Tag: academic

Robots dominating job market is not inevitable: Oxford economist Carl Frey

Robots dominating job market is not inevitable: Oxford economist Carl Frey

The economic historian believes technology is neither the solution to everything nor a dystopian nightmare

A research published six years ago by two Oxford academics, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, seemed to reinforce this ominous prediction about the global economy: Robots are going to take over our jobs. For, it warned that “about 47% of total US employment is at risk” due to computerisation. Carl, this year, expanded the ideas of the research in a book, which is portentously titled, The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation .

Contrary to what it seems, […]

Progressives’ initiatives hurt private-sector workers | Opinion

Progressives’ initiatives hurt private-sector workers | Opinion

Skip to main content A Labor Day visit to the American Labor Museum in Haledon Jim Beckerman, Staff Writer, @jimbeckerman1

Labor Day, this year, finds the American worker in a pretty good place. Jobs are plentiful, unemployment is down and business is competing for talent. Aside from politically inspired recession fears, the U.S. economy is strong and will get stronger when international trade deals are completed and approved by Congress.

None of this suggests, however, that there are not serious concerns about the future of work in America and that labor, business and government need to prepare for them now. The […]

Big Story: In the Quad-Cities, the future of work has arrived. Are you ready?

Big Story: In the Quad-Cities, the future of work has arrived. Are you ready?

Brice Wagner, of Davenport, plays a game wearing a pair of VR goggles during class at the AVR Academy, an augmented and virtual reality lab. (Monday, August 26, 2019, at Scott Community College in Davenport) Stephon Morgan, of Davenport, plays a game wearing a pair of VR goggles during class at the AVR Academy, an augmented and virtual reality lab. (Monday, August 26, 2019, at Scott Community College in Davenport) In a windowless room in the heart of downtown Davenport, Robert Gillespie sees the future.

Strapped around his face is a virtual reality headset, a sort of crystal ball that […]

History Predicts the Consequences of Today’s Digital Revolution

History Predicts the Consequences of Today’s Digital Revolution

The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation In The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation , Carl Benedikt Frey offers a sweeping history of automation from the Industrial Revolution to the current digital age. The Oxford University economist argues that while labor-replacing technologies generate progress in the long run, these advances often have devastating consequences for much of the working population during their lifetimes.

Economists, he proposes, tend to analyze technological history by the fruits it bears us now, rather than the pain it caused in the past. This penchant […]

SEEK boss warns mid-level jobs will disappear

Middle-ranking jobs are the ones disappearing, he said.

"My theory, and I hope I’m wrong, is that once there is a downturn there will be a justification to automate roles rather than re-hire people," Mr Bassat said.

Mr Bassat said he was particularly worried about the kinds of "unoriginal businesses" which dominate the Australian economy, singling out the big banks which are all laying off staff.National Australia Bank has committed to a $1 billion cost-cutting drive, aiming to reduce headcount by 2000 a year for three years, whereas Commonwealth Bank is expected to shed about 4000 roles from asset sales alone, […]

Automation & AI won’t make low-skilled jobs disappear

Automation & AI won’t make low-skilled jobs disappear

Representational image | Photo: Krisztian Bocsi | Bloomberg Whether AI and automation will create, eliminate or modify jobs, and how much, is the central question of a never-ending debate. In 2013, the Oxford academic duo Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne published a study titled “ The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerization? ”, which estimated that 47% of American jobs are at high risk by mid-2030.

Last year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released The Future of Jobs 2018 report, stating that algorithms and intelligent machines are expected to create 133 million new roles globally while […]

The Puzzle of Economic Progress

The Puzzle of Economic Progress

Gerard Julien/AFP/Getty Images Current academic research – into the impact of new technologies, the economics of innovation, and the quality of management, for example – may be providing ever more pieces of the puzzle. But many crucial questions about economic progress remain unanswered, and others have not yet even been properly posed.

CAMBRIDGE – Do we know how economies develop? Obviously not, it seems, or otherwise every country would be doing better than it currently is in these low-growth times. In fact, cases of sustained rapid growth, like Japan beginning in the 1960s, or other Southeast Asian countries a decade […]

The Challenges of Automation in a Fast Changing Economy

The Challenges of Automation in a Fast Changing Economy

A Bossa Nova robot scans shelves to help provide associates with real-time inventory data at a Walmart Supercenter in Houston, Nov. 9, 2018. “Technological innovation should be embraced,” notes a recent report from the Aspen Institute, a public policy and research organization in Washington. “Automation has been a largely positive economic and social force, and looking forward, automation will be necessary to feed, house, and raise the living standards of a growing and aging population.”

Still, the short-term disruptive impact on individuals and communities can’t be overlooked, the report says.

To better assess automation’s impact, the Aspen Institute takes a two-pronged […]

Employees less upset at being replaced by robots than by people

Employees less upset at being replaced by robots than by people

Generally speaking, most people find the idea of workers being replaced by robots or software worse than if the jobs are taken over by other workers. But when their own jobs are at stake, people would rather be displaced through automation than by another person. That is the conclusion of a study by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

Over the coming decades, millions of jobs will be threatened by robotics and artificial intelligence. Despite intensive academic debate on these developments, there has been little study on how workers react to being replaced through technology.

To […]

Can fake economies create real jobs? EVE Online CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson talks cryptocurrency, blockchain

Can fake economies create real jobs? EVE Online CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson talks cryptocurrency, blockchain

Image: Supplied There’s never been a better time to try to build a perpetual jobs machine.

There are currently about 13 million working people in Australia, and an estimated 3 million jobs set to be lost to automation by 2030 .

Over in the USA, democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has warned that automation will continue improving efficiency, cutting costs, killing jobs and hollowing out the economic backbone of America, starting from the centre of the country and moving outwards. His plank is a universal basic income (UBI) scheme to counter the impending tidal wave of mass unemployment.In addition to […]