Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

When robots take jobs, workers deserve compensation

When robots take jobs, workers deserve compensation

The largely forgotten fate of London’s watermen, who ferried passengers on the Thames for centuries before faster forms of transport stole their jobs, would seem of marginal relevance today. But the lessons of the past can often inform the decisions of the future. And as we fret about the rise of robots and the impact of artificial intelligence, the history of London’s water taxis can teach us something about how to ease disruption caused by new technologies. For many years, London’s watermen were the most numerous workers in the city. But complaints about their abusive practices forced parliament to […]

With automation (not trade or immigrants, as Trump claims) taking jobs, it’s time to consider a universal basic income

LFPress.com – Opinion – Work In Progress?

The main message of 2016 was that we are entering a period of economic and political upheaval comparable to the industrial revolution of 1780-1850, and nothing expressed that message more clearly than Donald Trump’s appointment of Andrew Puzder as secretary of labour — even though it’s clear that neither man understands the message.

Puzder bears a large part of the responsibility for giving space for Trump’s election promise to “bring back” America’s lost industrial jobs: seven million in the past 35 years. That’s what created the Rust Belt and the popular anger that put […]

Foxconn aims to replace almost entire workforce with robots

Foxconn aims to replace almost entire workforce with robots

Foxconn aims to replace almost entire workforce with robots
30 percent automation in China by 2020

According to the latest reports from Foxconn executives, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer now plans to replace nearly its entire human workforce with automated machines over three testing phases, due to advancements in the number of robots it can produce per year.
Dai Jia-peng, Foxconn’s GM of the Automation Technology Development Committee, says that the company has produced and deployed over 40,000 in-house industrial robots called “Foxbots” at its factories in China. It can now produce roughly 10,000 robots per year, allowing […]

Automation’s Future in Idaho Is Considered

Automation’s Future in Idaho Is Considered

In Idaho, a researcher at the state Department of Labor looked into automation and how it may play out locally. His overall estimate is based on that of the Oxford analysts , that nearly half of state jobs are susceptible within a couple decades.

But there’s no mention that workers are shoppers and are the engine of America’s consumer-driven economy. Nobody is discussing how the financial system is supposed to function without a healthy population of shoppers.

Or that the automation revolution makes immigration obsolete . The robots haven’t taken over — yet. Technology already is changing work force and how […]

Apple manufacturer Foxconn to convert its workforce into robots

Apple manufacturer Foxconn to convert its workforce into robots

Foxconn , One of Apple’s Original Equipment Manufacturers, plans to automate its workforce in their factories in China in the upcoming years, according to the company’s General Manager for the Automation Technology Development Committee, Dai Jia-peng.

A report from Digitimes established that this large manufacturer plans the automation in a three-phase program, Jia-peng said. In this scheme, the objective is to replace the human workforce for what they have called “Foxbots.” These robots will use a special unique software and will function as in-house robotic equipment. Foxconn plans to replace its human workforce for what they have called “Foxbots.” Photo […]

If Foxconn’s Chinese Factories Are Now Automating Then Those Apple Jobs Are Never Coming Back

Some years back President Obama asked Steve Jobs about all those Apple assembly jobs being done in those vast sheds in China. More specifically, he wanted to know whether those jobs would come back to the United States, was there some way they could be brought back perhaps. And Steve Jobs’ response was simply that those jobs are never coming back. This is not something specific to Apple, nor China, either. Mass employment in assembly of anything is just not something that is ever going to happen in a rich country any more. It’s cheaper to use machines to […]

A stronger economy won’t save obsolete jobs

A stronger economy won't save obsolete jobs

Automated robots build a 2015 Chrysler 200 automobile at the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant in Sterling Heights, Mich., in March 2014. In South Africa, people who speak Afrikaans use the word "robot" to mean the same thing it means in English. But it is also the word for "traffic light." Why? Before automated signals, motorists on busy streets were directed by police officers standing on platforms. Those cops were automated out of a job.

This bit of trivia comes from the dazzling new book "Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World," by University of Illinois at […]

iPhone manufacturer Foxconn plans to replace almost every human worker with robots

iPhone manufacturer Foxconn plans to replace almost every human worker with robots

Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturing giant behind Apple’s iPhone and numerous other major electronics devices, aims to automate away a vast majority of its human employees, according to a report from DigiTimes . Dai Jia-peng, the general manager of Foxconn’s automation committee, says the company has a three-phase plan in place to automate its Chinese factories using software and in-house robotics units, known as Foxbots.

The first phase of Foxconn’s automation plans involve replacing the work that is either dangerous or involves repetitious labor humans are unwilling to do. The second phase involves improving efficiency by streamlining production lines to reduce […]

Here’s what will happen when millions of jobs are lost to robots

Here's what will happen when millions of jobs are lost to robots

On the stump in 2016, both candidates talked about creating jobs, taxes, the economy, and trade. But what neither talked about was perhaps the greatest threat to economic security in the future: automation and computerization.

Take, for example, the number one job held by men today: Nearly 3 million of them are truck drivers. What will happen to them in a decade when Daimler expects its self-driving 18-wheeler now being tested in the Nevada desert to be ready for the road? How about the top job among women, that of administrative assistant? Technology already has wiped away many of those […]

Why iPhone production isn’t coming to the United States

Why iPhone production isn’t coming to the United States

iPhone-6s batt Apple is not the top seller of smartphones in the world — not even close. It does, however, have the vast majority of smartphone profits in the world with an estimated 90%. The margins on Apple’s hardware are so large that it can out earn OEMs that sell several times as many phones. There’s been a lot of talk about encouraging the manufacturing of electronics in the US with the incoming Trump administration, but is it even feasible to build an iPhone in the US? If Apple built them in the US, would that really create many […]