Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Will Robots Make Our Jobs Obsolete?

Will Robots Make Our Jobs Obsolete?

Advances in artificial intelligence , machine learning and robotics are taking over jobs that are repetitive, predictable and sometimes dangerous for people to do. The impact of automation on society depends on how fast it occurs—and how quickly displaced workers transition to other forms of employment .

“What most people don’t realize is the labor market has always evolved over time. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have the potential to accelerate the rate of change ,” says Jerry Kaplan , futurist and author of the book “Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

“There will be plenty of work,” he adds. […]

Displaced by Automation in Shanghai

Displaced by Automation in Shanghai

The CEO walked a group of visitors through the pristine, brightly lit factory. Robotic arms rotated and embedded memory chips into place. A small autonomous vehicle carrying parts rolled around the factory floor while playing a Bach sonatina. At some workstations, employees in protective clothing packed products into boxes and performed intricate soldering as the circuit boards traveled down a slow-moving conveyor belt.

“Not all the people are working very hard, but the robots are working hard,” the CEO noted. Indeed. In the past year, after installing sophisticated automated equipment, the number of human factory workers had fallen from 3,500 […]

Confusion about job creation is obscuring America’s productivity crisis

Confusion about job creation is obscuring America's productivity crisis

Robots work on a new Volkswagen Crafter production line at the newly opened Volkswagen factory in Wrzesnia near Poznan, Poland, in September. There is perhaps no other topic in economics that is more prone to illogical thinking than job creation. It is a wellspring of hysterical nonsense.

Let’s start with the canard that technology and automation kill jobs. Notwithstanding the fact that US productivity growth rates are at an all-time low, a growing chorus blames technology for killing our jobs. Writing in The New Yorker, NYU professor Gary Marcus alleges that, “as machines continue to get smarter, cheaper, and more […]

Automation, Jobs And The New Techno-Pessimism

Automation, Jobs And The New Techno-Pessimism

A strange vision is gaining traction in the developed world: a vision of a future economy so dramatically changed by technology that it is beyond recognition. This is not the apocalyptic prophecy of a real-world Skynet, turning computerised gadgets and artificial intelligence systems against the human population, but a growing fear of automation replacing people in an increasingly robotised world of work.

While it is plain to see how machines have improved humanity’s lot in the past despite putting their overlords out of work, some argue that this time, it is different. No doubt, sophisticated IT and AI are likely […]

How Trump’s Victory Will Affect Jobs Vs. Automation Issue?

How Trump’s Victory Will Affect Jobs Vs. Automation Issue?

The election of Donald Trump has gotten more experts talking about the automation’s anticipated effect on the job market.

Jobs Vs. Automation

Computer scientist Moshe Vardi started a debate six months ago about the anticipated effect of automation on the job market, according to Geek Wire . As a no political candidate, the scientist was talking about the potential impact of automated manufacturing and autonomous cars on future employment.Today, the topic became hot, after the election of Trump as the next U.S. president. Rice University’s Vardi said that the debate went practically mainstream from being just somewhat esoteric. In […]

A New Film Urges Americans to Start SERIOUSLY Worrying About Unemployment (Video)

A New Film Urges Americans to Start SERIOUSLY Worrying About Unemployment (Video)

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Robots, immigrants, and low-wage workers in other countries have all been scapegoated as potential threats to America’s employment. And sometimes for good reason. Automation and artificial intelligence have already taken away thousands of jobs from U.S. employees of the human kind – in factories, on computers, and even at Uber . Though happening at a rate blown far out of proportion (by the likes of President-Elect Donald Trump and others), there are immigrants who come to the United States willing to take low-paying jobs at even lower pay than their American counterparts, effectively decreasing the amount of Americans in […]

Welcome to the future of work

Welcome to the future of work

Brooks Rainwater is the director of the Center for City Solutions and Applied Research at the National League of Cities .

How to join the network

Nicole DuPuis is the senior associate for infrastructure at the Center for City Solutions and Applied Research at the National League of Cities How to join the network With advances in information technology, robotics, and artificial intelligence developing at a rapid rate, workforce dislocations are happening now and are here to stay. As existing trends accelerate and irreversibly change the workforce as we know it, the question to be answered is–what will […]

The Fate of the Office in the ‘Post-Work Era’

The Fate of the Office in the ‘Post-Work Era’

@simontheodavies With the rise of automation, human work may soon be a thing of the past. But when we reach this ‘post-work era’, what will become of the millions of offices that line our skylines?

Professor Moshe Vardi of Rice University estimates that 50 percent of human jobs may be obsolete in 30 years, as artificial intelligences and robots take over. So far, robots have replaced us in warehouse worker and truck driver roles, but experts say office jobs are far from safe. Once humans are automated out of these occupations, the fate of the office is uncertain. Offices in […]

Divide and Automate

Divide and Automate

Illustration by Lydia Wojack-West

As a species, we are poised at the brink of a transformation unlike any before.

The ancestor of this coming metamorphosis was not political or philosophical in nature; it did not emerge from the ashes of the American Revolution or the Bolshevik’s, nor did it germinate from the teachings of Jesus, Buddha or Muhammad. The predecessor to the singularity we so boldly march toward was something far more primordial, far more tangible. It was industrial.The last three industrial revolutions transformed the fabric of human civilization: The first, borne of steam and coal, powered newly invented […]

Mexico taking US factory jobs? Blame robots instead

Mexico taking US factory jobs? Blame robots instead

1 of 2 A worker loads spools of thread Oct. 21 at the Repreve Bottle Processing Center, part of the Unifi textile company in Yadkinville. America has lost more than 7 million factory jobs since manufacturing employment peaked in 1979. Yet American factory production, minus raw materials and some other costs, more than doubled over the same span to an inflation-adjusted $1.91 trillion last year, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. That’s a notch below the record set on the eve of the Great Recession in 2007, and it makes U.S. manufacturers No. 2 in the world behind China.

WASHINGTON […]