Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Facing The Unknown Future Of Work As AI Changes The Rules Of Business

Facing The Unknown Future Of Work As AI Changes The Rules Of Business

Even as we read about the first layoffs blamed at least in part on automation, there is still cause for optimism. While easily automated jobs may fall by the wayside, it’s important to remember that new jobs managing and leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) technology are being created.

Titles like edge computing release manager, edge stream researcher and AI analytics executive did not exist until very recently. Earlier this year, I hired a vice president of AI and robotic process automation. How many of us thought even ten years ago that a role like this would be so central for business […]

Will Technology Cause Massive Unemployment? The Lessons of History

Will Technology Cause Massive Unemployment? The Lessons of History

“Experience keeps a dear school, yet fools will learn in no other.” — Ben Franklin

I must be some kind of fool because I’ve learned a lot from history and my own experiences on Wall Street over the past 50 years.

For example, I’ve learned to be skeptical of claims that automation and technology will cause massive unemployment. Yes, computers will replace jobs, but they also will create new jobs.I remember reading an article in U.S. News & World Report in the 1960s about how “Automation Will Destroy Jobs.” Yet, new technology ended up creating more new forms of employment […]

The future of work: Being a cashier is Maryland’s most common occupation, but it’s vanishing

The future of work: Being a cashier is Maryland's most common occupation, but it's vanishing

Technological advances could leave Maryland cashier’s jobless. (Karl Merton Ferron / Baltimore Sun) Lester Watson began ringing up customers some 40 years ago at a five and dime store before he landed a job at Hutzler’s, the longtime Baltimore department store. He wrote up sales tickets by hand at first, calculating how much, with taxes, a customer owed. Later, he punched numbered keys on a cash register that did the math for him.

Now, the 59-year-old cashier works at Graul’s Market in Ruxton, all but teaching a master class in customer service. As he scans product codes into what’s now […]

Running out of human workers? Better buy robots

Running out of human workers? Better buy robots

The robots are coming to a field near you Record high employment means that businesses are turning to automation – Merryn Somerset Webb asks Walter Price of the Allianz Technology Trust about the best ways to invest.

Horrible news for British strawberry lovers, says The Guardian: this year’s crop – which has started to ripen two weeks early, thanks to the good spring weather – may end up rotting on the ground. Why? A shortage of fruit-pickers. Growers across Europe are “competing for labour”. Demand is high everywhere (hence better deals on pay, bonuses and accommodation), but supply is […]

Letter — Limited government approach to income inequality

One idea, proposed by conservative economist Milton Friedman. is to provide a minimum income for the poor. Such a program would be more efficient since it would eliminate many welfare programs requiring fewer government workers to run.

Besides the poor, we need to address the problem of disappearing jobs. Globalization has been a factor where some have been displaced by competing workers that pay lower wages as compared to our country. Another factor eliminating jobs has been automation reducing the number of workers required. One example has been the coal industry. Lastly, Artificial Intelligence (AI) threatens to destroy millions of […]

Letter — Limited government approach to income inequality

One idea, proposed by conservative economist Milton Friedman. is to provide a minimum income for the poor. Such a program would be more efficient since it would eliminate many welfare programs requiring fewer government workers to run.

Besides the poor, we need to address the problem of disappearing jobs. Globalization has been a factor where some have been displaced by competing workers that pay lower wages as compared to our country. Another factor eliminating jobs has been automation reducing the number of workers required. One example has been the coal industry. Lastly, Artificial Intelligence (AI) threatens to destroy millions of […]

Craftsmen: Capitalism’s conscientious objectors

This is the most amazing sound,” Warwick Jones says. I listen closely. There are footfalls, the rustle of fabric, and, most importantly, the voices of craftsmen. Jones grins. “You don’t hear a machine,” he says.

Jones is the CEO of Oxxford Clothes, a company that largely eschews the conventional machinery of mass-produced clothing. Even in the luxurious realm of high-end men’s attire—suits, topcoats, blazers, tuxedos, and slacks—Oxxford’s commitment to handwork is unique. There is no other company in the world that I know of with a corps of trained artisans committed to producing the kind of handmade garments that, once […]

‘The UK is a long way behind in terms of productivity’: Mike Wilson, BARA

Chairman of the British Automation and Robot Association (BARA) Mike Wilson discusses the ‘underperforming’ state of the UK’s manufacturing robot industry. He says without an increased commitment to automation, it will find itself with bigger problems on its plate than Brexit.

“The UK is a long way behind in terms of productivity,” says Mike Wilson of the British Automation and Robot Association (BARA). “The increased use of robotics is an important element of addressing that shortfall.” Wilson is the chairman of BARA, an organisation that represents “the supply chain for robot and automation products into the UK”. Its membership consists […]

Why we should embrace the age of robots and not fear it

Why we should embrace the age of robots and not fear it

Today, in the wake of recent advances in sensors, data analytics, robotics and artificial intelligence, the automation debate is centre stage once again The world’s first industrial robot was deployed at the General Motors plant in New Jersey in 1961. A promotional film released at the time created quite a stir. People were amazed by the way the Unimate could lift, weld and spray 500lb components with such ease and precision.

Aware that their new technological marvel might trigger fears that robots were set to overrun the manufacturing workforce, the robot’s inventors stressed that their machine would only take on […]

Nearly Half of All Retail Sales Jobs May Soon Be Replaced by Automation

Nearly Half of All Retail Sales Jobs May Soon Be Replaced by Automation

A sales associate adds the finishing touches as shoppers get a sneak peek of the Macy’s Backstage outlet store in Paramus, N.J. Soon enough, almost no existing occupation will be unaffected by technology.

About 25% of employment in the United States, or 36 million jobs , will be seriously disrupted by automation over the coming decades, according to the Brookings Institution. The researchers added that some 36% (or 52 million) jobs will face medium exposure while another 39% (or 57 million) will experience low exposure to digital technologies by 2030.

“Historically, workplace substitution by machines has freed up humans to focus […]