Tag: academic

Alice Lang: Automation and unemployment

Alice Lang: Automation and unemployment

Remember the "Terminator" movie series, which featured humans fighting intelligent machines that tried to take over the world? While this scenario may seem far-fetched, the increasing use of computers in the workplace has significantly reduced job opportunities.

I recently had the opportunity to tour a distribution center which opened this year in the Upstate. I was impressed by the cleanliness and orderly structure of the business, as well as the enormous number of products that it sends out each week.

However, there was one disturbing aspect that stood out from the tour: There were very few workers in the huge, 1.5 […]

Need to reset economic thinking

Need to reset economic thinking

Peter Lyons. We are living in an age of rising inequalities on a variety of fronts, writes Peter Lyons.

My friend got her "proposed restructuring" letter two years ago. In the mumbo jumbo terminology of modern management, her position was being "disestablished". She had been in customer services with the firm for more than 10 years on a middle income. It took her six months to find alternative work. In her own words, she had been living in a bubble and hadn’t realised how tough the labour market had become. Salaries offered for similar roles had dropped significantly with […]

Slow-Motion Automation

Slow-Motion Automation

Illustration by Richard Mia Automation — in the form of machine learning, robotics, autonomous vehicles, white-collar bots, exoskeletons, and so on — is changing the nature of work in a wide range of industries. In conducting research for my new book, Silicon Collar: An Optimistic Perspective on Humans, Machines, and Jobs (Deal Architect, 2016), I examined people at work in more than 50 settings: accounting firms and banks, the battlefront and digital agencies, the oil patch and restaurants, R&D labs and shop floors, warehouses and wineries. And it is clear that the old divisions among professions and trades have […]

Elon Musk Thinks Universal Income Is Answer To Automation Taking Human Jobs

but menial jobs that generate less value than a living wage but also pay much less than a living wage so the company generates a net profit while taking advantage of someone in a desperate situation, yes those jobs are becoming widespread. 1. But they’re not becoming widespread. Wages are increasing almost everywhere in the world, and jobs are becoming less menial. Compare the terrible jobs that the vast majority had 100 years ago to the jobs they have today. Or the jobs people have in developing countries to the jobs they have in more advanced economies.

This scaremongering being […]

Will jobs exist in 2050?

Will jobs exist in 2050?

As we develop artificial intelligence, what will happen to future jobs? Photograph: KTS Design/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF There’s no question that technology is drastically changing the way we work, but what will the job market look like by 2050? Will 40% of roles have been lost to automation – as predicted by Oxford university economists Dr Carl Frey and Dr Michael Osborne – or will there still be jobs even if the nature of work is exceptionally different from today? To address these issues, the Guardian hosted a roundtable discussion, in association with professional services firm Deloitte, which […]

Players For Hire: Games and the Future of Low-Skill Work

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. Summary

In this whitepaper I will use trends from automation and video game revenue models to make the following predictions about the future of low-skill work.
> Within five years, some game companies will be paying players in some way to play their games. This will be in the form of small points-based incentives that can be liquidated in the form of purchasing power. Within […]

The Biggest Worry We Have About Our Jobs Is Not Immigration, It’s Irrelevance

The Biggest Worry We Have About Our Jobs Is Not Immigration, It's Irrelevance

The biggest worry Americans have about their jobs isn’t immigration; it’s irrelevance.

In a new Pew Research report , 80 percent of survey respondents said outsourcing hurts American workers, and 54 percent said continual training will be "essential" to advancing their careers, including more than 60 percent of the youngest workers.

"It’s a positive story on the impact of skills and up-skilling on the American workforce," said Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce chief economist, Nicole Smith. The report found that employment growth is most rapid in high-skill jobs and in ones where continued training is imperative, in fields […]

Will new technologies destroy jobs?

Will new technologies destroy jobs?

At TM Forum Live! Asia (December 7-8, Singapore), Andrew Milroy, SVP ICT Asia Pacific, Frost & Sullivan, will take part in a panel on the future of digital services and the Internet of Everything across APAC . Here, he looks at the impact of automation on employment.

There has been much discussion recently around the impact of automation on employment, particularly the use of robotics. Advances in machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) are steadily eliminating routine and repetitive types of jobs. Some studies state that half of manufacturing jobs will be […]

Ben Chu: Why a robot is not going to steal your job

We live not so much in the age of the robots as in the age of worrying about the robots. New books and think pieces proliferate about the threat to the world’s workers from the twin forces of digitisation and automation.

The shadow Chancellor John McDonnell this week has cited new technology as a reason why his party is looking closely at a Universal Basic Income.

The Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, last year suggested that 15m British jobs could be automated.Such is the buzz around the subject that one half expects to arrive at the office one morning […]

How one business brought back manufacturing jobs

How one business brought back manufacturing jobs

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A look inside the Zentech manufacturing facility. – If you want to find out how to bring manufacturing jobs back from Asia, one route might be to start with someone who’s done it. Matt Turpin is CEO of Zentech, an electronics manufacturer in Baltimore, Maryland. His company manufactures goods or components for other companies.“We’ve brought back probably four projects in the past two years,” he said. There are “probably 30 people associated with those projects.”How’d he do it? First, “the level of automation has increased dramatically," Turpin said. "What used to take two to three […]