Author: automata

Trump’s No. 1 lie about Mexico and U.S. jobs

OXFORD, Great Britain

One of Donald Trump’s most misleading campaign themes is that Mexico is stealing U.S. jobs, and that Washington should re-negotiate or scrap its free trade deal with Mexico to prevent even larger job losses. In reality, what’s threatening U.S. jobs isn’t Mexico, but automation.

I thought a lot about Trump’s deceptive trade proposals this week while visiting Oxford University to interview the co-author of a much-cited Oxford-Martin School study on the future of employment . The study says 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk of disappearing over the next twenty years because of automation.Carl Benedikt Frey […]

How to automate work life in the virtual economy without compromising on quality

How to automate work life in the virtual economy without compromising on quality

iStockphoto Lately, new age virtually driven businesses have become all the rage. Everyone is talking about them.

But automation has nothing to do with being lazy, careless, or complacent. You can never fully automate everything, and even if you could — you should not. Nor does talk of a virtual economy immediately link to the cliche of a cheap, low-quality workforce in emerging economies desperate for dollars.

It’s unfortunate that some continue to focus on this narrative.Not long ago, people used to believe that to be successful, you had to have a swarm of employees and a swank brick-and-mortar office in […]

Automation and the Workforce [on hold]

Automation and the Workforce [on hold]

Throughout history, automation has had an enormous effect on the workforce, allowing fewer workers to do more, increasing efficiency. Robots were first used in the transportation equipment, chemical, and metal industries, leading to an increase in both total factory productivity and wages. The use of robots also increased labor productivity and value added from labor; in other words, each human worker was more productive and added more value to the economy than before the implementation of industrial robots. These gains in productivity and efficiency are huge economic drivers for automation. With basic automation of software development and testing coming […]

Think handcrafted pottery is safe from automation? Think again

Think handcrafted pottery is safe from automation? Think again

There are no shortages of studies suggesting that many forms of human employment as we know them today are likely to be wiped out by the ongoing AI revolution.

One thing many experts agree with, however, is that the jobs that will survive are those that rely on creativity and artisanal skill — since these are things machines will not be able to satisfactorily replicate.

Don’t tell that to Central Saint Martins student Charlotte Nordmoen, though. As part of a project called humanMADE, Nordmoen has created a prototype robot capable of generating its own examples of pottery — thanks to a […]

How digital manufacturing will shift production from the factory to your kitchen table

How digital manufacturing will shift production from the factory to your kitchen table

With the rapid pace of technological innovation, the need for greater market responsiveness, and the rising cost of labor in nearly all economies, many companies are revisiting age-old manufacturing strategies. They recognize there is a growing need to introduce innovative products faster to meet customer demands while maintaining aggressive cost and quality objectives. Traditional manufacturing approaches can no longer keep pace with this dynamic new consumer-driven age. Meeting these demands will instead require a complete reinvention to how we approach manufacturing, and this reinvention will need to unfold on a scale that amounts to a new industrial revolution. Welcome […]

Deloitte: Robots to replace a quarter of business service workers by 2035

Deloitte: Robots to replace a quarter of business service workers by 2035

Deloitte has predicted that as much as a quarter of jobs in the business services sector may be replaced by robots within the next 20 years.

The accountancy firm believes that rising wages and falling technology costs leaves many jobs at "high risk" of being taken over by automation.

Simon Barnes, a partner at Deloitte, warned that there could be a "fundamental change" in how the workforce is distributed in the next 10 to 20 years. People are likely to be made redundant from "repetitive and highly-structured" roles.Mr Barnes said that Deloitte expects “the pace of automation to increase […]

Jobs for the robots: One in four human workers to be automated

Jobs for the robots: One in four human workers to be automated

Yeah, you can call it a collaborative robot for now, and work with it, but pretty soon it will put you out of your job

One quarter of business services jobs at risk of automation in the next twenty years, according to Deloitte business analysts

More than a quarter of jobs in the business services sector are at high risk of automation in the next 20 years, according to a report by Deloitte , the business advisory firm. This is largely a result of the falling cost of technology combined with the rising cost of labour.Of the 3,300,000 jobs […]

Automation and Disruptive Technologies Will Soon Replace Lower-Skilled Jobs in ASEAN

Automation and Disruptive Technologies Will Soon Replace Lower-Skilled Jobs in ASEAN

A new study by the ILO Bureau for Employers’ Activities examines how technology is affecting workplaces in five major sectors across the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the transformation that enterprises and workers can expect in the next decade.

The report on ASEAN in Transformation: How Technology is Changing Jobs and Enterprises found the potential for growth and employment presented by advanced technologies, such as additive manufacturing, robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT), are considerable.

The report provides critical data on how millions of jobs are going to be impacted in the run up to 2025. However […]

Growth no longer means jobs: Inflexible labour laws, rapid technological change have caused employment generation to stall

Growth no longer means jobs: Inflexible labour laws, rapid technological change have caused employment generation to stall

Where are the jobs? This is the question Prime Minister Narendra Modi is repeatedly asked by his political opponents. One answer he has given recently in media interviews is that the jobs that are being created are invisible in the statistics: loans from the Mudra Bank are enabling self-employment, and as these micro businesses grow, they will add employees, one or two at a time. Hopefully, they will ultimately create millions of jobs in an economy that is releasing one million youth every month into the job market.

While creating a nation of micro-entrepreneurs is better than doing nothing, there […]

ILO: Low-skilled workers risk being replaced by advanced technology

ILO: Low-skilled workers risk being replaced by advanced technology

Asian workers at a garments production facility. Image from UN-ILO. MANILA – Some 56 percent of salaried workers in the Philippines and four other ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries are "at high risk of displacement" due to advances in technology over the next couple of decades, a report of the International Labour Organization (ILO) revealed.

Based on a new study by ILO’s Bureau for Employers’ Activities, titled ASEAN in Transformation: How Technology is Changing Jobs and Enterprises, the potential for growth and employment presented by advanced technologies, "such as additive manufacturing, robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT), […]