Tag: inequality

Robots Won’t Take Away All Our Jobs, MIT Report Finds

Robots Won't Take Away All Our Jobs, MIT Report Finds

A robot and a human (Jesse Costa/WBUR) The robots are coming, but not necessarily for your job.

The likelihood that robots, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) will completely wipe out large swaths of the workforce is exaggerated, a new MIT report finds.

Get the latest news Boston is talking about sent to your inbox each day. Subscribe here .The report , from MIT’s "Work of the Future" task force, examines the relationship between technology and work, drawing on research from more than 20 faculty members.There’s no doubt technology will impact jobs, but researchers say there is a larger concern when it […]

Taxing Robots Is a Great Way to Make People Poor

Taxing Robots Is a Great Way to Make People Poor

(Bloomberg Opinion) — Of all the ideas that presidential candidates are offering to address the country’s economic woes, here’s one of the worst: Taxing, or even outlawing, automation.

Many people worry about the prospect of automation causing mass unemployment. This might be justified in the science-fiction future, if machines learn to do anything a human can do. But there’s no sign that the robot takeover is happening anytime soon.

First of all, despite rapid progress in industrial automation, most Americans still have jobs. This means that the economy is creating plenty of new jobs to compensate for those eliminated by robots. […]

Taxing Robots Is a Great Way to Make People Poor

Taxing Robots Is a Great Way to Make People Poor

(Bloomberg Opinion) — Of all the ideas that presidential candidates are offering to address the country’s economic woes, here’s one of the worst: Taxing, or even outlawing, automation.

Many people worry about the prospect of automation causing mass unemployment. This might be justified in the science-fiction future, if machines learn to do anything a human can do. But there’s no sign that the robot takeover is happening anytime soon.

First of all, despite rapid progress in industrial automation, most Americans still have jobs. This means that the economy is creating plenty of new jobs to compensate for those eliminated by robots. […]

The Future Of Work Is Here, What Is Your HR Organization Working On?

The Future Of Work Is Here, What Is Your HR Organization Working On?

Orange butterflies (Argynnis paphia) drinking nectar on a green floral backgroung Getty The emerging contours of the new world of work in the Fourth Industrial Revolution are rapidly becoming reality for millions of workers and companies around the globe. The inherent opportunities for economic prosperity, societal progress and individual flourishing in this new world of work are enormous. To realize them depends crucially on all concerned stakeholders’ ability to instigate reform in skill development systems, labor market policies, employment arrangements and existing social contracts. Catalyzing positive outcomes and a future of good work for all will require bold leadership […]

Gen Z Know Automation Will Take Their Jobs

Gen Z Know Automation Will Take Their Jobs

Photo by Boxed Water Is Better on Unsplash Gen Z have their eyes on the prize, a world working with AI.

Gen Z, the generation that comes after Millennials, are graduating college and entering the workforce.

Growing up as digital natives, they know machine intelligence will scale in their generation as workers in the labor force. Those headlines about “robots” coming for our jobs? Well, Gen Z have an inkling. They are actually going to live it.The eldest of Gen Z are only about 24 now, in 2019 and the majority of them are still students. Gen Z is right […]

The Fastest Growing Jobs in America Don’t Require a College Degree

The Fastest Growing Jobs in America Don’t Require a College Degree

There’s a great future in panels. Photo: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images A college diploma is the new high-school degree. In a 21st-century economy, a higher education is the only reliable ticket to the middle class. We can’t solve inequality without solving the crisis of college affordability.

For decades now, liberals have taken these truths to be self-evident . After Ronald Reagan tore up the New Deal order, centrist Democrats found education a convenient panacea for middle-class decline: If differential access to quality schools and advanced skills were the leading drivers of America’s exploding inequality, then the problem could […]

Do we need a robot tax?

Do we need a robot tax?

Industrial revolutions throughout history play out like this: repetitive and mundane jobs are automated by new technology, livelihoods evaporate, skills become obsolete, and in the process humans are compelled to retrain and find new work. Whether it’s textile workers or checkout assistants, lamplighters or petrol-pump attendants, automation shows little mercy.

In the early-19th century, during the first industrial revolution, traditional jobs dried up, the labour share of income fell, while corporate profits surged, and the gap between the wages of the rich and poor skyrocketed. Today, we could be doing the time warp again as the third and fourth industrial […]

The dark side of progress: We’re ignoring the most potent threat to working-class Americans

The dark side of progress: We're ignoring the most potent threat to working-class Americans

The dark side of progress: We’re ignoring the most potent threat to working-class Americans During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised working-class white Americans in the smokestack cities and towns of the industrial Midwest that he would bring back millions of manufacturing jobs by reducing immigration, clamping down on globalization, and ending “terrible” trade agreements and currency manipulation.

He has not delivered on his promises.

In 2017 and 2018, to be sure, the United States did add 465,000 factory jobs , an impressive, though unspectacular, number. But the vast majority of them are located in California, Texas, Nevada, Arizona, and Oklahoma […]

Robots are not the inevitable future, if the workforce fights to stay relevant.

Robots are not the inevitable future, if the workforce fights to stay relevant.

Tim O’Reilly has such a relentlessly optimistic mindset that he sees redemption even in the Black Plague. He does have a point – it did, after wiping out a third of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages, give rise to the Renaissance – but it gives you the sense that O’Reilly sees even the worst burdens as opportunities.

And that is exactly his approach to the evolution of the tech industry and the workforce. O’Reilly, who’s written books like The Whole Internet User’s Guide & Catalog in 1992 and WTF: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us in […]

How Artificial Intelligence Is Going to Transform the Engineers’ Jobs

How Artificial Intelligence Is Going to Transform the Engineers' Jobs

Smart factory ipopba/iStock An engineer checking and controlling welding robotics automatic arms machines in an intelligent industrial automotive factory using a monitoring system software used to belong to the science fiction realm.

However, this is the reality of d igital manufacturing operations in today’s Industry 4.0 smart factories. Industry 4.0 is a concept that originated in Germany and is related to the integration of Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technology with networking and analytics with industry processes.

Another ingredient in Industry 4.0 is Artificial Intelligence , one of the fastest growing emerging technologies with a market expected to reach […]