Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

The Australians at greater risk of robots stealing their jobs

The Australians at greater risk of robots stealing their jobs

How scared should we be about robots stealing our jobs? (Source: Getty) When it comes to job fears, some should be more scared than others about the AI revolution.

For instance, those living in South Australia and Victoria should be more concerned about losing their jobs to ‘robotisation’ than others in Australia.

Indeed, more than a third (36 per cent) of Australian jobs are at major risk of automation , according to a OECD Employment Outlook report released earlier this year.However, new research from recruitment firm Hays has found that women are at a disadvantage when it comes to the changing […]

Editorial: Scary reading for rural America

Editorial: Scary reading for rural America

If you want to read something grim, depressing and sometimes downright scary this Halloween season, you could try a Stephen King novel.

Or you could read the report “The Future of Work” by the New York-based consulting firm McKinsey & Company. The King novel might have more gripping prose, but the McKinsey report is much more frightening because it’s not made up.

Here’s the essence of it: “In the decade ahead, the next wave of automation technologies may accelerate the pace of change. Millions of jobs could be phased out even as new ones are created. More broadly, the day-to-day nature […]

The jobs that will be obsolete in 10 years, making STEM a must

The jobs that will be obsolete in 10 years, making STEM a must

Rapid and profound technology changes and globalisation are combining to change the nature of work and the types of employment which will be available.

The world has passed through four industrial revolutions, each defined by the key technologies which sustained them: The first used water and steam power; the second relied on electric power; and the third used electronics and information technology.

The fourth and current industrial revolution is powered by artificial intelligence and the fusion of physical, digital, and biological technologies. New technologies such as nanotechnology, digitisation, artificial intelligence, robotisation, smart machines, drones and the like, are profoundly changing […]

Major threat to U.S. jobs today? It’s automation, not China

The adoption of technologies to let machines take over much of the work people do is just getting going.

LEE SCHAFER @LeeASchafer

Sometimes there can be sharp differences in a Democratic presidential debate, like when Sen. Elizabeth Warren turned a question about the threat of jobs lost to automation by insisting that bad trade rules are really to blame.Nonsense, responded lawyer and entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who noted that driving trucks is the top job in 29 states. He’s got friends in California testing self-driving trucks right now. What will truck drivers and truck-stop staff do for work when the […]

Tech revolution: are Pakistani women being left behind?

Tech revolution: are Pakistani women being left behind?

A Reuters file photo showing silhouette of a woman. We are living in the age of a technological revolution that has fundamentally altered the way people, organisations and institutions connect with each other. Technology has also transformed the world of work, launching the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0) that is characterised by a range of new technologies such as financial technologies (Fin Tech), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and Deep Learning (DL) that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, impacting every aspect of our lives today. This stage of industrial development is meant to connect […]

See warnings of the coming machine revolution

See warnings of the coming machine revolution

Summary: The next Industrial Revolution is now upon us. It won’t be Skynet and Terminators, but could bring massive job losses. With this warning and the experience from the earlier ones, we can build a prosperous future without massive suffering during the transition. But nothing will happen until we turn our eyes from the past towards the future. “Danger, Construction Ahead” by Kay Sage (1940). Preparing for the future by closing our eyes

“On September 23 {William the Conqueror’s} fleet hove in sight, and all came safely to anchor in Pevensey Bay. There was no opposition to the landing. […]

MIT on the Work of the Future

MIT on the Work of the Future

An air taxi vertiport in Singapore, Oct. 21, 2019 Automation fears have understandably accelerated in recent years, as our increasingly smart machines are now being applied to activities requiring intelligence and cognitive capabilities that not long ago were viewed as the exclusive domain of humans. While the majority of economists wave such fears away , we don’t really know whether this time might be different.

Tackling the topic, Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Rafael Reif last year convened a task force on the " Work of the Future " to address what might be the most critical question of the […]

Skilled labor careers plentiful in IT, ‘new collar’ industries

Skilled labor careers plentiful in IT, ‘new collar’ industries

Technology is transforming the modern workplace, leaving almost no job untouched. Even jobs that once depended on physical labor have become increasingly automated, which requires new skills from workers.
Shah Ardalan, the president of Lone Star College-University Park in Houston, said people can access these emerging roles beginning with certificate-level training and then advance through stackable credentials. Types of careers that fall into these skilled labor categories include computer and information technology, business operations, accounting, mechatronics, supply chain management, AutoCAD drafting, web design and more.
A newer interest and need is IoT, the internet of things, which […]

Andrew Yang warns Walmart robots will sideline workers in ‘winner-take-all-economy’

Andrew Yang warns Walmart robots will sideline workers in 'winner-take-all-economy'

Robot-made pizza: Is the Seattle startup’s invention better than hand-tossed? Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang sees Walmart’s plan to use more robots in its stores as a symptom of a larger problem: a march toward automation with the potential to crush the U.S. labor market.

The retailer, which is the largest U.S. employer with about 1 million hourly workers, is adding automatons to buoy productivity and curb costs, according to a report from CNN . They will handle tasks such as scrubbing floors and scanning shipment boxes. Worker advocates, however, fear their responsibilities are likely to grow as they become […]

Lawyers of the world: Robots aren’t replacing you–yet

Lawyers of the world: Robots aren't replacing you--yet

ArtificiaI intelligence (AI) may soon render many jobs obsolete. Remember how popular one-hour photo shops were in the 1980s and into the mid-1990s? That’s just the tip of the tech iceberg, as AI now seems to be gunning to take over the legal world.

The UK-based Law Society noted in a study earlier this year: "Over the longer term, the number of jobs in the legal services sector will be increasingly affected by automation of legal services functions. This could mean that by 2038 total employment in the sector could be 20% less than it would otherwise have been, with […]