Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Automation for the People: The Public, Technology and Jobs

Automation for the People: The Public, Technology and Jobs

A 2012 research brief by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee at MIT renewed an old debate over the effect of new technologies on employment levels. They argued that, counter to the prevailing belief that new technologies and automation simply shift jobs into new sectors after a period of disruption, instead rapid improvements in technology over the past decades have left some workers completely behind, a trend that will continue to accelerate as computers capabilities expand. But what does the public think? Do Americans see technological threats to employment, and have their views changed since the days when robots first […]

Impact of job-stealing robots a growing concern at Davos

Impact of job-stealing robots a growing concern at Davos

An attendee communicate with SARA, a socially aware robot assisstant, during a presentation at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, January 17, 2017. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich By Martinne Geller and Ben Hirschler

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – Open markets and global trade have been blamed for job losses over the last decade, but global CEOs say the real culprits are increasingly machines.

And while business leaders gathered at the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos relish the productivity gains technology can bring, they warned this week that the collateral damage to jobs needs to be addressed […]

Obama Warns Automation Is a Danger to U.S. Jobs

Obama Warns Automation Is a Danger to U.S. Jobs

leminuit/istock.com In his final interview before leaving office, released Thursday by Pod Save America, President Barack Obama warned that automation is the bigger threat than global trade in taking away jobs in the United States.

“The fact is, and the data just shows this, the jobs that are going away are primarily going away because of automation and that’s going to accelerate,” Obama said. Uber Technology Inc.’s driverless car programs and the “equivalent displacement that’s going to take place in office buildings around the country is going to be scary for folks,” he added.

Uber is currently running pilot programs for […]

Automation replaced 17,000 people’s jobs at one of the world’s largest professional services and tech firms Accenture over the last 18 months, but no one actually lost their job – “We are fortunate enough to reskill and reposition them.”

both can be expected to happen simultaneously and in equal proportions. > This likely explains why over the last 200 years of increasing automation, we have never had rapid bursts of automation associated with an unemployment crisis. Depends on who you consider being employed. Horses surely have less work to do now than they did before the industrial revolution. Similarly, humans will have less work to do if everything a human can do could be done by something else. In order for humans to compete with it, we’ll have to modify yourselves to stay competitive.

The question becomes what is […]

[OPINION] Davos: Unpacking the future of the insurance sector

[OPINION] Davos: Unpacking the future of the insurance sector

How does the insurance sector – a sector highly correlated to GDP growth – prosper in a global economy that is stuttering?

At the World Economic Forum at Davos, the chairman and CEO of the Dow Chemical Company presented a talk which dealt with the broken global economy and suggested that inclusive capitalism is the answer to fixing it.

Inclusive capitalism is defined as generating profits as well as creating holistic value for all by solving problems and improving lives.Insurance companies could argue that they are already doing this by being innovative in managing and pricing for risk as precisely as […]

Bet You Didn’t See This Coming: 10 Jobs That Will Be Replaced By Robots

Bet You Didn't See This Coming: 10 Jobs That Will Be Replaced By Robots

I was recently talking to a friend of mine who’s an accountant. He has his own accounting firm and lives an upper-class lifestyle in the Chicago suburbs. As he’s an accountant with an additional degree in economics, naturally the conversation veered to the future of the economy. He said he will happily pay for his daughter’s college education, provided she won’t pursue a degree in accounting.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard a parent say they don’t want their child following in their career footsteps; a lawyer recently told me the same thing. And it’s not because they feel […]

For white-collar staff, AI threatens new workplace revolution

For white-collar staff, AI threatens new workplace revolution

If your job involves inputting reams of data for a company, you might want to think about retraining in a more specialised field. Or as a plumber.

After industrial robots and international trade put paid to many manufacturing jobs in the West, millions of white-collar workers could now be under threat from new technology such as artificial intelligence (AI).

The issue of how best to face up to this "Fourth Industrial Revolution" has been exercising politicians and business leaders this week at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alpine town of Davos.The progress of artificial intelligence has been "staggering" in […]

For white-collar staff, Artificial Intelligence threatens new workplace revolution

For white-collar staff, Artificial Intelligence threatens new workplace revolution

a man works amid orange robot arms.(Photo |AP) DAVOS: If your job involves inputting reams of data for a company, you might want to think about retraining in a more specialised field. Or as a plumber.

After industrial robots and international trade put paid to many manufacturing jobs in the West, millions of white-collar workers could now be under threat from new technology such as artificial intelligence (AI).

The issue of how best to face up to this "Fourth Industrial Revolution" has been exercising politicians and business leaders this week at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alpine town of […]

Boss of the world’s largest recruiter: ‘One-off education followed by a career will no longer work’

Boss of the world's largest recruiter: 'One-off education followed by a career will no longer work'

Alain Dehaze, CEO of Adecco at Davos this year. Adecco DAVOS, SWITZERLAND — The world is going through a seismic shift in the make-up of its workforce and the boss of the world’s largest staffing firm told Business Insider that the only way to stay employed is to constantly learn.

The World Economic Forum’s benchmark "Global Risks" report for 2017 says the biggest risk to doing business globally is unemployment or underemployment due to the greater adoption of robots, automation, and artificial intelligence.

However, Adecco CEO Alain Dehaze told BI that companies now need to look beyond displacement and how […]

Davos — the rich are worried

“I can’t wait to see how the incoming administration deals with AI,” said US Secretary of State John Kerry in a less-than-gracious reference to the fact that the Trump team has not got a clue about the real driving force in the changing world economy.

What was striking was that Kerry did not have to clarify his remark for the 2,000 “global leaders” — politicians, bureaucrats, business representatives and public intellectuals — who are in the Swiss alpine town of Davos for the annual World Economic Forum. They all know what he is talking about.

This year’s Davos gathering is actually […]