Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Flippy gets fired: burger bot shut down after one day on the job

Flippy gets fired: burger bot shut down after one day on the job

After debuting to much fanfare, Flippy the burger-flipping robot, who started a new gig at CaliBurger , has been sidelined — at least temporarily. It turns out the automated fast-food worker created by Miso Robotics was a victim of his own success.

When USA Today visited the Pasadena location on Thursday, the robotic arm was still on display but someone had pulled the plug. Anthony Lomelino, the chief technology officer for Cali Group, explained that they needed more time to train the human workers to keep pace.

“Mostly it’s the timing,” he said. “When you’re in the back, working with people, […]

Men fear robots more than women do

Have you noticed the big claims being made about artificial intelligence lately?

A few weeks ago Google boss, Sundar Pichai, said AI would have a more profound impact than electricity or fire. The celebrated physicist, Stephen Hawking, has warned artificial intelligence could be the "worst event in the history of our civilisation" unless society finds a way to control its advance.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk reckons AI will be the most likely cause of World War III.And of course, pundits everywhere are talking about how robots will take our jobs.Despite the hype, young Australian workers are not nearly as worked […]

Men fear robots more than women do

Machines find it harder to do tasks that require the social skills considered typically female, Photo: Bloomberg Have you noticed the big claims being made about artificial intelligence lately?

A few weeks ago Google boss, Sundar Pichai, said AI would have a more profound impact than electricity or fire. The celebrated physicist, Stephen Hawking, has warned artificial intelligence could be the "worst event in the history of our civilisation" unless society finds a way to control its advance.

LoadingTesla chief executive Elon Musk reckons AI will be the most likely cause of World War III.And of course, pundits everywhere are talking […]

What Your CEO Is Reading: Squishy Robots; Failing Fast, Breaking Eggs; The Mid-Tech Boom

What Your CEO Is Reading: Squishy Robots; Failing Fast, Breaking Eggs; The Mid-Tech Boom

A ‘Marty’ miniature walking robot, manufactured by Robotical, stands on display at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Feb. 27, 2018. The future of robotics is softer, squishier. MIT roboticist and AI expert Daniela Rus writes in FT Magazine that it’s getting easier to build robots, a process that “has traditionally been difficult, tedious and expensive.” Automation is entering the robot-building space, but not how one would expect. Her team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is close to building robots that can be designed by “free-form sketching and fabricated to actually walk right out of a […]

Nation’s shrinking workforce troubles planners even as jobless rate stays low

Nation’s shrinking workforce troubles planners even as jobless rate stays low

THE country’s unemployment rate edged up to 1.2 per cent last year, due to an uneven economic recovery and the impact of technological advances, but the rate remained low, the top planning agency said.

Flagged as a concern is that the number of people in the workforce is on a downward trend, the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) said yesterday. In 2016, the jobless rate stood at 1.1 per cent.

The findings came from a report on the country’s social situation in the fourth quarter of 2017 and the outlook for this year that the NESDB released […]

Has automation driven job losses in the steel industry?

Has automation driven job losses in the steel industry?

Steel coils sit on wagons when leaving a steel factory in Germany on March 2, 2018, as the U.S. was considering tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. (AP/Martin Meissner) As President Donald Trump weighed imposing tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, some commentators have warned that this would be a misguided approach.

Noah Smith, a columnist for Bloomberg View and a former finance professor, wrote a column in which he noted, among other things, that a crucial issue facing metals-producing industries isn’t foreign competition — it’s automation.

Tariffs, Smith wrote, won’t "bring back good jobs at steel and aluminum factories. Since […]

Automated 3D Printing: How Industrial Additive Manufacturing Is Evolving

Automated 3D Printing: How Industrial Additive Manufacturing Is Evolving

For years, science fiction has portrayed images of robots and appliances catering to every need and whim of human managers completely automatically. In some ways, 3D printers have represented the first steps toward such sci-fi visions of the future: simply punch in a design and the machine fabricates the object, as though out of thin air. For this reason, MakerBot dubbed its desktop 3D printer the “Replicator,” after the Star Trek device that could reconstitute matter into anything desired by the ship’s crew. An industrial robotic arm can swap out used pellet containers or tool heads in Stratasys’ Infinite […]

Automation Isn’t Killing Jobs, Study Says, But May Be Keeping Income in Check

Automation Isn’t Killing Jobs, Study Says, But May Be Keeping Income in Check

Robotic arms weld car frames in a Japanese auto factory in December. Employment in transportation equipment manufacturing was nearly unchanged between 1970 and 2007, but the sector became far more productive. Over the previous five decades, automation hasn’t reduced the number of jobs available in 18 advanced economies, including the U.S.–in fact, it helped increase total employment, finds a new paper by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s David Autor and Utrecht University’s Anna Salomons and released Thursday by the Brookings Institution.

But the economists’ paper also found that automation, and the productivity enhancements that it drives, has resulted in laborers […]

AI-Based Systems Are Becoming As Smart As, If Not Smarter Than Us

AI-Based Systems Are Becoming As Smart As, If Not Smarter Than Us

After outlining the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation on jobs, work processes and tasks, a recent report from British accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) predicted that the most affected employment segment by automation over the next 5 to 8 years will be administrative and white collar office jobs.

Yet a new study has shown that AI can already work faster than lawyers on certain non-core legal tasks such as reviewing legal contracts. In the study, the Tel Aviv-based AI startup LawGeex put 20 top corporate lawyers – who had decades of experience in reviewing non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and whose […]

Haunting Photos Depict the Hardships of Global Labor

With powerful images of workers from around the world, the exhibition Labor & Materials explores the evolution of work and industry in the 21st century. In art ranging from collage to photographs, the show examines how the scale and speed of technology impacts the production of goods and services. Its goal is to lift the veil on the inequalities that exist around the world in the production of modern conveniences like smartphones and computers.

The art featured in this multimedia exhibition hint at the contradictions of modernity and its expected efficiencies. And they raise the question, “At whose expense?” Through […]