Tag: inequality

How Technology Can Defuse the Demographic Time Bomb

How Technology Can Defuse the Demographic Time Bomb

As people live longer and working age populations face hardship, technology could help ease the growing dependency burden. Society is currently faced with two converging phenomena. On the one hand, rapidly aging populations are supported by a shrinking working age population. On the other, those in work are increasingly being replaced by machines as result of the technological revolution. Yet these subjects are rarely discussed together, which is surprising given that technology has important implications for work and employment and the problem of old-age dependency is, as a matter of fact, a problem of work and production. As a […]

Debate: will robots fuel inequality?

Gerald Huff and Jerry Kaplan debate whether robots will leave us all worse off Automation is coming. No: Jerry Kaplan

Computer scientist, entrepreneur and author of Humans Need Not Apply

First and foremost, robots are a form of automation, and automation is the substitution of capital for labour. Historically, automation first advances the interests of the people who invest in it, before the positive impact is felt more broadly across society. In other words, with any new technologies there are winners and losers, even if in the long run we are better off on average.Just as mechanical looms […]

The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, And Status In The Twenty-first Century

The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, And Status In The Twenty-first Century

Ryan Avent Ryan Avent, thank you very much for joining us today. You’ve got a new book out entitled ‘ The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-first Century ’, and it addresses one of the hottest topics around at the moment – the digital revolution, and what it means for the future of work.

So, what do you think? What does it mean?

Well, I think it means big change. I think the starting point of the book is that the digital revolution actually is probably going to be as transformative as the industrial […]

Automated Inequality

Automated Inequality

Humans have been here before—at least three times before, in fact. At first, it was steam and water power; then came electricity and mass production; and then IT and computerization. Each time, Joseph Schumpeter’s “gale of creative destruction” blustered as rapid advances in technology destroyed some jobs, paved the way for new lines of work, and ultimately provided enhanced productivity and lifestyles for the majority. Researchers predict that over the next decade or so, emerging technological breakthroughs will once again fundamentally alter jobs and manufacturing processes around the world—but this time, the consequences could be drastically different.

There is little […]

Knowledge more crucial than skills in future economy

Knowledge more crucial than skills in future economy

What can the future hold for students seeking majors in a job market moving from part-time employment to emergent automation?

In the United States, neither political party has offered any significant frameworks for the coming challenges of automation displacing workers as economic inequality becomes unsustainable. While one party offers bread-crumb handouts such as education reform and more training for the American workforce, the other peddles the cliché that government is the problem, not the solution, offering fantasy schemes of fewer regulations, a new gig economy and a trickle-down economy by reducing taxes for the mega-wealthy.

A recent article in the […]

Will Artifical Intelligence Mean Massive Job Loss?

This article is from the
September/October 2016 issue. Dear Dr. Dollar:

What’s the story with artificial intelligence and jobs? Will the application of robotics to production really lead to massive unemployment?
—Anonymous, via email In the late 1970s, my early years at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB), the Department of Economics had two secretaries. When I retired, in 2008, the number of faculty members and students in the department had increased, but there was only one secretary. All the faculty members had their own computers, with which they did much of the work that secretaries had […]

Ben Chu: Why a robot is not going to steal your job

We live not so much in the age of the robots as in the age of worrying about the robots. New books and think pieces proliferate about the threat to the world’s workers from the twin forces of digitisation and automation.

The shadow Chancellor John McDonnell this week has cited new technology as a reason why his party is looking closely at a Universal Basic Income.

The Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, last year suggested that 15m British jobs could be automated.Such is the buzz around the subject that one half expects to arrive at the office one morning […]

“Basic Income”: A Solution To Unemployment In The Era Of Automation?

“Basic Income”: A Solution To Unemployment In The Era Of Automation?

The online buzz about the concept of “basic income” is getting stronger and stronger, even within just the last two weeks. What is this all about, and how might this impact you in the future?

Well, let’s say that increasing innovations in AI and robotics start putting more and more of the population out of a job. For example, suppose the self-driving vehicle thing really becomes a thing . That’s millions and millions of people out of work, who will have to learn a new skill in order to get employment—seeking employment in the greatly decreased job pool because automation […]

John McDonnell thinks the chance of a robot stealing your job is so high we need a universal basic income – but he’s wrong

John McDonnell thinks the chance of a robot stealing your job is so high we need a universal basic income – but he's wrong

We live not so much in the age of the robots as in the age of worrying about the robots.

New books and think pieces proliferate about the threat to the world’s workers from the twin forces of digitisation and automation. Read more McDonnell pledges £10-an-hour minimum wage and backs universal income Labour’s Chancellor John McDonnell this week has cited new technology as a reason why his party is looking closely at a Universal Basic Income.

The Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, last year suggested that 15m British jobs could be automated.Such is the buzz around the subject that […]

Why we must embrace digital disruption and ensure no worker is left behind

Why we must embrace digital disruption and ensure no worker is left behind

An industrial robot holds a sports car at the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago. The jobs of the future are likely to be in areas where machine thinking and robotics imitate human thought. Photograph: Xinhua / Barcroft Images Disruption in the workforce is hardly a new phenomenon. Mechanisation of manufacturing, mass production and the advent of the internet and computers have all changed the way that work is done.

Earlier waves of industrialisation have primarily affected low-skilled manual labour and past improvements in technology have typically made jobs at the lower end of the skills spectrum obsolete – for […]