Tag: conservative

Automation Could Set Us Free — If We Didn’t Live Under Capitalism

Automation Could Set Us Free — If We Didn’t Live Under Capitalism

As millions more jobs are eliminated, a process that could and should benefit workers will instead be one that makes their lives more difficult and insecure. (Leon Neal / Getty Images) Last year, the Daily Wire ’s Ben Shapiro debated Tucker Carlson on the question of automation. Ventriloquizing a very familiar market-conservative argument, Shapiro asked his guest point-blank whether he would support restrictions on the use of technology in order to protect jobs. In his reply, Carlson was nothing short of incredulous. Shapiro: You talk in [your] book about technology and how it’s shifting and taking away jobs from […]

How universities can best prepare for the generative AI tech revolution

How universities can best prepare for the generative AI tech revolution

Artificial Intelligence machine learning. [Getty Images] Every major technological revolution sets in motion a concurrent revolution in work. With the development of organised agriculture thousands of years ago, foragers settled on farms. During the Industrial Revolution, steam engines drove those farmers into factories. In the late 20th century, the arrival of the personal computer swapped machines for monitors, and lathes for laptops.

Now, with the appearance of the latest wave of generative artificial intelligence (AI), humanity is about to embark on an entirely new working order.

Last year, the OECD predicted that AI would “radically transform” 1.1 billion jobs in the […]

If bosses fail to check AI’s onward march, their own jobs will soon be written out of the script

If bosses fail to check AI’s onward march, their own jobs will soon be written out of the script

Actor Gina Gershon marches with striking writers in New York City, 3 May 2023. If there’s one thing Hollywood screenwriters know how to deliver, it’s a snappy one-liner.

“Pay your writers, or we’ll spoil Succession,” read one of the placards paraded outside movie studios in Los Angeles this week, as thousands of film and television writers went on strike. “Pencils down, middle fingers up,” said another. Closer to the bone, however, was a placard reading: “Wrote ChatGPT This.” For the plot twist is that this strike isn’t just over money. The Writers Guild of America also wants to establish some […]

A.I. Is Coming for Lawyers, Again

A.I. Is Coming for Lawyers, Again

More than a decade ago, lawyers were singled out as an endangered occupational species, their livelihoods at risk from advances in artificial intelligence.

But the doomsayers got ahead of themselves. While clever software has taken over some of the toil of legal work — searching, reviewing and mining mountains of legal documents for nuggets of useful information — employment in the legal profession has grown faster than the American work force as a whole.

Today, a new A.I. threat looms, and lawyers may feel a bit of déjà vu. There are warnings that ChatGPT-style software, with its humanlike language fluency, could […]

AI Is About to Decimate Millions of Jobs. It’s Time for Universal Basic Income | Opinion

AI Is About to Decimate Millions of Jobs. It's Time for Universal Basic Income | Opinion

For the better part of the last 15 years, I’ve worked in what some might call the "real economy." In the digital print production industry, I’ve worked in warehouses and neighborhoods that reflected the ill effects of modern economic policy. I’ve seen manufacturing hubs stripped of economic vitality, workers struggling to meet basic needs, and the growing gap between those with college degrees and those without.

Most of the workers I’ve met over the years were hard working and doing the best they could with the skills they had. They deserved to be dealt a fair economic hand in exchange […]

Rise of the bots! AI poses a threat to two thirds of jobs in the US and Europe, study finds – with 300 MILLION full-time positions at risk of automation

Rise of the bots! AI poses a threat to two thirds of jobs in the US and Europe, study finds - with 300 MILLION full-time positions at risk of automation

A quarter of jobs could soon be automated as a result of breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, a report has warned.

Research by investment bank Goldman Sachs highlighted that ‘generative’ AI systems such as ChatGPT – a computer program able to create writing and other content indistinguishable from that of a human – could spark an economic boom and increase global gross domestic product by 7 per cent in a decade.

But the technology would also cause ‘significant disruption’ to employment, with around 300million full-time jobs at risk of being automated, it warned.Two-thirds of jobs in the US and Europe could be […]

The minimum wage has failed | COUNTERPOINT

The minimum wage has failed | COUNTERPOINT

Sage Naumann Americans are struggling with inflation, and their wages aren’t keeping up. On that, I agree with my counterpart.

Unfortunately, the folly of our government possessing the ability to issue a “correction” when it comes to wages continues to be advertised as a viable policy solution, but that is pure illusion. Good intentions, combined with a lazy reliance on government coercion, have those on the left again considering tinkering with the mechanism of a “minimum wage,” to the detriment of those whom such a policy is aimed at helping. When minimum wage policies are enacted, those who lack foundational […]

Automation Doesn’t Have to Mean Unemployment and Misery

Automation Doesn’t Have to Mean Unemployment and Misery

From the 1940s to the 1970s, much of the US intelligentsia was transfixed by the notion that technology would in short order largely eliminate manual work. (Yuichiro Chino / Getty Images) The following review of Jason Resnikoff’s Labor’s End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work (University of Illinois Press, 2021) is reproduced from our sister publication Catalyst Review , which features weekly commentary on important scholarly work. The threat that automation is in the process of destroying large numbers of jobs has been much discussed recently. Sober think tanks such as the Brookings Institution and the McKinsey Global […]

Before the holiday season, workers at America’s busiest ports are fighting the robots

Before the holiday season, workers at America's busiest ports are fighting the robots

Automation has become a hot-button issue at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The shipping industry is pushing for more automation of the work loading and unloading ships. But dockworkers warn robots will only kill American jobs. It’s a never-ending line of massive ships stacked high with colorful containers that come and go from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach these days.

This busy scene is not unexpected as the volume of goods coming across the Pacific Ocean has hit new records during the pandemic.

The shipping industry says it must automate more of the work loading […]

While we fight the bear, the red dragon grows ever stronger

While we fight the bear, the red dragon grows ever stronger

BEFORE I viewed an old car recently, the salesman played a typical trick. On the phone he mentioned a fault in need of repair, thereby establishing himself as an honest actor. What he didn’t mention, of course, were the myriad other failings the rust bucket had. Only after I had driven an hour to see it did I find out that iron oxide had taken a firm hold.

Something similar is going on in the world today. Everyone is talking about how we need to reduce our reliance on Russian energy, and how anything remotely Russian is suspect. Even our […]