Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Zombie robot argument – apparently automation doesnt have any impact on jobs at all?

Zombie robot argument - apparently automation doesnt have any impact on jobs at all?

I’d like to see that as well. In the article it says: Yes, automation has led to job displacements in particular occupations and industries in the past, but there is no basis for claiming that automation has led—or will lead—to increased joblessness, unemployment, or wage stagnation overall. Implying that in certain industries automation has led to to job loss. My postulation is that we are going to continue seeing increasing industries experience automation overhauls. What happens to those individuals that experience job loss due to that? They claim in the key points that new jobs are created in different […]

In the age of disruption, what are the new rules of negotiating salary?

In the age of disruption, what are the new rules of negotiating salary?

If Robotic Process Automation is truly reducing the number of jobs, is salary negotiation a risk that a jobseeker should take? In a recent Harvard commencement speech, Mark Zuckerberg addressed his alma mater’s fresh graduates for “establishing a ‘social infrastructure’ for the world” as “generation-defining public works projects” that involve people towards a socially beneficial cause. Much like the recent technologies being developed at Facebook, his belief in a future with no job shortages despite automation was built not only “to create progress, but to create purpose”.

However, at a time when the World Bank data suggests that 69% of […]

Why Lifelong Learning is Our Competitive Advantage in the Automation Age

New technologies are transforming our profession, and they’re also transforming the skills we’ll need to stave off extinction.

In a paper titled “ The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation? ” University of Oxford researchers Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne tried to gauge the odds that certain occupations will be completely automated within the next 20 years. Among their predictions: Tax preparation: 98.7 percent

Bookkeepers: 97.6 percent Accounting and auditing: 93.5 percent In fact, only seven occupations – cargo and freight agents, watch repairers, insurance underwriters, mathematical technicians, hand sewers, title examiners, and telemarketers […]

RISE of the ROBOT

RISE of the ROBOT

A four-part look at how robots are changing the way we work. First up, robots aren’t killing jobs, they’re creating new ones and more of them
— at least at a GE Aviation plant in Quebec

By Drew Hasselback in Bromont, Que.
About 180 robots here are doing work that humans used to do at a GE Aviation plant that makes parts for jet engines. But they haven’t replaced the humans. Indeed, the opposite is true. Since a new, automated section of the plant ramped up at the start of the decade, the number of people working here […]

“Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism”: Has the Time For Universal Basic Income Finally Come?

The phrase fully automated luxury gay space communism is the meme-culture embodiment of the left’s traditional aspiration toward utopia. Like other forms of postmodern commentary, fully automated luxury gay space communism internalizes a dialectic of irony. Willful naiveté acts as its animating self-contradiction. The effect is to evoke sincerity while seeming to undercut it, pointing toward a social horizon to giggle at while chasing.

The dialectical nature of fully automated luxury gay space communism squares nicely with the contradictory status of technology in Marxian economic theory. Marx identified technological progress as one of capitalism’s fundamental sources of agitation. Capitalists extract […]

The robots are coming for our jobs but Deloitte’s COO doesn’t think it’s that scary

The robots are coming for our jobs but Deloitte's COO doesn't think it's that scary

Herwig Prammer/Reuters The robots are coming for our jobs.

As reported by Business Insider’s Elena Holodny , 47% of total US employment is at high risk of automation in the next ten to twenty years, according to an Oxford report .

To be sure, that doesn’t mean that those jobs will definitely be automated.A top executive at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, or Deloitte as it is commonly called, thinks the coming wave of automation is not something people should fear.Frank Friedman is the global chief operating officer of the 172-year-old financial firm known for its audit and consulting services. In his […]

Labor Markets in the Age of Automation

Labor Markets in the Age of Automation

BERKELEY – Advances in artificial intelligence and robotics are powering a new wave of automation, with machines matching or outperforming humans in a fast-growing range of tasks, including some that require complex cognitive capabilities and advanced degrees. This process has outpaced the expectations of experts; not surprisingly, its possible adverse effects on both the quantity and quality of employment have raised serious concerns.

To listen to President Donald Trump’s administration, one might think that trade remains the primary reason for the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States. Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, has declared that the possible technological […]

Workers underestimate ‘robotisation’ of jobs

New Zealander workers greatly underestimate the extent to which their roles will be replaced by robots, according to a survey undertaken by the Massey Business School and Auckland University of Technology.

Dr David Brougham from the Massey Business School and Professor Jarrod Haar from AUT surveyed 500 New Zealand employees earlier this year and say 80 percent of participants did not think their job could be automated. They say the results did not deviate significantly from data collected in 2015 and 2016, despite extensive media coverage of the issue over that time.

Brougham said: “There is an interesting cognitive bias going […]

Capitalism is destructive and unsustainable – It needs to be replaced

Capitalism is destructive and unsustainable – It needs to be replaced

Dissatisfaction with capitalism has grown since the Great Recession. Here, protesters march in Oakland in November 2011. | Occupy Oakland This article is based on remarks made by the author at the CPUSA National Labor Conference, May 20-21, in Chicago.

Several crises of contemporary capitalism have reached or are reaching dangerous tipping points. They are rooted in a path of destructive and unsustainable development.

They include extreme wealth and social inequality, job loss and dislocation from automation, and the existential threat posed by the ecological crisis.These interconnected crises are impacting everything and must be addressed together. And they can be.But […]

Why automation rather than Brexit is the prime challenge

Why automation rather than Brexit is the prime challenge

Donald Trump has been very vocal on protecting US manufacturing jobs Disruption is perhaps one of the most overused words in business – Amazon disrupted book selling, Uber disrupted taxis and Airbnb is disrupting hospitality.

But disruption has also been a major feature of politics, going as far back as the financial crisis, and including the Eurozone crisis, political turmoil in places like Greece and France, and the election of Donald Trump as US President.

Brexit is another major disruptor that is going to have significant implications for things like trade, labour, research, funding and borders. But the challenge at present […]