Tag: inequality

Fears of job-stealing robots are misplaced, say experts

Fears of job-stealing robots are misplaced, say experts

Fears of job-stealing robots are misplaced, say experts Some good news: The robots aren’t coming for your job. Experts at the Conference on the Future of Work at Stanford University last month said that fears that rapid advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation will leave all of us unemployed are vastly overstated.

But concerns over growing inequality and the lack of opportunity for many in the labor force — serious matters linked to a variety of structural changes in the economy — are well-founded and need to be addressed, four scholars on artificial intelligence and the economy told […]

Dems Pitch Automated Future at SXSW Against Record Employment

Dems Pitch Automated Future at SXSW Against Record Employment

Left-wing US politicians have landed at SXSW 2019. A day after sharing her proposal to break up companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon , US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) expanded on her plans at the event. And she wasn’t the only one from her party here today. On Saturday, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) featured in a session where she notably didn’t talk about Big Tech, but instead focused on the Green New Deal and automation, among other topics including pay inequality and racism.

When asked her thoughts on machines replacing humans in the workplace, Ocasio-Cortez said people should be excited […]

John Oliver: Parents Aren’t Preparing Kids for Automation

John Oliver: Parents Aren’t Preparing Kids for Automation

It feels good to laugh about automation and the dire future of the job market. But wouldn’t it feel better to do something to protect our kids?

On Sunday, comedian John Oliver addressed how automation is changing the American workforce , saying “Fifty years from now people will be doing jobs that we can’t even imagine right now. Like crypto baker, snail re-hydrater, investment harpist.” Then he spoke to kids about their future careers , which went about as well as you might think: He told them that robots could do their dream jobs and they told him off. […]

Automation can be boom or bust for Australia: McKinsey

Automation can be boom or bust for Australia: McKinsey

Automation in Australia can boost productivity to the level required to rekindle the country’s slowing economic growth, potentially adding over a trillion dollars to the economy, according to McKinsey. But the technology could also put to 6.5 million full time jobs at risk, increase unemployment levels and further widen inequality.

The difference between prosperity or wide scale disruption will be how the “inevitable” automation is handled, McKinseys says. It is calling for immediate action from Australian stakeholders including competition reform as part of a national automation strategy.

Generally the management firm is bullish on the local automation opportunity, in its new […]

The future Australian workplace is automated, according to McKinsey & Company report

The future Australian workplace is automated, according to McKinsey & Company report

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull takes a look at a robot at Robotic Automation in the Sydney suburb of Newington in 2016. As much as 46 per cent of existing work activities in Australia could be automated by 2030, displacing as many as 6.5 million jobs, a report by a respected global consulting firm has found.

The McKinsey & Company report, Australia’s Automation Opportunity, found 1.8 million to five million workers might need to change professions to find a job.

The report warns the nation’s unemployment rate could spike by up to 2.5 per cent during the peak of the […]

John Oliver Gives Kids a Tough Lesson on A.I. and Robot Job Losses

John Oliver Gives Kids a Tough Lesson on A.I. and Robot Job Losses

Robot automation is transforming society, but John Oliver is worried that kids aren’t prepared. The Last Week Tonight host used Sunday’s episode to highlight the large-scale shift as super-smart A.I. take over human roles, something that many kids — and president Donald Trump — don’t truly appreciate.

Oliver criticized the president’s focus on manufacturing jobs outsourced to other countries. While Oliver conceded that some of these jobs are moving overseas, he also cited industry figures that show American manufacturing produces twice as much as it did in 1984, but with a third of the jobs.

“Many of those jobs aren’t being […]

‘Numerous jobs and professions will change’: up to six million could be lost from automation

'Numerous jobs and professions will change': up to six million could be lost from automation

Unemployment could spike by up to 2.5 per cent as a result of the expected automation of up to 46 per cent of jobs in Australia by 2030, a new report has warned.

McKinsey Australia says that left to its own devices, automation could see Australia’s unemployment rate rise without retraining for people whose jobs are lost.

"Without retraining for vulnerable workers, especially administrative and manual workers and those in vulnerable regions, income inequality could widen by up to 30 per cent," the report says.Demand would increase for workers in unpredictable and interactive roles including nursing, care giving and sales, but […]

Lovely, lousy and little in between: The new frontier of work

Lovely, lousy and little in between: The new frontier of work

Linda Nazareth is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Her book Work Is Not a Place: Our Lives and Our Organizations in the Post-Jobs Economy is now available.

When Canada first took a census back in 1871, “blacksmith” and “shoemaker” made the top-10 list of occupations. Unfortunately, if any of the guys who did those jobs then envisioned that their great-great-great grandchildren would be continuing the family business, their dreams would have been very much unfulfilled. Job opportunities for those occupations, as well as many others, have dried up over the years but thankfully have been replaced by […]

Call $15 minimum wage what it is: the robot full employment act

Call $15 minimum wage what it is: the robot full employment act

The Cloud Pepper robot, which can speak multiple languages, appears at a tech conference in Barcelona on Monday. (Getty Images) Thirty-plus years ago, I became (nerd alert) fascinated with economics and read up on libertarian-conservatives like Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell and liberals like John Kenneth Galbraith and Paul Samuelson. It was captivating to see how they marshaled seemingly powerful evidence for and against policy proposals, only starting with whether heavy government spending could spur growth of the economy. I would read academics on one side and think of course they’re right, then read the other side and reach […]

Are Robots Competing for Your Job?

Are Robots Competing for Your Job?

Doomsayers insist that this time the employment apocalypse is really nigh. The robots are coming. Hide the WD-40. Lock up your nine-volt batteries. Build a booby trap out of giant magnets; dig a moat as deep as a grave. “Ever since a study by the University of Oxford predicted that 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk of being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence over the next fifteen to twenty years, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the future of work,” Andrés Oppenheimer writes, in “The Robots Are Coming: The Future of Jobs in the […]