Tag: employment

Google Exec Says AI Will Lead To More Jobs, Not Fewer

Google Exec Says AI Will Lead To More Jobs, Not Fewer

Eric Schmidt.OFFICIAL LEWEB PHOTOS/Flickr At this point, it’s no secret that people are starting to be more afraid of automation and artificial intelligence due to the prospect of job loss. However, Alphabet chief executive, Eric Schmidt said that these fears are unfounded. Instead of leading to fewer jobs, AIs and better computers will actually lead to better employment opportunities.

Schmidt made this pronouncement during the Viva Technology conference, which was held in Paris, France, Futurism reports. It was basically an event where industry luminaries and government leaders could attend and give their two-cents regarding the current trajectory of technology and […]

Robocalypse now? Central bankers argue whether automation will kill jobs

Robocalypse now? Central bankers argue whether automation will kill jobs

Manufacturing workers at the Rode Microphones factory in Sydney. The rise of robots has long been a topic for sci-fi best sellers and video games and, as of this week, a threat officially taken seriously by central bankers.

The bankers are not yet ready to buy into dystopian visions in which robots render humans superfluous.

But, at an exclusive gathering at a golf resort near Lisbon, the big minds of monetary policy were seriously discussing the risk that artificial intelligence could eliminate jobs on a scale that would dwarf previous waves of technological change.“There is no question we are in an […]

Bristol: Like it or not, big government may be here to stay

Bristol: Like it or not, big government may be here to stay

After reading recent news reports on job automation I’m wondering whether government itself will eventually become the employer of last resort. Actually that might not be such a bad thing.

We’ve seen what has happened to manufacturing jobs. They’re down from about 18 million to about 12 million over the last 40 or so years. No matter what President Trump says those jobs are not coming back.

Meanwhile, service jobs are up from about 40 million to over 100 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.This much larger part of the workforce includes not just jobs, such as checkout clerk […]

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp: New divisions will run deeper than left or right

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp: New divisions will run deeper than left or right

Deliveroo riders holding a protest over pay outside the company HQ in London. Could protests like this become more common as our economic model grows increasingly unstable? POLITICS and economics have been going through rapid evolutionary change in the last few years. Future historians may refer to it as a revolution. Political and economic thinking are deeply intertwined and while the economic order of our lifetime has failed and shows no sign of recovery, our politicians have failed to realise the new reality and are still arguing in terms of left and right, because that’s all they understand.

Left and […]

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp: New divisions will run deeper than left or right

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp: New divisions will run deeper than left or right

Deliveroo riders holding a protest over pay outside the company HQ in London. Could protests like this become more common as our economic model grows increasingly unstable? POLITICS and economics have been going through rapid evolutionary change in the last few years. Future historians may refer to it as a revolution. Political and economic thinking are deeply intertwined and while the economic order of our lifetime has failed and shows no sign of recovery, our politicians have failed to realise the new reality and are still arguing in terms of left and right, because that’s all they understand.

Left and […]

Don’t tax robots to save jobs… they might just create new forms of employment

Don’t tax robots to save jobs… they might just create new forms of employment

An automated welding arm. In a recent interview, Microsoft founder Bill Gates created quite a stir when he suggested that robots be taxed because society will not be able to manage the speed and magnitude of the impending automation of everything.

While his intent was to suggest ways to stave off the massive social unrest that will surely come with wholesale unemployment, it wasn’t a week before the editorial staffs at the Economist and BusinessWeek weighed in on impracticality of the idea, saying it would slow down technology investment and automation rates, and seriously damage American competitiveness.

Curiously, they framed the […]

Robots stealing human jobs isn’t the problem. This is.

Robots stealing human jobs isn't the problem. This is.

Foreign Affairs Editor Gideon Rose discusses work and life in the age of automation. He speaks on "Bloomberg Surveillance." (Photo: Fabrice Coffrini, AFP/Getty Images) A 15-hour work week. That’s what influential economist John Maynard Keynes prophesied in his famous 1930 essay " Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren ," forecasting that in the next century technology would make us so productive we wouldn’t know what to do with all our free time.

This is not the future Keynes imagined.

Many higher income workers put in 50 or more hours per week, according to an NPR/Harvard/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation poll. Meanwhile, lower-income workers […]

Amazon Buys Out Whole Foods Market

Amazon Buys Out Whole Foods Market

Reprinted with permission from Creators .

Excellent news, folks: A decade after Wall Street greed crashed our economy and crushed the working class, jobs are suddenly plentiful!

As an Associated Press article joyously put it, “The U.S. job market has settled into a sweet spot of steadily solid growth.” At long last, the American dream is back for working families, right? Well … in a word: No. Further down in the article, AP’s sweet news turns sour with this little admission: “About all that’s still missing [in the jobs market] is a broad acceleration in pay.”In other words, you can […]

Robots used to be advertised as job-saving technology

Robots used to be advertised as job-saving technology

At a US trade show in 2004, Fanuc, a large supplier of industrial robots, gave a seminar on how to automate factory work. “We had very few attendees,” remembers Scott Melton, a director of sales at the company.

An explanation for his company’s empty room came when he learned that another seminar—this one about outsourcing work to China—had been scheduled during the same time slot. “That room was completely full,” he says.

It didn’t take long for a marketing idea to emerge from the interest gap. There was a need, Melton says, to educate US companies that they “didn’t need to […]

Facebook, Tesla CEOs lead charge for guaranteed income: ‘I don’t think we’re going to have a choice,’ Zuckerberg says

Facebook, Tesla CEOs lead charge for guaranteed income: 'I don't think we're going to have a choice,' Zuckerberg says

WASHINGTON – Across their three presidential debates last year, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump uttered the word “jobs” 86 times – but the word “automation” never came up. And by all accounts, nothing is going to transform the American labor market more dramatically, and likely for the worse, than the increasing trend toward automation: on assembly lines, in self-driving cars , even clerical and white-collar positions once considered unthinkable for robots to occupy.

Credible projections now forecast that 40 percent of all jobs in the United States today could be eliminated by 2030, just 13 years from now, have led […]