Tag: inequality

Workplace of the future may require new safety net

Workplace of the future may require new safety net

Buy Photo This past election we heard much about the loss of manufacturing jobs. Columnist George Will puts these job losses in perspective in a recent article . Will cites a Ball State University study. From 2000 to 2010, only 13 percent of manufacturing job losses were due to trade. Productivity improvements accounted for over 85 percent of the losses.

Many fear that automation and robotics will cause economic dislocation for working people. Andy Stern addresses this topic in his book “ Raising the Floor : How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream.” […]

Robots will destroy our jobs – and we’re not ready for it

The McDonald’s on the corner of Third Avenue and 58th Street in New York City doesn’t look all that different from any of the fast-food chain’s other locations across the country. Inside, however, hungry patrons are welcomed not by a cashier waiting to take their order, but by a “Create Your Taste” kiosk – an automated touch-screen system that allows customers to create their own burgers without interacting with another human being.

It’s impossible to say exactly how many jobs have been lost by the deployment of the automated kiosks – McDonald’s has been predictably reluctant to release numbers – […]

Solutions needed to make India’s youth employable

Solutions needed to make India’s youth employable

With services contributing to 66.1% gross value-added growth in FY15-16 based on data from an India Brand Equity Foundation report, it’s clear that burgeoning progress is firmly entrenched in the waves of the services sector. India’s employment scenario has experienced a pendulum-like shift, from an agricultural towards a service-rich economy, corroborated with a boom in employment for sectors like IT, insurance, finance, infrastructure, retail and telecom.

With services contributing to 66.1% gross value-added growth in FY15-16 based on data from an India Brand Equity Foundation report, it’s clear that burgeoning progress is firmly entrenched in the waves of the services […]

The Robot Rampage

The Robot Rampage

Donald Trump tends to present the labor market as a zero-sum game: companies have shifted production to China and other emerging markets. He’s going to bring those jobs home.

Put aside for a moment how moving jobs back to a country with high costs gives companies an incentive to automate . There’s a bigger problem: After displacing U.S. manufacturing workers, robots are poised to do the same in developing economies, too. It will be hard to re-shore jobs that no longer exist.

It took 50 years for the world to install the first million industrial robots. The next million will take […]

A CES Takeaway: Don’t Fear Robots And Artificial Intelligence–Fear Politicians

A CES Takeaway: Don't Fear Robots And Artificial Intelligence--Fear Politicians

Maroon 5 keeps popping up on my Pandora stations, so artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning still have a ways to go. Even if AI can beat us at Go .

But, wow, that aside, the technologies showcased at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show (#CES2017, actually the 50th annual, sponsored by the Consumer Technology Association [CTA]), from countless robots to Hyundai exoskeletons, are incredible.

Voice recognition, virtual and augmented reality, smart home technologies and drones are everywhere. AI and machine learning comprise major threads.Which raises the question; will all that AI be Democrat or Republican?Just kidding. But a new concern has […]

Road to robo-car future filled with costly potholes

Road to robo-car future filled with costly potholes

QNX (BlackBerry) concept vehicle. (Handout) Every week it seems another news item heralds the imminent demise of the human-operated automobile. Latest to the party is Canada’s BlackBerry, which aims to recast itself as a maker of software for autonomous cars. That’s fine.

But why the rush to robo-cars? Surely it can’t be consumer demand. Surely it can’t be economic or political necessity. Surely it can’t be driver and pedestrian safety. Oh wait: Maybe it’s corporate greed.

I enjoy driving. I can’t imagine feeling anything but terrified in an autonomous bubble car, piloted through rush-hour traffic by circuitry, a sensor array and […]

Apple manufacturer Foxconn to convert its workforce into robots

Apple manufacturer Foxconn to convert its workforce into robots

Foxconn , One of Apple’s Original Equipment Manufacturers, plans to automate its workforce in their factories in China in the upcoming years, according to the company’s General Manager for the Automation Technology Development Committee, Dai Jia-peng.

A report from Digitimes established that this large manufacturer plans the automation in a three-phase program, Jia-peng said. In this scheme, the objective is to replace the human workforce for what they have called “Foxbots.” These robots will use a special unique software and will function as in-house robotic equipment. Foxconn plans to replace its human workforce for what they have called “Foxbots.” Photo […]

We're Frogs and Automation is Boiling Water

We're Frogs and Automation is Boiling Water

If you put water on the stove and heat it up, it will at first just get hotter and hotter. You may then conclude that heating water results only in hotter water. But at some point everything changes – the water starts to boil, turning from hot liquid into steam. Physicists call this a “phase transition.”

Automation , driven by technological progress, has been increasing inexorably for the past several decades. Two schools of economic thinking have for many years been engaged in a debate about the potential effects of automation on jobs, employment and human activity: will new […]

Robots Could Destroy Millions of Jobs Globally

Robots Could Destroy Millions of Jobs Globally

It’s difficult to predict exactly how robots and other AI might change the economy. A Nobel Prize-winning economist has warned that the rise in robotics and automation could destroy millions of jobs across the world.

Angus Deaton, who won the Nobel Prize last year for his work on health, wealth and inequality, said he believes robots are a much greater threat to employment in the US than globalization, Business Insider reported.

Addressing the theory that Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections was fueled by a backlash against globalization, Deaton told the Financial Times: “Globalization for me seems to be […]

Obama’s Government Failures Leave Americans Unprepared for Robots Everywhere

Obama’s Government Failures Leave Americans Unprepared for Robots Everywhere

The White House released a new report this week entitled Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy , as part of an admirable but very flawed initiative to understand the impact of the new technology on American employees.

But the report focuses just on automation while averting attention from the simultaneous and interactive impact of progressive policies that favor immigration, outsourcing, and wage-distorting legislation.

“Accelerating AI capabilities will enable automation of some tasks that have long required human labor,” the White House said when introducing its new report. These transformations will open up new opportunities for individuals, the economy, and […]