Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Millennials Think Automation Is Great For Jobs, Survey Says

Millennials Think Automation Is Great For Jobs, Survey Says

Millennials.ITU Pictures/Flickr While many of the older generation of workers are freaking out over potential jobless due to automation, a new survey suggests that millennials aren’t all that worried. In fact, it seems most of the people born in 1985 and onwards believes that technology is great for employment down the road.

The survey was commissioned by the World Economic Forum . 24,766 participants were asked a series of questions with regards to the impact of technology on the economy. The topics covered automation and advancements in artificial intelligence. Of the responders, 78.6 percent said that they did not believe […]

The radical future has to become a radical present. Interview with Nick Srnicek

The radical future has to become a radical present. Interview with Nick Srnicek

Jakub Dymek: What’s behind the idea of a ‘radical future’ on which you and Alex Williams just wrote a book?

Nick Srnicek*: The core argument is the idea that the left has given up on the idea of the future and we have to reclaim it. With changes to the labour market, through automation, we can start building towards something like a post-work society. We have to get rid of the centrality of work to our lives. We have to build alternatives. There are four demands. One, to push for automation – let’s automate all the drudgery and […]

Universal basic income would grow the economy PERMANENTLY, claims left-leaning think tank

Universal basic income would grow the economy PERMANENTLY, claims left-leaning think tank

Giving all Americans a guaranteed salary would boost the economy permanently, a new study has found.

The study, conducted by the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think tank, looks into how a universal basic income (UBI) would impact the American economy.

In such a society, each citizen is entitled to a basic income, which would come in the form of a monthly check. That check would likely not be the person’s primary income, but it would establish a basic standard of living, and provide security for those who find themselves out of work. A new study from the Roosevelt Institute has found […]

Column: Robots won’t steal all our jobs, if employers and workers adapt

Column: Robots won’t steal all our jobs, if employers and workers adapt

Technicians build LEAP engines for jetliners at a new, highly automated General Electric (GE) factory in Lafayette, Indiana, on March 29, 2017. Photo by REUTERS/Alwyn Scott Editor’s Note: On tonight’s Making Sen$e Thursday NewsHour segment, Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-visionary Vivek Wadhwa drives me around Palo Alto in his almost-driverless car to pose the question: are we going to drive automation or will it drive us?

To MIT business school professor Paul Osterman, this raises the key economic issue of our era: meaningful jobs that pay a meaningful wage in the face of what he calls “the robot frenzy.” Meaningful work was […]

Bet on the American worker to adapt and thrive

Bet on the American worker to adapt and thrive

Fort Worth Star-Telegram "Don’t fight forces, use them."

Early 20 th century visionary and philosopher Buckminster Fuller was clear when he emphasized the course humanity could chart when it embraced change rather than oppose it.

On Labor Day, it is good to remind ourselves how clearly we have benefited from embracing technological change. Once upon a time, automation that ushered in the U.S. industrial revolution was responsible for shifting employment from agrarian to urban centers. Those that argued for remaining on the farm missed the greatest economic expansion and increase in standard of living in all of human existence. Since the […]

Are we on the brink of a jobless future?

Are we on the brink of a jobless future?

MILES O’BRIEN: We’re going to get a better picture tomorrow of how strong job creation is when the monthly employment report comes out. But whatever that snapshot looks like, there are concerns about the rise of robotics and automation, and what that means for the future of the work force.

Our economics correspondent, Paul Solman, has been exploring that subject.

Here’s his latest report for our weekly series Making Sense. PAUL SOLMAN: In Silicon Valley, author Vivek Wadhwa says he already lives in the future. There’s his mostly driverless electric car.OK, so, your car can open the garage door and greet […]

‘The End of Loyalty’ and the Surge in Populist Sentiment

‘The End of Loyalty’ and the Surge in Populist Sentiment

In the literature that helps explain the shocking results of the presidential election of 2016, Rick Wartzman’s new book, The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America , merits a place alongside J. D. Vance’s well-known memoir of white working class alienation and despair, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis and the less well-known sociological study of American mores just before the election, The Vanishing Center of American Democracy , by James Davison Hunter and Carl Desportes Bowman, both of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Culture. The […]

The Job-Stealing Robot Apocalypse May Be Worse Than Previously Thought

The Job-Stealing Robot Apocalypse May Be Worse Than Previously Thought

Last year, Amazon introduced its first Amazon Go : a brick-and-mortar convenience store that sells snacks, staples like milk and bread, pre-made meals, and meal kits. But unlike a 7-Eleven, there are no cashiers or checkout lanes in the Seattle store. Instead, the entire process is automated: sensors track the items customers take out of the store, and charge them accordingly. Amazon is also working on another convenience-store concept in which customers would order online and pick up groceries from their cars, using license-plate-reading technology, sensors, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to help facilitate faster checkouts. It’s a revolutionary […]

Automation Robots Will Have Human Faces

Automation Robots Will Have Human Faces

Image: kuloser/Pixabay “Anti-Android is Anti-Human.”

Robots in science fiction generally fall into two categories: helpers and killers. Helpers are programmed to facilitate the objectives of their human companions, and are typified by characters like the garbage-compactor Wall-E, the Jetsons’ robotic maid Rosie, the Venture family’s H.E.L.P.eR bot , or droids like C-3PO, R2-D2, and BB8.

Killers—Terminators, cylons, the machines of The Matrix —are most often sentient robots that have rebelled against their human creators and seek to replace them through violent revolution and total extermination.While many fictional robots exist on a spectrum between these archetypes, the robo-killer trope […]

COLUMN: Now is the time to focus on future Pennsylvania jobs

COLUMN: Now is the time to focus on future Pennsylvania jobs

Labor Day is a day dedicated to recognizing the social and economic achievements of American workers and their contribution to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our wonderful nation.

When the first Labor Day was celebrated in September 1882, it was at a time when American cities were the hub of industrial employment. That being said, times have changed, and Pennsylvania must change in order to be able to provide first-rate jobs for our residents.

In 2017, the American worker faces two very troubling trends: automation and the radical shift of the retail economy. Both trends threaten to leave hundreds of […]