Tag: academic

Call $15 minimum wage what it is: the robot full employment act

Call $15 minimum wage what it is: the robot full employment act

The Cloud Pepper robot, which can speak multiple languages, appears at a tech conference in Barcelona on Monday. (Getty Images) Thirty-plus years ago, I became (nerd alert) fascinated with economics and read up on libertarian-conservatives like Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell and liberals like John Kenneth Galbraith and Paul Samuelson. It was captivating to see how they marshaled seemingly powerful evidence for and against policy proposals, only starting with whether heavy government spending could spur growth of the economy. I would read academics on one side and think of course they’re right, then read the other side and reach […]

Are Robots Competing for Your Job?

Are Robots Competing for Your Job?

Doomsayers insist that this time the employment apocalypse is really nigh. The robots are coming. Hide the WD-40. Lock up your nine-volt batteries. Build a booby trap out of giant magnets; dig a moat as deep as a grave. “Ever since a study by the University of Oxford predicted that 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk of being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence over the next fifteen to twenty years, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the future of work,” Andrés Oppenheimer writes, in “The Robots Are Coming: The Future of Jobs in the […]

Bentham, Hobbes, and The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

Bentham, Hobbes, and The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

If you’ve been paying attention to the news at all, you would think that the coming artificial intelligence revolution was a foregone conclusion, but many of these pronouncements tend to give a cursory acknowledgment of the ethics of artificial intelligence as if these are simply academic exercises that have no real bearing on the development of AI.

Those on the cutting edge of AI development know better. Autonomous vehicle makers are carefully managing the roll-out of autonomous vehicles knowing full well that a hasty introduction of these systems could lead to a public backlash that can shut the whole thing […]

The Great Myth of the AI Skills Gap

The Great Myth of the AI Skills Gap

One of the most contentious debates in technology is around the question of automation and jobs . At issue is whether advances in automation, specifically with regards to artificial intelligence and robotics, will spell trouble for today’s workers. This debate is played out in the media daily, and passions run deep on both sides of the issue. In the past, however, automation has created jobs and increased real wages.

A widespread concern with the current scenario is that the workers most likely to be displaced by technology lack the skills needed to do the new jobs that same technology will […]

Slaughter & Rees Report: Whither Globalization and Work?

Slaughter & Rees Report: Whither Globalization and Work?

The world’s two largest economies are engaged in a trade war without clear end. Britain is in the midst of a messy exit from the European Union.

Germany wants to block foreign takeovers of German companies. And worldwide there were more than three times as many restrictive trade measures implemented in 2017–18 as liberalizing ones, according to Global Trade Alert. All of this prompts the question: Is globalization going in reverse?

Not quite. Yes, trade in goods is growing more slowly amidst rising trade barriers in many places. But trade in goods is still growing, and trade in information and other […]

AI and the Future of Work

AI and the Future of Work

UVA Darden School of Business , UVA Darden , University of Virginia Darden , University of Virginia Darden School of Business , Anton Korinek , Artificial Intelligence , Economics , robot process automation , advanced machine learning

By Dave Hendrick

Newswise — Imagine an observer from another galaxy descends to Earth and sees entities called humans and entities called machines interacting with each other.How would the observer answer the question “Which entity controls the other?”In a recent paper, University of Virginia Darden School of Business Professor Anton Korinek presents the thought experiment as a part of a […]

Threat of automation varies greatly by location, occupation, education

Is a robot coming for your job?

A new study by the Brookings Institution suggests that intelligent machines may well take over many more tasks from humans in the future. But it forecasts dramatic differences among cities, occupations, ethnic and racial groups, educational levels and age groups.

"California turns out to have super-stark variations — regions with both the highest and lowest exposures to disruption," said Mark Muro, director of Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program and author of the report along with researchers Robert Maxim and Jacob Whiton.The Brookings study comes as a slew of academic and policy group papers have sought […]

Lousy Jobs, Lovely Jobs – and the Sagging Middle

Lousy Jobs, Lovely Jobs – and the Sagging Middle

Job-market polarisation is impeding class mobility. What does this mean for the future of management? This article is part of a series entitled “The Future of Management”, about how changes in culture and technology are reshaping what managers do. INSEAD professors Pushan Dutt and Phanish Puranam serve as academic advisors for this series.

The past four decades or so have been hard on those with dreams of climbing the socio-economic ladder. With social mobility having effectively ground to a halt in many of the world’s most advanced economies, divisions between the blue- and white-collar segments of society have clarified […]

The robotic future of work is messy, fuzzy and uneven

The robotic future of work is messy, fuzzy and uneven

For nearly one hundred years, science fiction has warned of robotic takeovers and a dystopian societal collapse as pseudo-intelligent, autonomous devices discover that they have little need for humans. Videos from BostonDynamics seem designed to stoke such foreboding, at least for promotional effect. Although the prospect of rogue robots destroying their creators is remote for now, a burgeoning army of industrial robots is displacing workers in a growing number of occupations.

The extent of job losses and their long-term implications on the labor market are topics of hot debate. A recent Brookings Institute study , for example, estimates that several […]

Automation is a bigger threat, depending on race, education and where you live, among other factors

Automation is a bigger threat, depending on race, education and where you live, among other factors

Is a robot coming for your job?

That is more likely for Californians who work in Riverside, San Bernardino, Merced or Modesto, according to a report released Thursday by the Brookings Institution. Those who live in San Francisco or San Jose have a better chance of weathering a coming onslaught of automation and artificial intelligence.

The new study by the Washington think tank suggests that intelligent machines may well take over many more tasks from humans in the future. But it forecasts dramatic differences among cities, occupations, ethnic and racial groups, educational levels and age groups.“California turns out to have super-stark […]