that hasn’t appeared to move forward is how we talk about the economy. We’re focused on jobs, but we’re skipping a necessary discussion of how the digital economy is shaping those jobs. The content of the campaigns still seems largely rooted in the 20th century while much of our work is rushing to meet the demands of the 21st.

The candidates are talking about cybersecurity (indeed […]