Tag: liberal

Robot Bartenders and the Future of Work

Robot Bartenders and the Future of Work

Higher ed seems to be a hotbed of worry about a robot-driven jobless future. This is at least true of the edtech people with which I hang around.

Go to any conference that is supposed to be about online learning and educational technology, and you will hear a good deal of conversation about robots.

Worries will be expressed about driverless cars taking all the driving jobs. A recent MIT Technology Review article pointed out that 3.8 million Americans make their living driving, including 1.7 million who drive trucks. Goldman Sachs estimates that self-driving vehicles will eliminate 300,000 jobs a year, once […]

Obama: Tech Is Biggest Challenge To Employment But Also Africa’s Biggest Entrepreneurial Enabler

Obama: Tech Is Biggest Challenge To Employment But Also Africa's Biggest Entrepreneurial Enabler

Despite the advances it has enabled, technology is the biggest threat to employment, says former President Barack Obama.

Speaking at the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in Johannesburg, he said economic forces and globalisation “powered by new technologies” helped the world in the last few decades prosper and “unleashed entrepreneurial talents”. He has previously praised how Africa has used technology, especially mobile, to be more innovative.

Giving his highest profile speech since he left politics, Obama used the occasion to its fullest in a stirring talk exemplifying the power of economic growth and globalisation to uplift people’s lives. But warned about the […]

McKinsey – the digital skills gap will get worse as cognitive automation intensifies

McKinsey – the digital skills gap will get worse as cognitive automation intensifies

I’ve been making fun of the periodic “IT skills crisis” proclamations long before we launched diginomica five years ago.

After a couple of decades, shouldn’t the sensationalism of a perpetual skills “crisis” give way to a more sober outlook? I’m cynical about the “crisis” language for two reasons: It fosters a misleading optimism for job seekers, who assume that investing in technical certifications will lead to immediate employment. Bottom-feeding pseudo-training companies exploit this hope.

The skills “crisis” is usually accompanied by proclamations from companies about talent shortages, when in fact the real problem is a lack of imagination in skills […]

The rise of the “Automacene”: How robots will define the next epoch in human history

The rise of the “Automacene”: How robots will define the next epoch in human history

(Shuttestock/Salon) Forget the Anthropocene — the next epoch in human history will be defined by AI and automation. Are we ready?

I’ve always had a close relationship with robots — even a fondness for them. When I was a kid I had a Baby Alive doll, mass-produced in the 1970s by Kenner. The baby ate through its battery-operated mouth and subsequently pooped, a ridiculously simple simulation of the real-life care of a newborn. In the wake of an avalanche of news on the ethical implications of technology — whether that’s Google bowing out of the military’s Project Maven or […]

Guaranteed jobs may not solve the Democrats’ bigger problem with many voters

Policies to ensure everyone has a job sound appealing. But they may not help Democrats at the ballot box, and aren’t economically realistic.

The next big idea from the Democrats is a universal guarantee of a job to everyone who wants one.

Sens. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Bernie Sanders, all potential candidates for president in 2020, have endorsed some version of the idea.Booker would start with a pilot program in 15 urban and rural areas, using federal funds to provide employment at $15 an hour.Gillibrand went considerably further. She told The Nation magazine, “Guaranteed jobs programs, creating floors for wages […]

Our workplace is ready for Brexit, say LIAM FOX AND ESTHER MCVEY

Our workplace is ready for Brexit, say LIAM FOX AND ESTHER MCVEY

‘We now have the lowest unemployment rate for 42 years’ More than 3.2 million more people have moved into work over this period – that’s over 1,000 people entering employment a day, every day.

We now have the lowest unemployment rate for 42 years at 4.2 per cent, and wages are outpacing inflation. This reality is a far cry from the predictions made at the time of the Brexit vote.

A job provides for career progression and with it wage progression. It is therefore important the Government grasps the opportunities Brexit brings.And this is exactly what we are doing as we […]

Will robots and AI take your job? The economic and political consequences of automation

Will robots and AI take your job? The economic and political consequences of automation

In Edward Bellamy’s classic Looking Backward , the protagonist Julian West wakes up from a 113-year slumber and finds the United States in 2000 has changed dramatically from 1887. People stop working at age forty-five and devote their lives to mentoring other people and engaging in volunteer work that benefits the overall community. There are short work weeks for employees, and everyone receives full benefits, food, and housing. [1] The reason is that new technologies of the period have enabled people to be very productive while working part-time. Businesses do not need large numbers of employees, so individuals can […]

Democrats can campaign on technology for edge in 2020

Democrats can campaign on technology for edge in 2020

© Getty Images While most Democratic candidates are ramping up for the 2018 midterm elections, at least two hopefuls have cast their gazes farther afield. Last year, John Delaney , a congressman representing Maryland’s sixth district, and Andrew Yang, a New York author and entrepreneur, threw their hats into the ring for the 2020 presidential election, leaving pundits baffled at their early and unexpected announcements. Both are longshots to win — Delaney is a little-known third-term representative and Yang is likely to double his campaign as a book tour for his manifesto, “The War on Normal People,” which hit […]

If You Read One Higher Ed Book This Year, Make it ‘Robot-Proof’

If You Read One Higher Ed Book This Year, Make it 'Robot-Proof'

Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence , by Joseph E. Aoun (MIT Press, 2017)

It is not an accident that I’m putting my review of Robot-Proof in "Inside Digital Learning ." My goal is to drive maximum awareness of this book among anyone thinking about the future of higher education.

Aoun, a linguist who also happens to head Northeastern University, makes the case that our economy is on the cusp of enormous change. He is largely supportive of the argument that accelerating improvements in the bundle of technologies that comprise artificial intelligence (sensors, processing, big data analysis) will […]

Technology and future of real estate practice

SIR: Global outlook generally is that 21st century is going to be driven largely by technological changes. Nobody ever thought 20 years ago for instance that someday there will be something called electric and chargeable cars that will suddenly eliminate the use of fuel and driver. The world is fast changing and very rapidly for that matter; the old order is fast crumbling and new ones are equally emerging fast.

Across the world, companies, organizations and even governments respond to the rapidly evolving technology by creating new business and operating models for unmanned aerial vehicles, otherwise known as Drones which […]