Tag: employment

The 5G Future is Being Built in Texas

The 5G Future is Being Built in Texas

Untitled design-18 Creating a 5G network is the next frontier in communication technology, and Texas is on the forefront of its manufacturing. In addition to partnership between AT&T and Samsung in Austin, a new “smart factory” by Ericsson in Lewisville will be both builder and practical showcase of 5G.

The cellular networks have revolutionized life as we know it starting from the purely analog voice delivery of 1G and evolving to the mobile internet capabilities of today’s smartphones. That evolution was critical to building the World Wide Web. A 1975 study from the Hanover Institute warned that there wasn’t enough […]

4IR in West Africa: What business owners need to know

4IR in West Africa: What business owners need to know

While small and medium business (SMB) owners in West Africa have seen the terms, ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ and ‘Industry 4.0’, or ‘4IR’ in the headlines and on the Internet, many assume that this trend will only affect larger businesses. Nothing could be further from the truth – the next wave of digital technology will be as meaningful and important to SMBs as the mobile phone and the Internet.

Let’s quickly recap what the history of the other three industrial revolutions before looking at the fourth: The first industrial revolution in around 1785 was about using steam- and water-powered machines to […]

Disappearing Jobs in Colorado

Disappearing Jobs in Colorado

We’re all aware that automation, robotics and AI is having a growing impact on America’s job market — and Colorado’s job market. According to a recent article published in the Denver Post, the number of jobs in certain Colorado industries has fallen significantly over the past ten years — since 2009 — while the number of cell tower workers is up eight-fold. The article used data from an analysis by CommercialCafé and Yardi Systems.

From the Denver Post article, as reprinted in Governing Magazine:

“Most of the mundane tasks previously done by researchers — like data scrubbing, localizing questions […]

The White-Collar Job Apocalypse That Didn’t Happen

The White-Collar Job Apocalypse That Didn’t Happen

Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Ron Kincaid remembers what it was like to worry that his job would be sent overseas.

Globalization had ravaged American manufacturing, and now, in the first years of the new century, economists were warning that offshoring — the relocating of work to other countries — was coming for white-collar jobs like his as well.For Mr. Kincaid, the evidence seemed close at hand; he overheard conversations through his boss’s open office door about which foreign contractors should take over which jobs at the automobile finance company where he worked. He remembers the meeting where an […]

Peterborough letter: Automation will change our world … are we ready?

Peterborough letter: Automation will change our world ... are we ready?

Re: Make automation a 2019 federal election issue when politicians come knocking , Sept. 20

Thank you for including this article in the Examiner.

The concept that Craig Wallace is describing involves jobs, or employment. There are two ways to perceive a job: one, as an activity that produces either a product or a service; and two, as a way for a person to make money. To understand the impacts of automation the two must be separated.Our society, and by extension, our economy, has been evolving faster than ever, and will hopefully continue to do so. Computers and smart phones […]

AI Weekly: Automation in the workplace could disproportionately affect women

AI Weekly: Automation in the workplace could disproportionately affect women

As AI and machine learning transform industries by automating much of the work currently done by humans, women’s careers will be disproportionately affected. That’s according to a McKinsey Global Institute report published earlier this year (“The future of women at work: Transitions in the age of automation“), which found that women predominate in occupations that’ll be adversely impacted. About 40% of jobs where men make up the majority in the 10 economies (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the U.K., the U.S., China, India, Mexico, and South America) contributing over 60% of GDP collectively could be displaced by automation in our […]

Cellphone Tower Workers in Demand, Others Not So Much

(TNS) – Concerns that robotics, automation and artificial intelligence will displace entire job categories are on the rise. But what occupations have actually fallen in and out of favor in Colorado this decade?

For example, the number of survey researchers in Colorado has dropped by four-fifths since 2009, while the number of cellular tower workers is up eight-fold, according to an analysis from CommercialCafé and Yardi Systems.

“Most of the mundane tasks previously done by researchers ? like data scrubbing, localizing questions for different countries and programming surveys ? have been taken over by machines, leaving more time to focus on […]

Robots could replace loan officers in the future

Robots could replace loan officers in the future

(Chart by the Orange County Register/SCNG) What’s up with mortgage rates? Jeff Lazerson of Mortgage Grader in Laguna Niguel gives us his take.

Rate news summary

From Freddie Mac’s weekly survey: The 30-year fixed rate averaged 3.64%, down 9 basis points from last week. The 15-year fixed rate averaged 3.16%, down 5 basis points from last week.The Mortgage Bankers Association reported a 10.1% decrease in loan application volume from the previous week. Bottom line: Assuming a borrower gets the average 30-year fixed rate on a conforming $484,350 loan, last year’s payment was a stunning $305 higher than this week’s […]

AI Gets Real in Professional Services

AI Gets Real in Professional Services

Remember when researchers predicted that professional services jobs in industries like insurance, tax and accounting, and finance and legal would soon be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI)? That was in 2013 when AI was just starting to peak on the hype cycle , and headlines like “Your Next Accountant Will Be a Robot” and “The Robots are Coming for Wall Street” were being cooked up daily.

Today, six years into the evolution of AI in professional services, it’s safe to say that the dystopian version of the future has not materialized. In fact, according to the latest data from the […]

The World Needs a Digital Blue-Collar Workforce

The World Needs a Digital Blue-Collar Workforce

Credit: Hero Images/Getty Images A.I. and automation continue to take ground, populist concern is growing that these new technologies will replace the effort of their human counterparts, and with it, the workers’ livelihood. Of course, this is nothing new. Gutenberg’s printing press revolutionized the distribution of ideas and slowly sidelined calligraphy — first to the category of an art form and then to a peculiar hobby. Textiles fell to the machine in the 18th century before Henry Ford’s assembly line organized workers for mass production, only to slowly replace them with robots.

Behind all growth marches gradual innovations that increase […]