Tag: inequality

Opportunity, policy, and the future of automation

Opportunity, policy, and the future of automation

Editor’s Note:

This paper was prepared for the December 8, 2020, conference on the Future of Automation and the Middle Class for the Brookings Institution, Future of the Middle Class Initiative.

Despite persistent fears that robots and computers are coming for our jobs, most labor market experts agree that fears (or hopes) for a future where work will be optional, or worse, extremely scarce due to technological change are unlikely . In rare instances, such as the elevator operator, jobs will be rendered completely obsolete. Most jobs, however, will still exist even if fundamentally changed in both task content and […]

Butler on wheels, robot cutting salad: How COVID-19 has sped automation

Butler on wheels, robot cutting salad: How COVID-19 has sped automation

A health-care worker receives groceries delivered with a Starship Technologies robot in Mountain View, Calif. Automation has increased to keep workers safe during the pandemic, but will it eventually cost them their jobs? For decades, the attitude of unions and their advocates to increased automation could be summed up in one word: no. They feared that every time a machine was slipped into the workflow, a laborer lost a job.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a small but significant shift in that calculation. Because human contact spreads the disease, some machines are now viewed not exclusively as the workers’ enemy […]

Books Reviewed in 2020

Books Reviewed in 2020

2020 was a terrible year for the world. 2020 was a great year for books.

Here are the books that I reviewed for IHE, along with a couple that I co-authored.

Would love to hear (in a letter to the editor, or an e-mail, or a tweet, or a TikTok, or whatever) if we read any of the same books in 2020. See you all in 2021. Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education by Joshua Kim and Edward Maloney The Low-Density University: 15 Scenarios for Higher Education by Edward Maloney and Joshua KimForeword to ‘Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to […]

Automation helps keeps factories running amid COVID-19 social distancing

Automation helps keeps factories running amid COVID-19 social distancing

An machine at EVCO Plastics in DeForest packages COVID test parts into thermal form trays. Because fewer workers are on a production line, employees are better able to remain distanced from each other amid the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent the spread of the virus. Robots aren’t really taking away jobs, manufacturers say. They’re just doing the work that no one else will do.

From simple labeling machines to complex robots that can deftly make a part or product from base materials to completion, automation has become a major part of Wisconsin’s manufacturing landscape. Reports throughout the years have warned of […]

Universal basic income trial backed in Swansea

Universal basic income trial backed in Swansea

Money Richard Youle, local democracy reporter

The replacement of the welfare system with a sum of money paid to everyone, irrespective of their means, has been endorsed by Swansea councillors.

They supported a motion which backed the concept of universal basic income (UBI) and the value of trialling it, potentially in Swansea.The motion suggested that the current welfare system was failing, and that UBI could address inequality, poverty and precarious employment by giving workers greater freedom to change their job, valuing unpaid work and removing the negative impacts of benefit sanctions.It said the success of a pilot UBI should be […]

Rethinking the World of Work

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The pandemic is accelerating a shift toward more informal and precarious work

With millions of jobs lost, robots on the rise, and white-collar workers toiling largely at home, COVID-19 appears to have ushered in a new normal in the global workplace.But many of these developments stem from failed policy responses to megatrends already in motion long before the pandemic struck. For at least two decades, shifting demographics and technological upheaval have been upending labor markets, exacerbating inequality, making jobs increasingly precarious, and deepening economic insecurity.The new normal, in other words, isn’t really new. A deadly virus has simply […]

Does automation spell the end of capitalism?

Does automation spell the end of capitalism?

Capitalism will not ‘automatically’ morph into some ‘postcapitalist’ or socialist system due to technology replacing the human workforce. As the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY explains, ending capitalism will require a conscious, collective action on the part of ‘the many’ — the working class

THE END OF WORK? Labour leader Keir Starmer meets a fleet of Starship delivery robots at a Co-op in Milton Keynes, during a visit to discuss technological innovation during Covid-19 AUTOMATION — defined as the introduction of a technology whereby a process (physical or informational) can be accomplished with significantly reduced human agency — has deep historic […]

How faster productivity growth in low-skill sectors contribute to wage stagnation

How faster productivity growth in low-skill sectors contribute to wage stagnation

Because productivity grows unevenly, workers reallocate between sectors, and low-skill wages stagnate, write Rachel Ngai and Orhun Sevinc The real wage of non-college workers in the U.S. has grown by about 20 per cent since the 1980s, which is less than half of the growth in aggregate labour productivity. This is rather puzzling because low-skill workers tend to work in sectors that have higher productivity growth, yet their wages are lagging behind those of high-skill workers and aggregate labour productivity. The slow growth of low-skill wages is also important for the average wage growth as non-college workers represent two-thirds […]

What Microsoft’s Satya Nadella thinks about work of the future

What Microsoft’s Satya Nadella thinks about work of the future

Some people are fearful the coming revolution in AI and robotics will take people’s jobs. Satya Nadella sees a way forward. Speaking at the Nov. 18 MIT AI and Work of the Future Congress , the Microsoft CEO envisioned a near future where jobs are “enriched by productivity.”

“Computing is getting embedded in the real world, in a manufacturing plant, in a retail setting, in a hospital, in a farm,” Nadella said. “Now we’re transcending beyond knowledge work to help people who are on the construction site, in care management in hospitals, on manufacturing shop floors, to all participate in […]

3 Questions: Christine Walley on evolving perception of robots in US

3 Questions: Christine Walley on evolving perception of robots in US

Anthropologist touches on the history of tech-related job displacement and explores how other countries approach policies on robots, skills, and learning. Christine Walley, professor of anthropology and member of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, explores how robots have often been a symbol for anxiety about AI and automation. Christine J. Walley, professor of anthropology at MIT and member of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, explores how robots have often been a symbol for anxiety about artificial intelligence and automation. Walley provides a unique perspective in the recent research brief […]