Tag: inequality

Is tech a friend or foe when it comes to workplace equality?

Is tech a friend or foe when it comes to workplace equality?

"It will be a challenge to develop software which is 100% unbiased and can truly contribute to workplace equality". Photo: iStock Analysis: an assessment of technology’s impact on gender pay gaps, equal employment opportunities and life/work balance

Topics such as the "future of work" , "Industry 4.0" and the "gig economy" have recently become almost ubiquitous in popular media. While debate about such topics is called for, one of the criticisms, which can be levelled at some of those to the fore of such discussions is the largely homogenous way in which these developments are discussed.

Technological advancement holds great […]

AI: More than robots in the factory

AI: More than robots in the factory

Fancy a free salary? No strings attached. Technology heavyweights, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Richard Branson all back Universal Basic Income (UBI). Graham Smith from Microsoft recruitment partner Curo Talent , explains why these policies aren’t simply the brain fodder of billionaires, but could become a reality due to advances in artificial intelligence.

UBI describes a cash handout, distributed to everyone, irrespective of a citizen’s employment status. The concept has long been supported by socialists, but the inequality of jobs caused by automation could make policies like this a necessity.

Reports by PwC estimate that robots could represent up to 30% […]

Japanese fear automation will take more jobs than foreigners

Japanese fear automation will take more jobs than foreigners

Pew survey: Only 15% of adults feel youths will be better off than their parents Nearly 90% of Japanese think robots and computers will take over most of the jobs in the next half century. © Reuters TOKYO — The Japanese public is happier about the economy than at any time in nearly two decades, though few think the next generation will have it as good. People’s biggest fear is automation, not foreigners, taking jobs from local workers.

While 44% of respondents to a Pew Research Center survey said the current economic situation is good, 15% answered that today’s children […]

Universal Income, Incentives and Well-Being

Universal Income, Incentives and Well-Being

Photo: iStock/Getty Images

Marx objected to the 19th-century Speenhamland revision to the Elizabethan Poor Laws—which was a top-up grant regardless of income—because it would incentivize employers to lower wages, and Marxists are big believers in labor (versus leisure or capital) as the source of economic value.

Interest in a guaranteed income arose in the 1960s wave of “cybernetics” (man-plus-machine automation) and the debate over whether the modern economy was evolving from labor to leisure and away from full employment. It has re-emerged in this era of artificial intelligence and robotics in the grander-sounding “universal basic income” (UBI) which risks metastasizing […]

Don’t fear automation and artificial intelligence. Humans will always be in control — and employed

Don't fear automation and artificial intelligence. Humans will always be in control — and employed

Robots assemble a car at the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., in 2015. (David Butow / For The Times) To the editor: I am an electrical engineer with the skills to make automation happen, and I believe the future is not as bleak as presented in the article predicting millions of Californians could soon be out of work .

Artificial intelligence is not magic, and we still have to build and program devices capable of implementing it. Where autonomous vehicles are concerned, remember that aircraft have employed autopilot systems for decades. As an instrument-rated private pilot, I would require additional […]

Universal basic income isn’t the answer to the looming AI job crisis

Universal basic income isn’t the answer to the looming AI job crisis

Why don’t we just give everyone $20,000, no strings attached?

That, in essence, is the policy known as Universal Basic Income, or UBI. It has gained popularity on the right and the left because of its simplicity. It would replace the basic income already provided by complex welfare and unemployment insurance plans, instead handing an above-poverty amount to every adult regardless of income or employment status.

UBI appeared in the news recently when Ontario Premier Doug Ford abruptly cancelled a provincial pilot study that was giving slightly smaller amounts to about 4,000 people. The Premier was wrong to cancel the study; […]

The US can survive automation if it reimagines meritocracy

Is meritocracy one of the greatest myths in America? As comedian George Carlin once said, “The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

Sounds grim, right? But such attacks on the concept of meritocracy are actually healthy. They’re signs that America is finally reckoning with widening wealth inequality and stagnant wages. The future of work is a space where we can reinvent a concept that sounds good in theory—that employment rewards those with the best skills and work ethic—but which has actually become deeply tainted by barriers to access.

A truly […]

China battles US for AI and robotic space: Who’s ahead?

China battles US for AI and robotic space: Who’s ahead?

Robot dominates: Ford F150 trucks go through robots on the assembly line at the Ford Dearborn Truck Plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Robots are also entering areas such as logistics warehousing, chemicals and plastics factories and F&B industries. — AFP NO doubt, the FAANGs – Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google – are making the world a better place.

Still, they are being accused of being BAADD – big, anti-competitive, addictive and destructive to democracy.

Regulators fine them, politicians take them to task, and even their backers warn of their power to cause harm. Much of the techlash is undeserved. There’s fake […]

Gen Z faces ‘tectonic forces’ as it enters workforce

Gen Z faces ‘tectonic forces’ as it enters workforce. Patrick Commins AFR Woodcut Every new generation shapes, and is shaped by, the economy they inherit.

The oldest of the cohort of Australians born between 1994 and 2000 – so-called Generation Z, at least by the rubbery standards applied by marketeers playing demographers – have now started careers and probably begun contemplating how their hopes and dreams line up with the opportunities available to them today.

At first blush, the picture looks rosy. The country has not suffered a recession in 27 years. Indeed, nobody under 45, and relatively few under 50, […]

New York City high schools should expand vocational education

New York City high schools should expand vocational education

A group of students doing their work in a classroom workshop near Robert Bosch Vocational School in Ulm, Germany. The United States is entering an era of dramatic economic upheaval as the industrial economy – and, increasingly, even the service sector – automates tasks once performed by humans. In 20 years, many of the jobs currently held by people without college degrees, including cab and truck drivers, forklift operators and even line cooks, could be filled by robots. Last year, a report by the McKinsey Global Institute found that up to 73 million American jobs could be lost to […]