Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

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 […]

How robots will change the workforce

SAN DIEGO: Thirty of the world’s top scientists are scheduled to meet at the University of California at San Diego in February to discuss the toughest challenges in robotics and automation, including how to make driverless cars safe for a mass audience.

The experts are being brought together by Henrik Christensen, the prominent Georgia Tech engineer who was hired in July to run UC San Diego’s young Contextual Robotics Institute.

Christensen said at the time, “I want to build a research institute that, ideally, will be in the top five in the world five years from now. Why not see if […]

Microelectronics, Automation and Employment in the Automobile Industry

Microelectronics, Automation and Employment in the Automobile Industry

Teslas Model 3: Warum der Zeitplan heikel ist | Handelszeitung.ch

Impact of new electronic technology. microelectronics,. with a large share in automobile manufacturing plants.Automobile industry electric vehicle production, 195-196 employment projections,.Microelectronics, automation, and employment in the automobile industry. Automation and Employment in the Automobile Industry edited by S. Global Automotive Industry

The Changing Workplace, Manufacturing Workers and. microelectronics industry,.International Journal of Technology Management. microelectronics, automation. technological changes and outsourcing in the Japanese automobile industry:. Industrial Automation Robotics Symmetry Electronics and Fujitsu Microelectronics America Announce New. factory automation.Automotive World is a leading provider of automotive industry information.Working paper based on […]

Don’t fear the robots; they won’t kill jobs

Don't fear the robots; they won't kill jobs

"Rogue One," the latest in the Star Wars franchise, has had mixed reviews but features one undisputed star: K-2SO , a gangly robot with the best lines.

Movies of the distant future always tap into current anxieties, and the latest alarm is that the robots are coming. Droids may not conquer the world, but they will take over its work – white-collar as well as blue-collar. Could these filmmakers know something we don’t?

Previous scares, such as when Time magazine reported on "the automation jobless" in the early 1960s, were just that. But many technology gurus insist that this time is […]

Automation: The Real Job Killer of American Manufacturing.

Part 1 of a 2 part series for the Good Men Project .

I am an optimistic believer in the possibility of an America which can move forward unified, despite the differences we have in race, class, education, the list goes on ad infinitum. But first, I need to try to understand the people who I did not agree with on Election Day. This section of the population I may have little in common with on a core issue that does not directly affect me. A healthy future depends on how well we try to understand one another regardless […]

How Robots Will Change The Workforce

How Robots Will Change The Workforce

Thirty of the world’s top scientists are scheduled to meet at the University of California at San Diego in February to discuss the toughest challenges in robotics and automation, including how to make driverless cars safe for a mass audience.

The experts are being brought together by Henrik Christensen, the prominent Georgia Tech engineer who was hired in July to run UC San Diego’s young Contextual Robotics Institute.

Christensen said at the time, "I want to build a research institute that, ideally, will be in the top five in the world five years from now. Why not see if we can […]