Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Should developing countries fear the impact of automation on jobs?

Should developing countries fear the impact of automation on jobs?

Fears of technology-induced unemployment have penetrated media headlines and policy discourse in both advanced and developing countries. A water jet harvester works rows of romaine lettuce near Soledad, California, United States, 3 May, 2017 (Photo: Reuters/Michael Fiala). In 2017, economists Carl Frey and Michael Osborne concluded that 47 per cent of jobs in the United States were at high risk of automation. A range of replications and extensions have made similar claims. The World Development Report 2016 asserts that 68.9 per cent of jobs in India are at high risk — and that number remains at 42.6 per cent […]

Will real life Blade Runners be tax collectors?

Will real life Blade Runners be tax collectors?

In 1979, an innovative two-minute TV commercial gave Britain a glimpse of the future. Choreographed to music from Rossini’s Barber of Seville, hi-tech machines built the Fiat Strada. The tagline was Handbuilt by Robots . Humans were nowhere to be seen in the Turin factory where the ad was shot, but the film crew knew where the people were: outside, on picket lines protesting the loss of their jobs.

Fast forward nearly 40 years and “ the robots are coming, they want to replace us, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them” isn’t the plot of the second […]

AI is synonymous with job automation in the minds of American workers

AI is synonymous with job automation in the minds of American workers

Artificial intelligence may well pose an existential threat to humanity. But that’s not what worries the public. What worries them is jobs.

According to a new study conducted by my team at SYZYGY, 70 percent of the American public fear that AI will have a negative impact on employment in the US. On average, Americans in work today believe that 30 percent of their work could be replaced by AI-enabled automation technology within five years. And overall, when asked about what they fear most from AI, job automation is the number one ranked fear. Fears of job automation are not […]

Automation’s Impact on Jobs

Automation’s Impact on Jobs

Associate Professor Louis Hyman Associate Professor Louis Hyman will speak at a congressional briefing Monday on the history of automation and jobs.

Sponsored by the National History Center, the event will address questions about technologies that have raised new fears about the future of work and how technological innovations transforming work in the past can inform the new wave of automation and its impact on employment.

The 10 to 11 a.m. event in the Rayburn House Office Building, Room 2045, is open to the public. Hyman , director of ILR’s Institute for Workplace Studies and its Future of Work initiative, plans […]

Retailers Slash Holiday Season Hiring As E-Commerce Takes Toll

Retailers Slash Holiday Season Hiring As E-Commerce Takes Toll

As brick-and-mortar retailers struggle to remain relevant in the new world of e-commerce, they’re hiring fewer seasonal workers.

That’s according to a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which shows October employment gains fell 8% from last year – a result of fewer hiring announcements from companies like Walmart. The report shows that seasonal retail hiring has fallen each October since 2015.

“The shrinking job gains in retail during the holiday season are indicative of the changing consumer habits and overall transition the industry is experiencing,” John Challenger, the firm’s chief executive officer, said in the report. Online Shift More shoppers […]

CIPD Annual Conference 2017: ‘Better managers and more training are the only routes to good work’

Expert panel says productivity and inequality challenges can be solved by strong HR

The huge rate of technological change is creating a new tranche of winners and losers in the British workforce – but HR can help business become a force for good in society by prioritising investment in managerial competence and L&D.

That was the verdict of an expert panel convened at the CIPD Annual Conference to discuss one of the most pressing issues facing policymakers and business leaders: how we create ‘good work’ in a rapidly changing economy.By some measures, the prognosis is bleak. Stefan Baskerville, principal director […]

Crises and Automation

(The Artificial Fabrication of Arbitrary Value, Price, and Wage Across Post-Industrial, Post-Modern Capitalism)

According to Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring , “the only value known in economics is the value of commodities”. 1 Commodities are products produced, not for individual consumption by their producers, but products produced for general public consumption. The value of a commodity, according to Engels, is determined via comparison with other commodities, namely, “they can be…said to be equal or unequal [with other commodities], according to the quantity of [general human] labor embodied in each”. 2

As a result, for Engels, “social conditions remaining the same, two equal […]

Spotlight: Killer or savior, technology plays its two faces on employment

by Liu Tian, Mao Pengfei, Le Yanna

DA NANG, Vietnam, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) — As technologies play increasingly important role in pushing forward modern economy development, debates related to technologies have never stopped since it, although created numerous jobs in new economic fields, forced many laborers to leave their posts, especially in those traditional manufacturing industries.

The paradox has been subjected to discussion for the world’s business elites who are here for the meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Week and seeking answers.Nicolas Aguzin, chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Asia-Pacific, said during a discussion at the APEC CEO […]

Zuckerberg Comments on Issue of Technology Eliminating Jobs

Zuckerberg Comments on Issue of Technology Eliminating Jobs

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made some comments about technology jobs that we found very interesting. His Year of Travel challenge, where he’s visiting all the U.S. states that he’s never been to, took him to Oklahoma’s wind farms, from where he posted this (this is a small excerpt from his post):

“A lot of people focus on whether technology creates or destroys jobs. I’ve seen both this year –improving tech has created more jobs in some industries and in others it has eliminated jobs. But perhaps the more common dynamic I’ve seen is that the number of jobs stays […]

Unprecedented challenges confront APEC: President

Unprecedented challenges confront APEC: President

The APEC business community needs to help tackle serious challenges facing the world today, including widespread poverty and unprecedented impacts of climate change, President Trần Đại Quang said yesterday.– VNA/VNS Photo ĐÀ NẴNG – The APEC business community needs to help tackle serious challenges facing the world today, including widespread poverty and unprecedented impacts of climate change, President Trần Đại Quang said yesterday.

He praised the community for being crucial contributor to the bloc becoming a driving force behind global growth and integration.

The APEC business community has taken the lead in developing new technologies and energy sources as well as […]