Tag: consumer

Will AI Bless Us With A 15 Hour Work-Week, Or Turn Us Into Paperclips?

Will AI Bless Us With A 15 Hour Work-Week, Or Turn Us Into Paperclips?

Francois Lenoir / Reuters With scaremongers predicting millions of job losses and an increasing divide between the haves and the have-nots, it was interesting to see the results of a recent White House report into AI. Yes, there will be job losses, but the report found that business productivity will rise, which could prompt an increase in average salaries. The benefits for the global workforce should not be ignored.

When you think of the average white-collar office job, it probably doesn’t conjure up images of a room full of whizz kids staring at glistening monitors replete with fancy graphs and […]

Automation for the People: The Public, Technology and Jobs

Automation for the People: The Public, Technology and Jobs

A 2012 research brief by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee at MIT renewed an old debate over the effect of new technologies on employment levels. They argued that, counter to the prevailing belief that new technologies and automation simply shift jobs into new sectors after a period of disruption, instead rapid improvements in technology over the past decades have left some workers completely behind, a trend that will continue to accelerate as computers capabilities expand. But what does the public think? Do Americans see technological threats to employment, and have their views changed since the days when robots first […]

Obama Warns Automation Is a Danger to U.S. Jobs

Obama Warns Automation Is a Danger to U.S. Jobs

leminuit/istock.com In his final interview before leaving office, released Thursday by Pod Save America, President Barack Obama warned that automation is the bigger threat than global trade in taking away jobs in the United States.

“The fact is, and the data just shows this, the jobs that are going away are primarily going away because of automation and that’s going to accelerate,” Obama said. Uber Technology Inc.’s driverless car programs and the “equivalent displacement that’s going to take place in office buildings around the country is going to be scary for folks,” he added.

Uber is currently running pilot programs for […]

Inevitability of automation necessitates adaptation: GDR Creative Intelligence CEO

Inevitability of automation necessitates adaptation: GDR Creative Intelligence CEO

Panasonic teamed with IBM’s cognitive computer Watson on concierge solutions NEW YORK – The Fourth Industrial Revolution is bringing about rapid change, forcing both consumers and companies to adapt at a challenging pace, according to the CEO of GDR Creative Intelligence speaking at the National Retail Federation’s Retail’s Big Show on Jan. 17.

Whereas innovations during previous industrial revolutions moved humans from manual labor to more cognitive tasks, the fourth includes disruptive technology such as artificial intelligence that threatens to take intellectual jobs away from humans. The “Retail Opportunity for the Fast Changing World and the Human Mind” session uncovered […]

Here Is How Entrepreneurs Can Help Create Real, High-Value Jobs

Here Is How Entrepreneurs Can Help Create Real, High-Value Jobs

Every job is valuable to the person who holds it, but just bringing on more people does not make our companies or our economy healthier. Entrepreneurs do best if they create jobs that are both high-value and real.

The conversation on job creation is both energetic and confusing: energetic because job creation is a major challenge of our time and a political hot button. It’s confusing because the language is sloppy, and the underlying dynamics of job creation are not straightforward.

Consider the value of a job on two dimensions. One dimension is the value of a job to the employee. […]

Simplicity is attractive, but not always realistic

Simplicity is attractive, but not always realistic

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I enjoy reader responses. Praise is gratifying, but criticism is often more valuable, as a doorway to discussion and insight. Case in point, David R. Lecklider’s Dec. 10 letter: “There are ultimately two ways to value goods and services, either the price system or the dictates of a central authority.” Plain and simple.

But reality seldom conforms to simple ideologies. Einstein advised that ideas be expressed in the simplest possible terms — “but no simpler!” Simplifying complex ideas helps us understand them; but oversimplifying leads to error, by ignoring essential information. The notion that matters must distill to either […]

Robot arms replace factory hands

Robot arms replace factory hands

Donald Trump has been crowing as companies including Ford renounce plans to move factories to Mexico. But the main beneficiaries of this shift back to the US aren’t saying much by way of celebration — industrial robots don’t tend to speak.

While globalisation’s detractors blame countries such as China and Mexico for stealing the factory jobs of the West, experts point to less obvious culprits which are harder to scapegoat and to overcome in an interconnected economy with complex supply chains.

Since US manufacturing employment peaked in the late 1970s, according to Michael Hicks of the Center for Business and Economic […]

Robot arms replace factory hands

Robot arms replace factory hands

95 per cent of job losses are due to automation and computer technology. PHOTO: AFP PARIS: Donald Trump has been crowing as companies including Ford renounce plans to move factories to Mexico. But the main beneficiaries of this shift back to the US aren’t saying much by way of celebration — industrial robots don’t tend to speak.

While globalisation’s detractors blame countries such as China and Mexico for stealing the factory jobs of the West, experts point to less obvious culprits which are harder to scapegoat and to overcome in an interconnected economy with complex supply chains.

Since US manufacturing employment […]

Workplace of the future may require new safety net

Workplace of the future may require new safety net

Buy Photo This past election we heard much about the loss of manufacturing jobs. Columnist George Will puts these job losses in perspective in a recent article . Will cites a Ball State University study. From 2000 to 2010, only 13 percent of manufacturing job losses were due to trade. Productivity improvements accounted for over 85 percent of the losses.

Many fear that automation and robotics will cause economic dislocation for working people. Andy Stern addresses this topic in his book “ Raising the Floor : How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream.” […]

Workplace of the future may require new safety net

Workplace of the future may require new safety net

Buy Photo This past election we heard much about the loss of manufacturing jobs. Columnist George Will puts these job losses in perspective in a recent article . Will cites a Ball State University study. From 2000 to 2010, only 13 percent of manufacturing job losses were due to trade. Productivity improvements accounted for over 85 percent of the losses.

Many fear that automation and robotics will cause economic dislocation for working people. Andy Stern addresses this topic in his book “ Raising the Floor : How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream.” […]