Tag: consumer

Basic Income Might Be The Answer To Society’s Productivity Crisis

Basic Income Might Be The Answer To Society's Productivity Crisis

With the decline of manufacturing jobs, and the onset of automation to take over almost all kinds of work, society is on the hunt for a long-term, scalable solution to our future productivity.

What will happen to displaced workers? How will mass unemployment hurt our increasingly globalized economy?

One concept, a universal basic income, has been debated by thinkers as far back as the 16th century . The theory suggests that a flat income, given to every citizen regardless of employment or societal status, will allow society to pursue the work it really believes in. Can a monthly universal stipend help […]

Does automation destroy jobs? It doesn’t.

The trouble with this argument is that it poses a question – Will automation affect employment in the future ? & attempts to answer it purely by looking at historical data – but that is entirely missing the point.

The central question to answer (& in all my time spent with Futurology – I’ve never even once heard anyone come up with an answer) is – in a future where AI & Robots can do most jobs, how can humans compete with then in an economy that has free market capitalism as its guiding economic principle.

In the past displaced workers […]

How computer automation affects occupations: Technology, jobs, and skills

How computer automation affects occupations: Technology, jobs, and skills

A popular notion is that computer automation leads to major job losses. However, this ignores the dynamic economic responses that involve both changing demand and inter-occupation substitution. Using US data, this column explores the effect of automation on employment growth for detailed occupational categories. Computer-using occupations have had greater job growth to date, while those using few computers suffer greater computer-related losses. The real challenge posed by automation is developing a workforce with the skills to use new technologies.

Automation has become a concern not just for blue-collar manufacturing workers, but also for white-collar workers and even professionals. New computer […]

How to Protect Workers From Job-Stealing Robots

How to Protect Workers From Job-Stealing Robots

A robot and a human work side by side. There is a lively debate happening across various corners of the internet and the hallways of academia: In the coming decades, will advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) render human labor unnecessary?

At first blush, economic data suggest little reason to worry. American businesses in recent years have needed more and more humans: 15 million new private-sector jobs have been created since early 2010. At the same time, what economists refer to as labor productivity (economic output per human hour worked) has grown disappointingly slowly. If robots were on track to replace […]

Automation will end the dream of rapid economic growth for poorer countries

Automation will end the dream of rapid economic growth for poorer countries

Humanoid robots working side by side with employees on an assembly line at a factory. Photograph: Issei Kato/REUTERS For a long time – at least since the economic emergence of South Korea in the 1960s – many low-income countries have been able to achieve rapid economic growth through industrialisation.

The process usually starts with low-end manufacturing (apparel, footwear, plastics) and entails large numbers of workers moving from low productivity smallholder agriculture to high productivity export manufacturing.

Industrialisation has helped to drive an unprecedented convergence between rich and poor country wealth levels. By the early 2000s, 83 developing countries were achieving growth […]

Job Automation Will Cost 6% of US Jobs in 5 Years

Job Automation Will Cost 6% of US Jobs in 5 Years

Job automation will cost 6% of all jobs in the U.S. by 2021. That’s nearly 8.9 million jobs in five years. The 6% figure is according to a new report by Forrester Research . According to the study, the job loss won’t be uniform across all fields, industries and positions. However it also won’t be limited to manufacturing as it has in the past. Rather, Artificial intelligence (AI), robots, automation and machine learning will destroy vastly more than 6% of jobs in select industries like transportation (think driverless Uber) and trucking, customer service, logistics and consumer services. Jobs in […]

AI, Robots to Eliminate 6 Percent of US Jobs by 2021, Report Says

AI, Robots to Eliminate 6 Percent of US Jobs by 2021, Report Says

According to a new report, robots and artificially intelligent machines will be taking over 6% of all jobs in the US, including customer service and transportation. (Photo : Steve Jurvetson / Creative Commons / Wikimedia Commons) Robots and AI’s will be taking over 6 percent of U.S. jobs in the next five years.

According to a report by market research company Forrester, cognitive technologies will start eliminating customer service and transportation jobs as early as 2021. Apart from these industries, the impact will also be felt in logistics and consumer services industries.

The report further details that the disruption will affect […]

University receives $1 million grant to improve collaborative robotics

University receives $1 million grant to improve collaborative robotics

The envisioned intelligent material delivery system: a robot will sense when skilled workers need materials, and deliver them in advance. This will help reduce worker frustration, stress, and talent loss, and save approximately $1.7 million dollars an hour by reducing work stoppage problems, according to UC San Diego. Engineers at the University of California San Diego have been given $1 million to research how to improve the way robots interact with people in US factories

Laurel Riek, a roboticist at the UC San Diego, will lead a three-year, $1 million project funded by the National Science Foundation to help […]

Buddhist Economics: Economics as if People Mattered

Buddhist Economics: Economics as if People Mattered

Economics Should Be About People, Not About Wall Street

By John Lawrence In Buddhist economics there is the concept of “right livelihood.” Work is considered an essential component of human life just as play and leisure. Work of a craftsmanlike nature, work which is satisfying–not work that is stultifying, of an assembly-line nature. Work that nourishes the soul; this kind of work results in right livelihood.

By the same token, there is “right consumption.” This is as contrasted with the unlimited consumption advanced Western societies and pushed on their citizens through advertising and other means in order to have […]

Uber will wipe out skills not jobs

Uber will wipe out skills not jobs

Uber’s announcement to add self-driving cars to its usual taxi services in the United States is as unexpected as it is indicative of the automated future of the sharing economy. Governments should limit their efforts to regulate the rapidly-evolving sharing economy and instead focus on developing relevant skills. Ride-hailing app Uber recently announced a pilot project testing the use of self-driving cars in the streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The announcement was quite unexpected since the technology of automated passenger cars is not even close to hitting the markets. There are major technological flaws to be resolved and regulators have […]