Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Forcing Marx Into the Automation Debate

Forcing Marx Into the Automation Debate

Automation, the reduction and/or removal of human participation in processes and procedures, has been a topic of economic discussion since the Industrial Revolution. The general dispute has been about whether or not automation will lead to mass unemployment. Acknowledging but passing over the primitivist perspective, in the 20th and 21st century, two camps have taken form, although the ideas behind each have existed for quite some time.

On the one side stand those who believe that technological advancement has never and therefore will never lead to the mass unemployment envisioned by techno-pessimists. Their ranks are often represented by professional economists […]

The rise of automation: Should retailers be worried?

The rise of automation: Should retailers be worried?

There’s plenty of talk over the rise of robots and automation in the retail sector, and the negative impacts are well known: En masse reductions of staff in warehouses and increasingly autonomous and anonymous customer care are just the beginning. However, in this feature we’ll be taking a step back from the emotive arguments behind automation’s rise in retail, and examining how retailers can embrace this shift without losing the human values that have stood them in good stead until now. While not yet a common sight, incremental changes towards robots replacing humans in stores are already being trialed […]

EPRS-OECD conference: policies can mitigate impact of jobs losses from automation

EPRS-OECD conference: policies can mitigate impact of jobs losses from automation

Written by Marcin Grajewski, EPRS Policy roundtable – The impact of automation:Identifying jobs at risk Technological and digital revolutions are reshaping labour markets across the world, with many jobs likely to disappear or to be significantly transformed over the next 15 years, as robots and computers learn to perform an increasing number of tasks, according to analysts speaking at a conference in the European Parliament. In response, governments need to foster policies to master automation, rather than reject it, and create jobs in the technologically transformed environment, as well as alleviate the associated negative impacts with social protection measures. […]

Companies Should Help You Retrain When You’re Automated Out of a Job

Companies Should Help You Retrain When You’re Automated Out of a Job

PureSolution/Shutterstock.com Reskilling is shaping up to be an imperative—and perhaps the imperative—of the next decade. That is because as machines increasingly complement people in the workplace, automation will bring about major shifts in both occupations and skills.

We estimate that if the pace of automation adoption is in the midpoint of our range of scenarios, about 15% of the global workforce, or 400 million workers, will be displaced by 203 0. (That range stretches from almost nobody, if automation adoption is slow, to 800 million, in the event of very rapid automation).

At the same time, as new technologies and the […]

Books: How Artificial Intelligence Will Impact Human Well-Being

Books: How Artificial Intelligence Will Impact Human Well-Being

The question of how artificial intelligence (AI) will impact human well-being is something of a Rorschach test. It depends on whom you ask. For some, the advent of “smart” everything portends a future of rising living standards and unimagined opportunities for human flourishing. Others help us see the dark side. Without going “full Terminator,” some of the best informed people in the AI field see an economic transformation that threatens social cohesion as human labor – mental and physical – becomes slow, antiquated and artisanal and is ultimately consolidated and replaced by the unlimited energy, dynamism, and rocketing productivity […]

Why Fear of Immigrants In Employment Is Short-Sighted At The Dawn Of The Automation Age

Why Fear of Immigrants In Employment Is Short-Sighted At The Dawn Of The Automation Age

Getty Getty Cast in bronze and mounted at the Statue of Liberty is a sonnet that reads, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.” Famed American poet Emma Lazarus wrote these words only after a friend convinced her that the statue would one day stand as a beacon for immigrants coming to this country. And yet today, you find the American people divided most poignantly on the topic of immigration.

Though unemployment is at its lowest rate in half a century , the fear of losing jobs to immigrants has been a hot topic issue over the past […]

Automation of British industry ‘pretty rubbish’, claims Bank of England economist

Automation of British industry 'pretty rubbish', claims Bank of England economist

Automation, including robotics, could put as many as 30 per cent of jobs at risk by the 2030s British industry is "pretty rubbish" when it comes to automation and the adoption of technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

That’s according to Bank of England economist Will Abel, who claimed that the UK has a "below average" adoption of robotics, with a consequently higher proportion of GDP going to labour, rather investment in industrial technology.

Speaking yesterday at an event run by the Resolution Foundation, the economist suggested that the UK lags far behind its near neighbours, particular Germany."One […]

The Autonomous Revolution: here to help, not replace

The Autonomous Revolution: here to help, not replace

Niral Patel, MD and Technology Leader for Oracle South Africa The arrival of any new technology that promises to change the way we do things has always created curiosity and some anxiety in society; think of the introduction of machines during the Industrial Revolution. In today’s world, we are seeing the dramatic rise in the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation in business.

How concerned should we be about the impact of these emerging technologies on the South African workplace? If history is anything to go by, less so than we currently are.

While in the past new technologies have […]

Yanfeng works to seize the potential of 4.0

Yanfeng works to seize the potential of 4.0

A collaborative robot works on a line at a Yanfeng Automotive Interiors plant. Much has been written about the fourth industrial revolution and the need of industry and manufacturing to participate in the digital transformation or be left behind. However, the reality would seem to be that many companies, at least those in the European plastics processing industry, are taking it slowly.

Not many processors are comfortable talking about the subject. While the manufacturers of plastics processing machinery, systems and auxiliaries of all kinds continue to develop and expand on the Industry 4.0 technology available to the industry, many companies […]

The US can survive automation if it reimagines meritocracy

Is meritocracy one of the greatest myths in America? As comedian George Carlin once said, “The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

Sounds grim, right? But such attacks on the concept of meritocracy are actually healthy. They’re signs that America is finally reckoning with widening wealth inequality and stagnant wages. The future of work is a space where we can reinvent a concept that sounds good in theory—that employment rewards those with the best skills and work ethic—but which has actually become deeply tainted by barriers to access.

A truly […]