Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Automation isn’t about giving in to the robots

Automation isn’t about giving in to the robots

Future workplaces still need those high skill jobs credentials to make it happen Image Credit: Hugo A. Sanchez/©Gulf News We’ve all heard the warnings of an impending dystopian future.

According to Deloitte, an estimated 35 per cent of UK jobs are at high risk of automation in the next 10 to 20 years, while in the past 15 years technology already contributed to the loss of over 800,000 jobs. Market research firm Forrester predicts 6 per cent of US jobs will be lost to robots and automation by 2021, with the main losses being felt in transportation, logistics, customer services, […]

Artificial intelligence, the future of work, and inequality

Artificial intelligence, the future of work, and inequality

Figure 1: Gross Domestic Product in five countries, 1000-2015. Source: The CORE-Econ Project. Credit: Colorado State University One of the most spectacular facts of the last two centuries of economic history is the exponential growth in GDP per capita in most of the world. Figure 1 shows the rise (and the difference) in living standards for five countries since 1000 AD.

This economic progress, unprecedented in human history, would be impossible without major breakthroughs in technology. The economic historian Joel Mokyr has argued that the Enlightenment in Britain brought new ways to transfer scientific discoveries into practical tools for engineers […]

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 […]