Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

The Robot Rampage

The Robot Rampage

Donald Trump tends to present the labor market as a zero-sum game: companies have shifted production to China and other emerging markets. He’s going to bring those jobs home.

Put aside for a moment how moving jobs back to a country with high costs gives companies an incentive to automate . There’s a bigger problem: After displacing U.S. manufacturing workers, robots are poised to do the same in developing economies, too. It will be hard to re-shore jobs that no longer exist.

It took 50 years for the world to install the first million industrial robots. The next million will take […]

A CES Takeaway: Don’t Fear Robots And Artificial Intelligence–Fear Politicians

A CES Takeaway: Don't Fear Robots And Artificial Intelligence--Fear Politicians

Maroon 5 keeps popping up on my Pandora stations, so artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning still have a ways to go. Even if AI can beat us at Go .

But, wow, that aside, the technologies showcased at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show (#CES2017, actually the 50th annual, sponsored by the Consumer Technology Association [CTA]), from countless robots to Hyundai exoskeletons, are incredible.

Voice recognition, virtual and augmented reality, smart home technologies and drones are everywhere. AI and machine learning comprise major threads.Which raises the question; will all that AI be Democrat or Republican?Just kidding. But a new concern has […]

Sayōnara, Humans: Japanese Company Replaces Its Workers with AI

Sayōnara, Humans: Japanese Company Replaces Its Workers with AI

34 workers at a Japanese insurance company are being laid off and replaced with an artificial intelligence (AI) system . Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance , seeking greater efficiency in calculating their payouts to policyholders, will soon replace many of its office workers with an AI system based on IBM’s Watson Explorer ("a cognitive technology that can think like a human").

In a recent press release , Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance stated an expected increase in productivity by 30% from their "Diagnostic document assessment automatic coding system."

The AI system will be used to read and understand medical certificates, hospital stays, surgical […]

Automation: Almost 50% of American jobs to dissappear

Automation: Almost 50% of American jobs to dissappear

Big Think | Aidan Quinn, Editor in Chief

A key platform for President Elect Donald Trump is to “bring the jobs back from China”. But what happens when the Chinese are already giving those jobs to machines? The jobs aren’t coming back:

One of the key drivers for Donald Trump’s shock victory during the U.S. election has been an anxiety about job security and the changes that the globalized economy has made across the globe. President Elect Trump capitalized on a ground-swell of dissatisfaction that middle-class Americans felt about stagnating wages and rapidly shrinking job opportunities, stoking anger […]

Ford CEO downplays Trump’s role in nixing Mexican plant, weighs in on tech, globalization and jobs

Ford CEO downplays Trump’s role in nixing Mexican plant, weighs in on tech, globalization and jobs

Alan Murray of Time Inc. interviews Ford CEO Mark Fields, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and Flex CEO Mike McNamara at CES today. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) LAS VEGAS — Ford was the latest company to find itself in the spotlight over issues of jobs and globalization this week, as the automaker canceled plans for a Mexican factory that would have employed nearly 3,000 people.

President-elect Donald Trump is getting the blame, but Ford CEO Mark Fields, speaking today the Consumer Electronics Show, insisted that the company made the decision for its own r Ford CEO Mark Fields at CES […]

US Manufacturers Add 17,000 Jobs in December

US Manufacturers Add 17,000 Jobs in December

By Bill Koenig Manufacturers added 17,000 jobs in December, ending a mostly down year on an upswing.

Durable goods manufacturers generated the bulk of the monthly gain. Such companies increased employment by 15,000 jobs last month, according to a breakdown by industry issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today. Non-durable goods added another 2000 jobs.

Within durable goods, the biggest gainer was fabricated metal products, up 5800 jobs. Other sectors posting job increases included motorized vehicles and parts (up 2900), primary metals (up 2200) and furniture (up 2300).Computers and electronic parts lost 900 jobs. The transportation equipment category, which includes […]

America Is Still Making Things

America Is Still Making Things

A manufacturing worker at an Eli Lilly facility in Indiana COLUMBIA CITY, Ind.—Big companies such as Rexnord and Carrier are closing down plants in this Rust Belt state and moving their factories to Mexico. But in some corners, including this rural patch of the state’s northeast, manufacturing is growing.

In a nondescript building set among the icy cornfields of Columbia City, Brian Emerick, the CEO and owner of Micropulse, employs 306 people who make millions of dollars worth of specialized medical equipment such as orthopedic implants and the surgical tools used to install them. That’s up from the 190 he […]

GARY MACDOUGALL: Society’s right to work

GARY MACDOUGALL: Society’s right to work

A typical auto manufacturing production floor will have thousands of industrial robots lined up doing multiple tasks. ©(Submitted photo)

Many years ago as a young reporter I felt underpaid and overworked. I had a crisis of faith in terms of my chosen field of employment.

Looking back, I was likely being paid about what I should have earned, given my education and experience.Unlike myself, many young people in the 1960s had chosen the booming economy of southern Ontario to find employment. The cars they drove when they returned home for summer vacations made me chafe at my lot in […]

America Is Still Making Things

America Is Still Making Things

A manufacturing worker at an Eli Lilly facility in Indiana COLUMBIA CITY, Ind.—Big companies such as Rexnord and Carrier are closing down plants in this Rust Belt state and moving their factories to Mexico. But in some corners, including this rural patch of the state’s northeast, manufacturing is growing.

In a nondescript building set among the icy cornfields of Columbia City, Brian Emerick, the CEO and owner of Micropulse, employs 306 people who make millions of dollars worth of specialized medical equipment such as orthopedic implants and the surgical tools used to install them. That’s up from the 190 he […]

When it Comes to ‘Saving Globalization’ World Leaders are Still Missing the Point

When it Comes to ‘Saving Globalization’ World Leaders are Still Missing the Point

“Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it,” or so Karl Marx once wrote. As trade liberalization and globalization more broadly are called into question, G20 leaders could do with both interpreting the situation and changing it.

It is not an easy task for the G20, which is a diverse group of developed and emerging economies, accounting for around 80% of GDP. In spite of their great success in launching a trade and investment working group and agreeing on guiding principles of investment policy-making, G20 leaders failed to address the emergence of […]