Tag: consumer

Robotics in business: Everything humans need to know

Robotics in business: Everything humans need to know

YakobchukOlena | istock.com Introduction

One kind of robot has endured for the last half-century: the hulking one-armed Goliaths that dominate industrial assembly lines.

These industrial robots have been task-specific — built to spot weld, say, or add threads to the end of a pipe. They aren’t sexy, but in the latter half of the 20th century they transformed industrial manufacturing and, with it, the low- and medium-skilled labor landscape in much of the U.S., Asia, and Europe. Is your washing machine a robot? Is a modern high-end car a robot? It’s a little like Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of […]

The future of AI: relying on robots in our everyday lives

The future of AI: relying on robots in our everyday lives

Forrester predicts that investments in artificial intelligence (AI) will grow by 300 per cent in 2017, and a recent study by Narrative Science found that 68 per cent of enterprises will use AI technology by 2018. It is no secret that AI and cognitive technology is set to transform every sector. The healthcare sector, customer service and the public sector could change beyond recognition in the not-too-distant future – but how do UK consumers feel about these technological advances? Do they recognise the benefits this could have on their daily lives? Benefits of an artificial intelligence age

The answer […]

Transportation, Sales & Retail Jobs ‘To Disappear’ As Robots Take Over

Transportation, Sales & Retail Jobs ‘To Disappear’ As Robots Take Over

Automation and e-commerce are set to phase out 80 percent of transportation and warehousing jobs and 63 percent of sales employment, says Oxford University

Roughly 80 percent of jobs in transportation, warehousing and logistics and 63 percent in sales are likely to disappear due to automation , with retail employment also at a high level of risk, according to Oxford University researchers.

In a study focusing on the impact of automation on e-commerce and the wider wholesale and retail sector, the university’s Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment found the impact of digital commerce systems was only beginning to be […]

Invasion of the job snatchers? Use of robots in workplace on the rise

Invasion of the job snatchers? Use of robots in workplace on the rise

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It’s only about 50 feet to the shipping station, but if employees at Cochlear Americas had to walk each order back and forth, they would work longer days.

They used to do the walk. That was before “Morty,” the autonomous-moving cart, joined the hearing-implant company in Centennial in January. Morty — also called Robbie or Suzy, depending on which Cochlear employee you ask — maneuvers between workstations, curious visitors and unidentified objects as it thoughtfully takes packages between workstations to the shipping area all day long. […]

Millennials Think Automation Is Great For Jobs, Survey Says

Millennials Think Automation Is Great For Jobs, Survey Says

Millennials.ITU Pictures/Flickr While many of the older generation of workers are freaking out over potential jobless due to automation, a new survey suggests that millennials aren’t all that worried. In fact, it seems most of the people born in 1985 and onwards believes that technology is great for employment down the road.

The survey was commissioned by the World Economic Forum . 24,766 participants were asked a series of questions with regards to the impact of technology on the economy. The topics covered automation and advancements in artificial intelligence. Of the responders, 78.6 percent said that they did not believe […]

Are we on the brink of a jobless future?

Are we on the brink of a jobless future?

MILES O’BRIEN: We’re going to get a better picture tomorrow of how strong job creation is when the monthly employment report comes out. But whatever that snapshot looks like, there are concerns about the rise of robotics and automation, and what that means for the future of the work force.

Our economics correspondent, Paul Solman, has been exploring that subject.

Here’s his latest report for our weekly series Making Sense. PAUL SOLMAN: In Silicon Valley, author Vivek Wadhwa says he already lives in the future. There’s his mostly driverless electric car.OK, so, your car can open the garage door and greet […]

‘The End of Loyalty’ and the Surge in Populist Sentiment

‘The End of Loyalty’ and the Surge in Populist Sentiment

In the literature that helps explain the shocking results of the presidential election of 2016, Rick Wartzman’s new book, The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America , merits a place alongside J. D. Vance’s well-known memoir of white working class alienation and despair, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis and the less well-known sociological study of American mores just before the election, The Vanishing Center of American Democracy , by James Davison Hunter and Carl Desportes Bowman, both of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Culture. The […]

CITI: Retail jobs will ‘vanish’ due to technology and it ‘will affect every city and region’

CITI: Retail jobs will 'vanish' due to technology and it 'will affect every city and region'

As much as 80% of retail jobs at risk from automation, Citi and University of Oxford predict.

Low-skilled jobs most at risk and will have profound effects on communities.

‘Watershed’ moment coming for retail jobs, Citi and Oxford warn. People walk by the Amazon Go brick-and-mortar grocery store without lines or checkout counters, in Seattle Washington, U.S. December 5, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Redmond LONDON — Analysts from Citi bank and academics from Oxford are predicting seismic changes to the retail industry that could mean low-skilled jobs "vanish.""The lesson of the twentieth century has been that most jobs […]

Toledo has nation’s highest concentration of robots in work force

Toledo has nation's highest concentration of robots in work force

Metropolitan Toledo has the highest concentration of industrial robots relative to its work force of anywhere in the country, a good-news, bad-news finding that points to the region’s strong embrace of advanced manufacturing, but also a potential sign that human labor is being replaced by machines.

As part of an upcoming report on disruptive effects of automation, the Brookings Institution set out to pinpoint where the nation’s robotic footholds have been gained. Robots install windows on a Jeep Liberty at the Toledo Assembly Plant in 2011. A recent report by the Brookings Institution indicated that Toledo has the highest concentration […]

Bringing jobs back — Location

Bringing jobs back — Location

The Mid- Ohio Valley has a lot of economic advantages that many people may never have thought about. We are close to half of the markets in North America. New York City, Toronto, Chicago and Atlanta are all within a day’s drive. What this means is that if you make a consumer product the cost to get it to the market place and to millions of people who can buy it is far less than if you were in Asia, Europe or even the Gulf Coast. You can also get it to millions of consumers faster. These are huge […]