Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Will the future of work be a utopia or a dystopia?

Will the future of work be a utopia or a dystopia?

Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics will have a dramatic impact on the future of work. Already, today’s most valuable technology companies employ about one-fifth as many workers as the most valuable companies in the 1960s. Estimates of workforce displacement due to automation range from the OECD’s 14 percent of current jobs to the European think tank Bruegel’s 54 percent . Automation will disproportionately affect low-skill workers that are least able to adapt to these changes. On May 14, Center for Technology Innovation Founding Director Darrell West unpacked these trends in a presentation and a panel discussion held […]

Robots will not take over all our jobs

Robots will not take over all our jobs

A study shows that the fear may be far-fetched Today, advanced machines like robots pose a significant threat to jobs traditionally performed by human beings. So it’s no surprise that new technological developments in the market are faced with stiff resistance from interest groups like labour unions. Moreover, there are some economists and others who believe that robots could lead us into a future where there are no jobs left to be done by human beings. How realistic are such fears? What in particular does history tell us about the effect of machines on employment?

A 2017 paper by Katja […]

Automation Could Have Biggest Impact on Low-Skilled U.S. Workers, Experts Say

Automation Could Have Biggest Impact on Low-Skilled U.S. Workers, Experts Say

The rise of automation in the coming decades will require a shift in political, educational and societal approaches to handle an evolving U.S. workforce and population, according to panelists speaking Monday at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Some experts suggested that without fundamental changes to reduce risk and expand opportunities, the rise of automation and associated technologies — artificial intelligence, driverless cars and robots — could have negative repercussions for low-skilled workers and Midwest residents.

Darrell M. West, founding director of the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings, said the U.S. political system needs to be ready to tackle rising populism […]

China really is to blame for millions of lost U.S. manufacturing jobs, new study finds

China really is to blame for millions of lost U.S. manufacturing jobs, new study finds

Robots are not to blame for the loss of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Millions of Americans who lost manufacturing jobs during the 2000s have long ”known” China was to blame, not robots. Evidently many academics who’ve studied the issue are finally drawing the same conclusion.

For years economists have viewed the increased role of automation in the computer age as the culprit for some 6 million lost jobs from 1999 to 2010 — one-third of all U.S. manufacturing employment. Firms adopted new technologies to boost production, the thinking goes, and put workers out of the job in the process. […]

How the World’s Biggest Companies Are Fine-Tuning the Robot Revolution

How the World’s Biggest Companies Are Fine-Tuning the Robot Revolution

Fritz is more efficient at handling the dangerous and repetitive task of lifting the 8-inch metal-and-circuitry pieces out of the furnace. This leaves Mr. Rösch less exposed to potential accidents and gives him time to test 20% more parts than he did before the robots.

The big question surrounding automation has long been whether robots would compete with workers or help them. Initially, workers feared robots would destroy jobs across the economy. Scholarly research and real-life experience has eased that concern, although some types of workers and industries are ending up on the losing side.

Today, the question is more precise: […]

Robots, AI, and jobs: All three are coming

Robots, AI, and jobs: All three are coming

Joe Atikian is the author of Industrial Shift: The Structure of the New World Economy.

The robots are not coming for our jobs. In 1915, the industrialist Lloyd Raymond Smith asked, “Can automobile frames be built without men?” The same question has been asked about entire industries. It never happened, even though automation has appeared in every workplace. And it didn’t merely appear. Factory labour got intensively more mechanized from the moment factories were born. The surprise was that factory employment kept growing for another 65 years, including the early computer era.

Computer technology intensified automation, but it also spawned […]

Why we need to protect our income from robot automation

Why we need to protect our income from robot automation

The future is here. It’s time to take action. Robots conjure images of some distant future – a crisp, white-walled existence. Except that time is now.

Last month, one leading futurologist predicted that the global robot population, already more than 57 million, will outnumber humans by 2048, and that’s a conservative estimate.

Automation is already ingrained in everything from warehouse management to selling financial products. Workers are worried that they are going to find themselves replaced in the jobs market; employer services provider ADP recently surveyed 1,300 working adults and found that a third believe their job will be automated within […]

The Future Of Work And How Employers Can Adapt To It

The Future Of Work And How Employers Can Adapt To It

Reportedly, 65% of children entering primary school today will grow up to take jobs in roles that don’t yet exist—and somehow, we need to be prepared for this. While no one can predict the future, we do already have some growing workplace trends to help inform strategy.

Big data

A 2017 UAE Government White Paper, The UAE and the Future of Work, reported that by 2020, ownership in personal internet devices in the Gulf is expected to have risen 866% since 2010. We’re always connected, creating huge amounts of data, and it’s rapidly changing how we operate our businesses.For […]

LETTER: Stop worrying about automation and get a job

LETTER: Stop worrying about automation and get a job

Why should we as a society worry about low-income retail cashiers and fast-food workers whose jobs are being taken over by automation technology?

When you lose a job, the most logical thing to do would be to get another one. I had to whenever I became unemployed. The people who work these positions should take responsibility for their lives and adapt to the changes by either getting a different and preferably higher-paying job, or by going back to school to learn new skills to get such a job.

And I’m sure there are many of them these days who are doing […]

Will AI Be Empathetic? The HyperHuman Thinks So

Will AI Be Empathetic? The HyperHuman Thinks So

We’ve reached a level whereby when artificial intelligence (AI) is mentioned a certain cloud of worry hits everybody around. Reason; people have been made to believe that AI will not understand empathy, leave alone being empathetic, and that, intelligent robots could bring an irreversible disaster to humanity when the tech attains full independence. However, the HyperHuman thinks otherwise.

Let’s dig a bit into the AI fearmongering currently floating on the internet. Most people now believe automation will wipe away all jobs, while those who don’t care about losing employment (maybe because they are employers,) are concerned about finding themselves trapped […]