Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Working with Robots: Human and Machine Coexistence in the Workforce

Working with Robots: Human and Machine Coexistence in the Workforce

Credit: whiteMocca/Shutterstock The pervasive fear that artificial intelligence (AI) will take over human economic livelihood has been felt in places like the manufacturing sector, as large swaths of the industry automate labor formerly done by humans . However, proponents of machine learning say ultimately AI and robotics will improve the way we do virtually everything, and ultimately create new jobs.

Still, nearly 40 percent of U.S. jobs were slated as a "high risk" for automation by the early 2030s in a March 2017 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). While the PwC report acknowledges it’s unlikely all those jobs will be automated […]

Efficiency in Work — Where Do Humans Fit In?

Efficiency in Work — Where Do Humans Fit In?

The rise in automation is going to bring about huge changes in the jobs market, and some will be better prepared than others. Efficiency in work. Man has always sought a better way to do more and, if possible, at a lower cost.

Simple machines such as levers, pulleys and inclined planes are found in the fossil record and were clearly part of the historic creation of the Great Pyramids and Greco-Roman construction.

Mass production was a need to achieve Henry Ford’s ostentatious goal of “a motor car for the great multitude,” hence, the first moving assembly line on a conveyor […]

Robots Future Jobs Reports: Working Side-by-Side With Humans

Robots Future Jobs Reports: Working Side-by-Side With Humans

In this May 14, 2015 photo, Kuka robots work on Tesla Model S cars in the Tesla factory in Fremont, California. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) Robots could play a big role in future jobs reports as automation continues to grow, with more and more bots performing tasks that were once designated to humans.

With President Donald Trump’s administration publicly stating that it wants to concentrate on boosting blue-collar jobs, it has been those skills that have been most affected by robotics and future technologies, according to CNBC .

Forrester Research stated last week that as many as 10 million jobs could […]

Startups spy an opportunity in the power of AI and automation

Startups spy an opportunity in the power of AI and automation

Emily Foges, chief executive, says Luminance allows junior and trainee lawyers get back to more interesting work analysing the data as they did before contracts were drawn up digitally Have you heard the one about the Chinese mobile phone factory that made one change and increased productivity by 250 per cent?

In news that won’t have been very funny to employees, the Changying Precision Technology replaced 90 per cent of its human workforce with machines.

The workforce at the factory in Dongguan City shrank from 650 people to just 60 after the company invested in 60 robot arms that can work […]

Grover Norquist: Bill Gates’ robot tax is ‘stupid’

Grover Norquist: Bill Gates' robot tax is 'stupid'

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist is not a fan of the "robot tax" recently proposed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

"A robot tax is a particularly stupid tax. It is a tax on productivity — a tax on growth," Grover told the Washington Examiner in an email exchange.

Gates made the suggestion during an interview with Quartz in February, in response to the number of jobs being lost to automation. "If a human worker does $50,000 of work in a factory, that income is taxed," he said. "If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax […]

Quick Takes: Automation of Labor

Quick Takes: Automation of Labor

With Technological Advancement Comes Easier Methods to Exploit

Despite all the promises of technological innovation, the proliferation of automated machines will harm financial prospects for working people in the following decades. According to Digital Trends , robots are likely to replace around five million jobs by 2020. Beyond the threat of job destruction, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have found that the effect of creating one robot for every thousand workers is a decrease in wages by about 0.25–0.5 percent. As robots are continually engineered to be more efficient and productive than humans, their work is valued at lower […]

What Are the Implications of Emerging Technologies in AI-Driven Robotics and Automation for Globalization?

Last month I attended an outstanding workshop at the University of Pennsylvania’s newly-established Perry World House on a topic that (as far as I can tell) has not received the attention it should: the intersection of emerging technologies with globalization. As it happens, I work in both these areas—but when I received the workshop invitation to join a panel on the interactions of emerging technologies in AI-enabled robotics and automation with processes of globalization, I realized I had never given much thought to how these two might interact with each other, today and into the future.

While there is a […]

When the robots take over, will there be jobs left for us?

When the robots take over, will there be jobs left for us?

With autonomous vehicles and machines becoming cheaper and computers smarter, what are the ramifications for human employment in a post-robot economy? By every measure, our country is on the road to becoming an AUTOMATION NATION. Our Money Issue Cover Story comes from David Pogue of Yahoo Finance:

Tony Hughes has been a long-haul truck driver for more than 20 years. But today, all he has to do is sit back and relax.

“’Rosebud’ is on,” he said, flipping a switch.Today, he’s hauling 20,000 pounds of freight down the Florida turnpike in a self-driving, robotic truck. It’s been retrofitted with a […]

Puzder: Minimum Wage Hikes Are ‘Robot Employment Acts’

Puzder: Minimum Wage Hikes Are 'Robot Employment Acts'

As seen on The Journal Editorial Report

Former CKE Restaurants executive Andrew Puzder wrote in the Wall Street Journal that rising labor costs combined with minimum wage hikes effectively created a "Robot Employment Act"

Puzder, who bowed out of contention for President Trump’s labor secretary, said on the "Journal Editorial Report" that McDonald’s is installing 14,000 ordering kiosks and that Wendy’s is adding 1,000.He called the changes an example of how high labor costs from heightened minimum wage levels and the like have driven companies to take the risk and make such drastic changes. Could Another Trump Shake-Up the […]

AI FEARS: New laws DEMANDED over concerns at speed of super robots taking over our jobs

AI FEARS: New laws DEMANDED over concerns at speed of super robots taking over our jobs

Robots undertaking clerical tasks in the office of the future Vast swathes of the global workforce could be replaced by machines thanks to rapid technological change and innovation in artificial intelligence and robotics.

And future governments will be forced to bring in legislation to ensure quotas of human workers as traditional working practices are turned on their head.

Gerlind Wisskirchen, a Cologne-based employment lawyer who is vice-chair of the International Bar Association’s (IBA) global employment institute, said existing legal frameworks regulating employment and safety are becoming rapidly outdated. New laws will be needed to protect the human workforce from its robotic […]