Tag: consumption

Organised business and trade unions should consider joint ventures in IoT to kick-start ailing industries

Organised business and trade unions should consider joint ventures in IoT to kick-start ailing industries

C onnecting everyday physical objects to the internet and ensuring these can “talk” in the cloud may sound like something best left to science fiction writers. However, when you strip away the noise around machine-learning, robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT) and the coming Fourth Industrial Revolution, it becomes clear that an array of exciting opportunities for businesses and industries are on our doorstep in 2020.

The secret to success will be ensuring this data is harnessed so that a valuable action can be performed to benefit consumers, businesses and communities. The potential of this cutting-edge technology to lift under-performing […]

The shape of the British economy has changed radically since 2000

The shape of the British economy has changed radically since 2000

A personal view from Ian Stewart, Deloitte’s Chief Economist in the UK.

The past, as the novelist LP Harley wrote, “is another country, they do things differently there”.

And things were different in the year 2000. The global economy was booming. The 3.5% growth rate in the UK and the 3.8% figure in the euro area that year have not been bettered in the 19 years that followed.Tony Blair was in Downing Street, George Bush was in the White House and Vladimir Putin had just become president of Russia. The events of 9/11, and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and […]

If this era of automation mirrors the past, we’re in trouble

If this era of automation mirrors the past, we’re in trouble

There are two general philosophical camps when considering the automated future: those who believe it will be a time where massive numbers of jobs eliminated and large segments of the population will find themselves struggling to make ends meet, and you will also find people who think everything is going to be just fine. The second group will argue that automation will create new types of work and that automation has always been a positive thing in the past.

Those who think automation fears are overhyped often cite the Industrial Revolution, which started towards the end of the 18th century, […]

Redefining Capitalism @Davos 2020

Redefining Capitalism @Davos 2020

In the last decade

There’s been trade

There’s been globalizationThere’s been technology It’s all good Or not?Companies are flush with funds, but real incomes of people have declinedGrowth has not been equal; the richest 2000 own more than 4.6 billion othersCapitalism has flourished while people have been left behindCapitalism has flourished while our environment has been severely degraded It’s not all good These are the debates and the discussions at the World Economic Forum at Davos where business leaders and experts are highlighting the need to redefine the current form of capitalism also called “shareholder capitalism” which is the dominant form […]

Say Hello to the Robo Worker

Say Hello to the Robo Worker

Illustration by Tanmoy Chakraborty MORE FROM THIS SECTION

Right from when I started working with the government in 1956, the approach has been that India must adopt labour intensive methods in manufacturing industries. The logic was that our large population and abundance of low-cost labour would help us manufacture goods at low cost. Quite predictably, labour unions opposed any form of automation or use of technology in factories that would lead to additional jobs not being created.

Everyone is aware that manufacturing in India has stagnated at 15-16 per cent of GDP while some of the bigger countries in […]

Future-proofing the youth to develop skills for a new age

Future-proofing the youth to develop skills for a new age

A man and a woman interact with a robot during Gitex Technology Week at Dubai World Trade Centre. New techhnology is expected to take away some jobs currently carried out by humans, but create others. Reem Mohammed / The National As digitalisation continues to grow in significance in more aspects of our daily lives, young people will need to develop a skillset that not only enables them to handle smart technologies but also equips them to adapt to the ever-changing demands of the workplace of the future

We stand at the cusp of a digital revolution and when we cross […]

Automation and the working class

Automation and the working class

Difference engine According to one account in 2013, 47% of jobs in the USA risk being automated away within “a decade or two”.[1] That prospect has been interpreted as utopia or as dystopia. The near future will be one of networked individuals freed from drudgery by automation, and able easily to get what they want to consume and to undermine all hierarchies. Or: only a techno-elite will retain employment and wages. The rest of us will be reduced to a new pauper class vegetating on “universal basic income” handouts.

Further research has queried the projections. Many tasks can be automated, […]

Automation: A guide for policymakers

Automation: A guide for policymakers

Introduction:

Advancing technologies are increasingly able to fully or partially automate job tasks. These technologies range from robotics to machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence, and are being adopted across many sectors of the economy. Applications range from selecting job applicants for interviewing, picking orders in a warehouse, interpreting X-rays to diagnose disease, and automated customer service. These developments have raised concern that workers are being displaced by advancing automation technology. Indeed, over 18 recent studies predict job losses from new automation technologies, including some predictions of massive job losses (Winick 2018). A large literature on […]

The federal government’s foresight agency has identified five game-changing trends related to technology that could change the future of work.

The federal government’s foresight agency has identified five game-changing trends related to technology that could change the future of work.

The head of the federal government’s foresight agency says identifying the skills that workers will need in the future, as jobs rapidly change or disappear completely, is one of the toughest challenges policy-makers have in front of them.

Kristel Van der Elst, executive head of Policy Horizons, said artificial intelligence and automation’s impact on the nature of work is an issue confounding researchers and governments around the world.

“We have an idea, but what (skills) are actually needed is the biggest question,” said Van der Elst, who is also the CEO of the Global Foresight Group.“A lot of organizations are struggling […]

Economic Possibilities for Ourselves

Economic Possibilities for Ourselves

21 November 2019, Hamburg: A robot interacts with a woman at “Speed Dating with AI – Meet the Robots at AI Days” at the Hammerbrooklyn Digital Campus. On 22 and 23 November, a selection of highly developed robots from various fields will be shown, giving an insight into the current possibilities of artificial intelligence. Photo: Axel Heimken/dpa (Photo by Axel Heimken/picture alliance via Getty Images)

The most depressing feature of the current explosion in robot-apocalypse literature is that it rarely transcends the world of work. Almost every day, news articles appear detailing some new round of layoffs. In the […]