Tag: consumer

The pill-popping future of work looks terrifying

The pill-popping future of work looks terrifying

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, a dystopia rules mankind in a way that renders the masses compliant consumers. The apex of medical mind control in the book is soma: a tranquilliser offering ‘a holiday from reality’. Huxley describes how its users’ ‘eyes shone (and)…the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles’.

Huxley’s vision was intended as a nightmare but PricewaterhouseCoopers appear to have taken it as an inspiration. Their new report, Workforce of the Future , predicts what the labour market could look like in 2030. As you might expect, automation takes […]

Robots Making Humans More Efficient, Opening Up New Jobs

Robots Making Humans More Efficient, Opening Up New Jobs

SAM, the Semi-Automated Mason, can be seen on YouTube laying bricks alongside human masons. While SAM can, according to contractors, lay around 2,000 bricks a day compared to an average of 600 to 700 for a human mason, the video illustrates a key point missed by many: It shows human workers programmming SAM and providing it the bricks and mud and following behind cleaning up after it. In other words, SAM, produced by Construction Robotics, isn’t replacing masons, it is making them more efficient and saving their backs.

A year ago, Rick Cohen, the founder of Symbotic LLC, which develops […]

What you should know about AI

What you should know about AI

Artificial intelligence seems to be nearly everywhere these days, yet most people have little understanding of AI technology, its capabilities and its limitations.

Despite evocative names like “artificial intelligence,” “machine learning” and “neural networks,” such technologies have little to do with human thought or intelligence. Rather, they are alternative ways of programming computers, using vast amounts of data to train computers to perform a task. The power of these methods is that they are increasingly proving useful for tasks that have been challenging for conventional software development approaches.

The commercial use of AI had a bit of a false start nearly […]

Driverless cars and trucks don’t mean mass unemployment—they mean new kinds of jobs

Driverless cars and trucks don’t mean mass unemployment—they mean new kinds of jobs

As business leaders who work with scores of senior leaders across the private and public sectors, the topic of automation and its implications for workers is inescapable—and often anxiety-inducing. Understandably so. Technology and social changes are poised to reshape nearly every aspect of what and how work gets done, and by whom. When we speak and write on this topic , the audience response is usually intense and ranges from excitement to deep anxiety.

Our response to these fears is two-fold.

First, the details matter—a lot. While every industry will likely be impacted, the nature of those impacts may vary considerably. […]

What You Can Do to Prepare for the AI-Powered, Robot-Driven Work Revolution

What You Can Do to Prepare for the AI-Powered, Robot-Driven Work Revolution

In this episode of Motley Fool Answers , Alison Southwick and Robert Brokamp are joined by senior Motley Fool analyst Simon Erickson to talk about the disruptive trends of artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation. Recent studies conclude that huge numbers of U.S. workers will see their jobs — or parts of them — delegated to machines in the next few decades. That will mean great things for efficiency and possibly even society, but how can an individual prepare for the rise of the robots? What jobs are safe? And where should a Foolish investor put his or her money […]

Kurt Vonnegut’s dystopian future has come to pass

Kurt Vonnegut’s dystopian future has come to pass

Author foresaw the threat to civilisation and the crisis of meaning created by automation

’We could soon reach a point at which our smartest machines become more intelligent than we are and accelerate away from us on an exponential learning curve.’ The self-driving car has become the poster gadget for the next wave of automation powered by artificial intelligence. It is a terrifying idea.

Turning basic transportation over to robots will, almost certainly, cause the greatest job extinction event in labour history, wiping out the already dwindling earning potential for taxi drivers, truckers, delivery people and many more.Tech giants like […]

Will the home appraisal industry be replaced by technology?

Will the home appraisal industry be replaced by technology?

Automation haunts many discussions about the future of work, employment, and the economy. But technological advances may soon hit homes in an unexpected way: could real estate appraisers be replaced by robots?

That’s the conclusion of a recent article in Bloomberg , which discusses how advances in big data and computing are helping automate this knowledge-based job, perhaps a harbinger of how advances in machine learning mean an ever-widening circle of professions are at risk.

The future of the profession has become a topic due to a recent decision by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two institutions that facilitate the flow […]

Jobs tech-threat weighs on workers’ minds

More and more companies are embracing the arrival of emerging technologies, but the enthusiasm has workers fearing redundancy. Around a quarter of Australians are worried about losing their jobs to "robots" as more and more companies turn to emerging technologies to enhance productivity.

Research conducted by analyst firm Telsyte looked at the adoption of transformative technologies – including artificial intelligence (AI), automation, voice commands and virtual reality – by Australian organisations.

It found nearly two-thirds of businesses are already dabbling with machine learning or deep learning to improve operations or influence business decision making.But Telsyte managing director Foad Fadaghi said there […]

[Lee Jae-min] Will minimum wage hike step up automation?

[Lee Jae-min] Will minimum wage hike step up automation?

As heralded, the minimum wage is being increased substantially by the Minimum Wage Commission.

The commission is raising the minimum wage from 6,470 won ($5.80) per hour this year to 7,530 won next year, a 16.4 percent increase and the largest increase since 2001. The rise will continue until the minimum payment reaches 10,000 won. As of now, Korea’s per hour minimum wage is roughly in the upper middle among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, when per capita gross national product and gross national income are factored in.

The increase is part of the government’s effort to narrow the […]

Hong Kong’s automated-sushi restaurant: An attempt to not interact with any humans

Hong Kong's automated-sushi restaurant: An attempt to not interact with any humans

Workers are frequently told robots are coming for their jobs, while fast food employees are already starting to see automation creep into their places of employment. Along with kiosks popping up at McDonald’s, diners in Japan have been treated to a sushi-making robot, while in California a robot flips burgers .

So with machines on the rise in restaurants, how has it impacted the consumer dining experience? Recently, CNBC tested a sit-down restaurant in Hong Kong where automation has taken over most of the tasks usually performed by servers. The goal was to see if a meal could be consumed […]