Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Oxford Professor Says 47 Percent of U.S. Jobs Can Be Automated

Oxford Professor Says 47 Percent of U.S. Jobs Can Be Automated

Nearly 50 percent of jobs in the United States can be automated with the emergence of the fourth industrial revolution, an Oxford University professor said Thursday. (Image: Yonhap) SEOUL, Oct. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — Nearly 50 percent of jobs in the United States can be automated with the emergence of the fourth industrial revolution, an Oxford University professor said Thursday.

In a seminar held in Seoul hosted by the Institute for Global Economics (IGE), Carl Benedikt Frey, co-director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology & Employment, said that while many jobs can be taken over by machines, there should […]

Oxford expert says 47 pct of U.S. jobs can be automated

Oxford expert says 47 pct of U.S. jobs can be automated

By Choi Kyong-ae

SEOUL, Oct. 19 (Yonhap) — Nearly 50 percent of jobs in the United States can be automated with the emergence of the fourth industrial revolution, an Oxford University professor said Thursday.

In a seminar held in Seoul hosted by the Institute for Global Economics (IGE), Carl Benedikt Frey, co-director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology & Employment, said that while many jobs can be taken over by machines, there should be enough jobs for people."I believe that as long as there are things that we can’t automate, there will be enough jobs to go around. Forty-seven percent […]

Are you obsolete?

Are you obsolete?

“I am old enough to have caught the very end of the last revolution, having started in an era of manually writing out trade tickets and having paper based databases to work from. CRM’s were not commonplace, with your desk comprising a telephone, pen, A4 paper and a list of numbers to call” – Paul Orford Paul Orford is Head of Institutional at AMB Prime

Over the past 18 months or so the 4th industrial revolution has come more and more to my attention. In case you were not aware of this term, a great place to start is […]

Will You Still Have a Job When the Robots Arrive?

Earlier this fall, the organization hosted a panel discussion that hoped to answer a foreboding question: Will you still have a job when the robots arrive?

Envision a world in which companies only employ the most educated sliver of the population, while artificially intelligent machines have filled everyone else’s jobs. Humans are powerless in a world controlled by algorithms and those who code them.

Members of the Kennedy School student organization AI Initiative worry about that very future. Earlier this fall, the organization hosted a panel discussion that hoped to answer a foreboding question: Will you still have a job when […]

Science must examine the future of work

Science must examine the future of work

Automation will take away jobs, but a bigger question is how many it will generate. In 2014, the Los Angeles Times began beating its rivals to report earthquakes, using an algorithm to convert announcements from the US Geological Survey (USGS) to breaking news within a few minutes. This June, it announced that a magnitude-6.8 quake had shaken Santa Barbara, California. That was certainly news to the distinctly unshaken residents of Santa Barbara; the earthquake the newspaper was reporting on had actually happened in 1925. The paper’s Quakebot had misinterpreted an update to the USGS seismic database and published its […]

Big question for US cities: Is Amazon’s HQ2 worth the price?

Dozens of cities are working frantically to land Amazon’s second headquarters, raising a weighty question with no easy answer:

Is it worth it?

Amazon is promising $5 billion of investment and 50,000 jobs over the next decade and a half. Yet the winning city would have to provide Amazon with generous tax breaks and other incentives that can erode a city’s tax base.Most economists say the answer is a qualified yes — that an Amazon headquarters is a rare case in which a package of at least modest enticements could repay a city over time. That’s particularly true compared with […]

Lessons from history for the future of work

Lessons from history for the future of work

Children working in a cotton mill in Macon, Georgia, in January 1909. Today is not the first time that people have worried that machines will render human labour obsolete, making a few very rich and the majority very poor.

Since the Industrial Revolution, mechanization has been controversial. Machines pushed up productivity, raising incomes per capita. But they threatened to put people out of work, to lower their wages and to divert all the gains from growth to the owners of businesses. The stocking-frame operators of Nottingham, UK (the Luddites), wrecked improved knitting machines that threatened their jobs. Mobs burnt down […]

This Company’s Robots Are Making Everything—and Reshaping the World

This Company’s Robots Are Making Everything—and Reshaping the World

The headquarters of Fanuc sit in the shadow of Mt. Fuji, on a sprawling, secluded campus of 22 windowless factories and dozens of office buildings. The grounds approach the lower slopes of Japan’s most famous peak, encircled by a dense forest that Fanuc’s founding CEO, Seiuemon Inaba, planted decades ago to shield the company’s operations from prying eyes—an example of the preoccupation with secrecy that once led Fortune to compare him to a bond villain. An error has occurred

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How Will China’s Industrial Modernization Plan Affect Workers?

How Will China’s Industrial Modernization Plan Affect Workers?

Chinese industrial workers. By Boy Luethje

Today’s discussions about the future of manufacturing are awash with visions of revolutionary change. Digital technologies are expected to create a “fourth industrial revolution”—a world of seamlessly interconnected “smart factories” driven by artificial intelligence, cloud computing and big data applications.

In line with this thinking, China has developed a master plan to transform its vast manufacturing base from low-cost export production to highly automated advanced manufacturing aimed primarily at the domestic market. The plan was drafted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and was outlined in 2015 in a comprehensive government […]

Lifelong Corporate And Manufacturing Jobs Aren’t Coming Back

Lifelong Corporate And Manufacturing Jobs Aren't Coming Back

Courtesy: William Edwards/AFP/Getty Images) My father was a 45-year veteran employee of the tire and rubber product manufacturing giant Uniroyal, Incorporated.

In 1979, my family returned home to Naugatuck, Connecticut — also the company’s home base. We had finished a three-year assignment in Rome, where my father led the company’s Italian operations.

When I asked if we could stop at the Rubber Shop, where we always bought Keds sneakers made in the town’s factories, my mother’s eyes met mine. “The store shut down,” she said, “and the factories are leaving too.”I was only 14, but I knew that people depended on […]