Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Making George Jetson pay taxes on Rosie robot

Making George Jetson pay taxes on Rosie robot

In-Shape Health Clubs Bet you George and Jane Jetson are wishing they hired an undocumented immigrant as a housekeeper instead of hiring Rosie the robot maid.
The Jetsons — the space age cartoon family Hanna-Baebera created that lives in 2154 — may have to cut back on some luxuries if San Francisco County Supervisor Jane Kim succeeds in imposing a tax on robots and automation.
Taking a cue from musings from Microsoft founder Bill Gates — who became one of the world’s wealthiest men through software programs that reduced labor needed to perform a wide array of office work […]

CEOs: Changing technology landscape is impacting people strategy

CEOs: Changing technology landscape is impacting people strategy

Technology has the potential to create considerable disruption to employment across a range of industries. A new report considers the current trend, as well as the kinds of skills that employers cannot automate. Many of those skills themselves remain difficult to find, pointing out that considerable social transformations may be on the horizon, with people strategies likely to adapt to the new normal.

In PwC ’s latest edition of its ‘Global CEO Survey’, the 20th edition, the firm considers a range of factors affecting businesses across the globe. One key area of concern, from both the public as well […]

Over the last 60 years, automation has totally eliminated just one US occupation

Over the last 60 years, automation has totally eliminated just one US occupation

Automation often replaces human labor, but very rarely in the last sixty years has it eliminated an entire occupation.

Only one of the 270 detailed occupations listed in the 1950 US Census has since been eliminated by automation, according to a working paper by Harvard economist James Bessen. The one exception: elevator operator.

While other occupations on the 1950 list have been eliminated by factors like lack of demand (boardinghouse keepers) and technological obsolescence (telegraph operators), only elevator operators owe their occupation’s demise mostly to automation, Bessen found.The pattern of the last 60 years is likely to continue. Though almost all […]

The Robots are Coming, your Job is at Risk

The Robots are Coming, your Job is at Risk

Development & Aid , Featured , Global , Globalisation , Headlines , Labour | Opinion

Martin Khor is Executive Director of the South Centre, a think tank for developing countries, based in Geneva. Credit: John Greenfield/Flickr PENANG, Mar 15 2017 (IPS) – Last year Uber started testing driver-less cars, with humans inside to make corrections in case something goes wrong. If the tests go well, Uber will presumably replace their present army of drivers with fleets of the new cars.

Some personally owned cars can already do automatic parking. Is it a matter of time before Uber, taxi and personal […]

Fears of robots stealing our jobs are misplaced

Fears of robots stealing our jobs are misplaced

It was feared ATMs would displace bank tellers. However, deployment of ATMs reduces bank running costs, allowing banks to open more branches

A widely cited 2013 study estimates that 47 per cent of American jobs are at high risk of being computerised soon Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence by machines. The term was coined in a 1955 research proposal stating that “good progress could be made in research to get machines to solve the kinds of problems reserved for humans”. This prediction was over-optimistic at the time and AI garnered a reputation for promising more […]

Robots won’t take your job—they’ll help make room for meaningful work instead

Robots won’t take your job—they’ll help make room for meaningful work instead

Unencumbered by the prospect of re-election, outgoing presidents tend to use their final speeches to candidly warn against threats they believe to be metastasizing in society. For example, George Washington spoke of the ills of hyper-partisanship and excessive debt. Dwight Eisenhower denounced the waxing power of the “military industrial complex.” President Barack Obama singled out an economic peril in his otherwise doggedly hopeful final address in Chicago : “The next wave of economic dislocations won’t come from overseas,” he said. “It will come from the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good, middle-class jobs obsolete.”

Obama articulated […]

America may miss out on the next industrial revolution

America may miss out on the next industrial revolution

A robotic arm manufactured by KUKA, a German industrial robotics company, installing the cockpit section of a Mercedes Benz S-Class. Robots are inevitably going to automate millions of jobs in the US and around the world, but there’s an even more complex scenario on the horizon, said roboticist Matt Rendall. In a talk Tuesday at SXSW, Rendall painted a picture of the future of robotic job displacement that focused less on automation and more on the realistic ways in which the robotics industry will reshape global manufacturing.

The takeaway was that America, which has outsourced much of its manufacturing and […]

Work fewer hours and be happier: Greens

Work fewer hours and be happier: Greens

Greens leader Richard Di Natale believes some Australians would be better off with a four-day working week or a six-hour working day even if it meant earning less money in some cases.

This would allow people to spend more time on the things that make life worth living, such as family, sport, and volunteering. SHARE Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link Richard Di Natale is urging Australian society to seek a better life-work balance for the sake of everyone. Photo: Andrew Meares Swimming against the political tide in which jobs and work are held up as ends […]

Hayward: Burger-Flipping Robots Know the True Minimum Wage Is Always Zero

Hayward: Burger-Flipping Robots Know the True Minimum Wage Is Always Zero

I thought the grim lesson of the burger-flipping robots was so obvious it barely deserved comment, but comment I did… and soon discovered plenty of people do need this lesson explained to them:

BurgerFlipBot calculates that the true minimum wage is, always has been, and always will be ZERO. https://t.co/ZT3SaDiyZJ It’s time for a little primer in BurgerFlipRobot economics, with a little help from the friendly (and not-so-friendly) folks in my Twitter stream. I decided not to reprint any Tweet except my own, because I don’t wish to embarrass anyone. Quite the contrary — I think even my more […]

DICT: 48% of employees to be affected by automation

DICT: 48% of employees to be affected by automation

The statistic underscores the need to urgently improve public access to the internet and information RETHINKING PROCESSES. Rodolfo Salalima (center) addresses the need for society to adjust to the advent of automation. Photo by Gelo Gonzales/Rappler MANILA, Philippines – The incoming wave of automation underscores the need to improve internet services in the country – and fast.

Automation or the assignment of jobs and tasks to machines and computer-helmed systems will affect roughly 48% of employees in the Philippines – either by reducing the worker’s role or taking away a job completely. The statistic was presented by Department of Information […]