Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Trump Voters Need Good Economic Policy, Not Empathy

Trump Voters Need Good Economic Policy, Not Empathy

There has been a strange debate among many liberals and progressives since the election as to whether they should have empathy for the people who voted for Donald Trump. After all, Trump is a pretty reprehensible character who has pledged to do some pretty awful things in the White House. Is there a reason that people should have empathy for the voters who put him there?

Whatever answer you pick to that question, there is another set of questions that should be simpler for progressives to answer. What are the right economic policies to be pursuing for the working class? […]

The Inevitability of Ubiquitous Automation

The Inevitability of Ubiquitous Automation

http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf The linked paper is brought to you by researchers from Oxford University. They examine emerging labor market trends resulting from automation and why the oncoming round of automation will be different from the last.

Synopsis:

Historic labor market trends (1980-2005) point towards a hollowing out of middle income routine based careers in favor of high-income cognitive and low-income manual occupations. Net changes in US employment were U-shaped in skill level, meaning lowest and highest job-skill quartiles expanded sharply with relative employment declines in the middle of the distribution.These changes resulted from automation being confined to routine manufacturing tasks. […]

Trump Voters Need Good Economic Policy, Not Empathy

Trump Voters Need Good Economic Policy, Not Empathy

There has been a strange debate among many liberals and progressives since the election as to whether they should have empathy for the people who voted for Donald Trump. After all, Trump is a pretty reprehensible character who has pledged to do some pretty awful things in the White House. Is there a reason that people should have empathy for the voters who put him there?

Whatever answer you pick to that question, there is another set of questions that should be simpler for progressives to answer. What are the right economic policies to be pursuing for the working class? […]

Is automation really the worst enemy of the US middle class?

This Axios headline is problematic: “Summers: Automation is the middle class’ worst enemy.”

The accompanying piece doesn’t actually quote economist Larry Summers making that declaration. Rather it summarizes an interview in which Summers indeed points out the challenge automation poses for workers. He’s right.​ Of course that’s been the case for the past 200 years and will likely be the case for the next 200. But in exchange for a degree of instability and disruption, technological progress has dramatically raised living standards for workers. Technicians build LEAP engines for jetliners at a new, highly automated General Electric (GE) factory in […]

Career planning will be critical in the age of automation

Career planning will be critical in the age of automation

Press Release: Massey University

Most New Zealanders are still confident their jobs will be safe from advances in technology over the next decade, according to the latest findings of an ongoing research project into attitudes around the future of work.

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

Robot versus human in investment industry

Robot versus human in investment industry

Automation trend: the role of robots in the investment industrywas discussed at the CFA Conference in Philadelphia

“Everyone has a plan ‘till they get punched in the mouth.” – Mike Tyson

I’m back from what was an excellent conference in Philadelphia, the home of Rocky. Like Rocky’s epic battles and fights, the CFA conference offered up a few great matches that permeated the entire conference. I’ll discuss two. In fight one, the robots squared off against the humans. In the second bout, it was passive versus active management.Robot versus humanThe concept of automation and artificial intelligence integration within the […]

Labour and Artificial Intelligence: Visions of despair, hope, and liberation

Labour and Artificial Intelligence: Visions of despair, hope, and liberation

Science-fiction scenarios of rampant AI are interesting thought-experiments but already-existing AI is here, and requires well-crafted policy

A conventional delivery truck of Germany’s biggest retailer Metro AG stands behind the world’s first commercial delivery robot of Starship Technologies during a demonstration at Metro’s headquarter in Duesseldorf, Germany, June 7, 2016.(REUTERS) In the United States, job demographic data from censuses since the 1900s reveal a startling fact. Despite the two post-Industrial revolutions of electricity and computers, the occupations with the largest employment numbers are still jobs for drivers, retail, cashiers, secretaries, janitors etc, i.e. old professions needing simple skills and […]

Here’s When Machines Will Take Your Job, as Predicted by AI Gurus

While technology develops at exponential speed, transforming how we go about our everyday tasks and extending our lives, it also offers much to worry about. In particular, many top minds think that automation will cost humans their employment, with up to 47% of all jobs gone in the next 25 years. And chances are, this number could be even higher and the massive job loss will come earlier.

So when will your job become obsolete? Researchers at the University of Oxford surveyed the world’s top artificial intelligence experts to find out when exactly machines will be better at humans in […]

Balancing automation and taxation

Balancing automation and taxation

Money maker: a taxing system for robots need to be developed to maintain societal balances Olaf Merk explains why ports should take the lead in defining how to tax automated industries

One of the biggest political issues of the coming decades is the future of work. Technological advances are such that more than half of the existing jobs could be automated. Automation might create new jobs, but these will very likely not offset the lost jobs. This has far-reaching consequences: uncorrected, automation will erode tax income, welfare state and lead to very unequal income distribution. Some people say that […]

Employees Optimistic About The Role of Automation At Work

The past few months have seen a deluge of dire warnings about the coming robotic apocalypse, whereby vast swathes of jobs will be automated and humanity will be sidelined by our new robotic overlords.

Most of these dire predictions have their basis in three prominent studies. The first, and arguably most well known, was published by Oxford University’s Michael Osborne and Carl Benedikt Frey back in 2013. In it, they argue that 47% of jobs will be automated within 20 years.

The second was published by the McKinsey Global Institute, and they predicted that 45% of jobs will be automated, whilst […]