Tag: employment

New report says physical and ‘predictable’ jobs are at risk of automation; AI experts respond

New report says physical and 'predictable' jobs are at risk of automation; AI experts respond

Image: iStockphoto.com/ndoeljindoel With robots helping in hospitals, schools, restaurants, and even on cruise ships, it seems that there are few industries that won’t feel the impact of automation. But whether human jobs will be replaced by machines is still a complex question, and it is still too early to know how human jobs will be impacted in the age of AI.

A new report released by McKinsey & Co. on Friday attempts to shed more light on the issue. The key takeaway? "Predictable" jobs are most at risk of becoming automated.

The report , which draws from data from the US […]

The Workplace of the Future

The Workplace of the Future

The Barbarian Group’s ‘Superdesk’ | Source: Courtesy There are few sectors of the economy that offer as wide and interesting a range of career opportunities as fashion. For more careers content or to browse current job opportunities in fashion, visit BoF Careers .

LONDON, United Kingdom — The way we work is changing. Many of us have experienced working in big offices, in cubicles, under fluorescent lighting and at the same desk and computer every day. However, several key trends are leading up to a shift in the way people communicate, collaborate and work.

Economic shifts are redistributing power, […]

Robots in the Workforce: Automation Is a New Era for Engineers

Robots in the Workforce: Automation Is a New Era for Engineers

Welcome, Future Engineer. Currently, creative engineers are forced to build geometry in CAD systems to assess the viability of design ideas. In the future, their time will be better spent analyzing and constructing the problem statement, so computers can generate new geometric options and help engineers iterate faster. As a result, the scope of problems will increase, creating new challenges and opportunities.

An example is SpaceX, which successfully landed two rockets on a boat this year (after five failed attempts). What if, at the beginning of the process, the engineers had fed project parameters into a generative-design tool ? And […]

42 percent of working Canadians at high risk of being replaced by automation, says study

42 percent of working Canadians at high risk of being replaced by automation, says study

If you are on the verge of graduating from high school and wrestling with what to do with the rest of your life, or re-training yourself for another job mid-career, a study by Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship located in Toronto, Canada and housed within Ryerson University may have an impact.

Their recent study , The Talented Mr. Robot: The impact of automation on Canada’s workforce says a staggering 42 percent of the Canadian workforce is at high risk of being affected by automation over the next 10 to 20 years, with over a 70 percent probability of this […]

How robots paved the way for Donald Trump

How robots paved the way for Donald Trump

View photosMore See any humans? A Ford assembly plant in Missouri. Think we don’t make anything in America any more? Think again.

US manufacturing output is close to a record high, even when adjusted for inflation. The reason that sounds surprising is manufacturing jobs have been disappearing since the late 1980s, and now that number is just 12.3 million. Since 1989, manufacturing output has surged 69% while employment has fallen by 32%.

Manufacturers are doing more with less because of technology: computerized machines, streamlined processes, and on just about any factory floor that’s been built or revamped during the last 20 […]

Technological change makes social and cognitive skills key to future workforce

Technological change makes social and cognitive skills key to future workforce

Equipping the workforce with strong cognitive and social skills will be a larger benefit to the UK than just technical skills and knowledge according to research by Deloitte Building on its work on the impact of automation on the UK economy, Deloitte has analysed 120 skills, abilities and knowledge sets and mapped them to UK occupational classifications to demonstrate which are the most important to the UK’s workforce and how this is likely to change in the coming decades. More news

Apprenticeships: Improving access for people with learning disabilities

Radical rethink needed for UK engineering education, says […]

Trump’s No. 1 lie about Mexico and U.S. jobs

OXFORD, Great Britain

One of Donald Trump’s most misleading campaign themes is that Mexico is stealing U.S. jobs, and that Washington should re-negotiate or scrap its free trade deal with Mexico to prevent even larger job losses. In reality, what’s threatening U.S. jobs isn’t Mexico, but automation.

I thought a lot about Trump’s deceptive trade proposals this week while visiting Oxford University to interview the co-author of a much-cited Oxford-Martin School study on the future of employment . The study says 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk of disappearing over the next twenty years because of automation.Carl Benedikt Frey […]

How to automate work life in the virtual economy without compromising on quality

How to automate work life in the virtual economy without compromising on quality

iStockphoto Lately, new age virtually driven businesses have become all the rage. Everyone is talking about them.

But automation has nothing to do with being lazy, careless, or complacent. You can never fully automate everything, and even if you could — you should not. Nor does talk of a virtual economy immediately link to the cliche of a cheap, low-quality workforce in emerging economies desperate for dollars.

It’s unfortunate that some continue to focus on this narrative.Not long ago, people used to believe that to be successful, you had to have a swarm of employees and a swank brick-and-mortar office in […]

Automation and the Workforce [on hold]

Automation and the Workforce [on hold]

Throughout history, automation has had an enormous effect on the workforce, allowing fewer workers to do more, increasing efficiency. Robots were first used in the transportation equipment, chemical, and metal industries, leading to an increase in both total factory productivity and wages. The use of robots also increased labor productivity and value added from labor; in other words, each human worker was more productive and added more value to the economy than before the implementation of industrial robots. These gains in productivity and efficiency are huge economic drivers for automation. With basic automation of software development and testing coming […]

Think handcrafted pottery is safe from automation? Think again

Think handcrafted pottery is safe from automation? Think again

There are no shortages of studies suggesting that many forms of human employment as we know them today are likely to be wiped out by the ongoing AI revolution.

One thing many experts agree with, however, is that the jobs that will survive are those that rely on creativity and artisanal skill — since these are things machines will not be able to satisfactorily replicate.

Don’t tell that to Central Saint Martins student Charlotte Nordmoen, though. As part of a project called humanMADE, Nordmoen has created a prototype robot capable of generating its own examples of pottery — thanks to a […]