Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Journalists, look out: Google is funding the rise of the AI news machine in Europe

Journalists, look out: Google is funding the rise of the AI news machine in Europe

Human journalists, start the countdown to your obsolescence (if you haven’t already, that is). Your inevitable robot replacements are picking up steam — and more importantly, sponsorship — with another show of support from the world’s biggest tech company.

Google’s Digital News Initiative (DNI), a fund that promotes innovation in digital journalism in Europe, just announced its latest round of sponsored projects. Among them is RADAR, a collaboration between the UK and Ireland’s Press Association (PA) and Urbs Media , a startup that creates localized news stories using AI.

DNI awarded the RADAR project (which stands for Reporters And Data And […]

America, we still have a jobs problem

America, we still have a jobs problem

Biggest job gains were in these sectors … 01:31 Jeffrey Sachs is a university professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN)For those with a college degree or above, life is good. Jobs are plentiful, incomes are rising, inflation is low, health is broadly improving, and the impacts of the new information technologies — from smartphones to e-commerce to ubiquitous information — are generally beneficent. For those without a college degree, the situation is starkly different. Earnings are low and often lagging behind inflation. Health conditions of […]

Robotics Industry Has Big Future as Applications Grow

Robotics Industry Has Big Future as Applications Grow

Robotics are about to take off, with applications for the technology expanding across many different industries, said Susan Teele, the head of marketing and communications for the Pittsburgh-based Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute (ARM).

A push to make robots more easily customized and more flexible will especially increase their use, she added.

“Right now robots have to be fairly customized to do a job and the goal for any success with robotics is the ability to do mass production,” said Teele in an exclusive interview with R&D Magazine . “More opportunities for mass production for robots is important because it will […]

Why robots may not replace humans after all

Economist John Maynard Keynes conjectured in 1930 that all human workers would be replaced by machines, leading to “technological unemployment.” This and similar prophesies have inspired a cottage industry of research examining what might happen in a robot-led future. Previous studies, including the 2016 World Bank’s World Development Report, have estimated that roughly half of all workers will be at risk of losing their jobs to automation over the next 20 years.

But MIT’s Daron Acemoglu and Boston University’s Pascual Restrepo analyze the effect of industrial robots and find a more modest effect on job loss.

Industrial robots (IRs) are fully […]

How robots, AI and automation are shaking up Iowa’s workforce. Is your job at risk?

How robots, AI and automation are shaking up Iowa's workforce. Is your job at risk?

Take a look at how this sweet Iowa treat is made, and find out how the Country Maid pastry plant in West Bend is increasing it’s production with automation. Michael Zamora (Photo: Michael Zamora/The Register) WEST BEND, Ia. — If one machine goes down inside the Country Maid plant, the whole operation devoted to churning out Butter Braid pastries comes to a screeching halt.

The stainless steel giants that make up the automated production line constantly talk with each other. When something goes wrong at one station, an alert is instantly sent to the next in line, effectively cutting workers […]

Google’s robot journalism project

Google’s robot journalism project

news robots A robot journalism project where computes write 30,000 stories a month for local media is going to be funded by Google. The scheme that will be launched in 2018 will use human journalists with the Press Association (PA) News Agency and will be funded £622,000 for the project, according to the BBC .

To automate reports about crime, health and employment, five people will use official open data sources.

The PA announced that Reporters and Data and Robots (Radar) would benefit “established media outlets”, independent publishers and local bloggers. ‘Cost effective ways to produce local stories’ “Skilled human journalists […]

The digital divide: why the skills gap must be addressed to tackle inequality

Automation anxiety: the role technology is playing in rising inequality has become a hot topic

In 1821, the eminent political economist David Ricardo remarked: “The substitution of machinery for human labour is often very injurious to the interests of the class of labourers… [it] may render the population redundant and deteriorate the condition of the labourer.” Little over a century later, John Maynard Keynes identified a similar predicament: “Technological unemployment… [is an issue born of] our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses of labour.”

Fast-forward another century and […]

Mark Zuckerberg Suggests the Government Should Give Everyone Free Cash

Mark Zuckerberg Suggests the Government Should Give Everyone Free Cash

By David Ramos/Getty Images. As Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg chips away at his New Year’s resolution to visit all 50 U.S. states—a tour that continues to raise questions about his political ambitions—he stopped in Alaska with his wife, Priscilla Chan, to highlight Silicon Valley’s favorite new policy proposal: giving everyone free money. Alaska, unlike other states, has its own form of basic income, known as the Permanent Fund Dividend, which allocates some of the state’s oil revenue to a fund that gets disbursed to Alaskan residents. Each Alaskan receives a chunk of money through the program; in 2016, every […]

Mark Zuckerberg Suggests the Government Should Give Everyone Free Cash

Mark Zuckerberg Suggests the Government Should Give Everyone Free Cash

By David Ramos/Getty Images. As Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg chips away at his New Year’s resolution to visit all 50 U.S. states—a tour that continues to raise questions about his political ambitions—he stopped in Alaska with his wife, Priscilla Chan, to highlight Silicon Valley’s favorite new policy proposal: giving everyone free money. Alaska, unlike other states, has its own form of basic income, known as the Permanent Fund Dividend, which allocates some of the state’s oil revenue to a fund that gets disbursed to Alaskan residents. Each Alaskan receives a chunk of money through the program; in 2016, every […]

Human qualities could produce jobs as automation intensifies

Human qualities could produce jobs as automation intensifies

It’s fashionable — and, in a way, understandable — to fear that robots and algorithms are primed to take away too many jobs to laugh off. Machines, the logic goes, are becoming so much better than humans at churning out products, even the kind that require skilled labor, that soon it’ll be a liability to employ people. Today’s trendy despair will certainly ensure we won’t be surprised if bots really take over the world. But the lack of creative and classical thinking about humans’ myriad advantages is now so pronounced that it’s hard to credit the pessimists.

Amid our many […]