Jobs require an overhaul in education system

Jobs require an overhaul in education system

Rise in AI likely to hurt Centre’s ambition to create millions of jobs. Amidst concern about robots replacing manual labour in the middle skill jobs, a report released by industry body Assocham along with global audit firm PwC has called for an overhaul of the education system to meet the emerging industry demand. (Representational image) MUMBAI: Amidst concern about robots replacing manual labour in the middle skill jobs, a report released by industry body Assocham along with global audit firm PwC has called for an overhaul of the education system to meet the emerging industry demand. The report also […]

Work in an automated future

Work in an automated future

Disruptive technologies are now dictating our future, as new innovations increasingly blur the lines between physical, digital and biological realms.

Robots are already in our operating rooms and fast-food restaurants; we can now use 3D imaging and stem-cell extraction to grow human bones from a patient’s own cells; and 3D printing is creating a circular economy in which we can use and then reuse raw materials.

This tsunami of technological innovation will continue to change profoundly how we live and work, and how our societies operate.In what is now called the Fourth Industrial Revolution, technologies that are coming of age — […]

Those Jobs Are Never ‘Coming Back’

Those Jobs Are Never 'Coming Back'

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – MARCH 06: A Volkswagen AG (VW) ‘Cedric’ self-driving automobile is presented during the Volkswagen Group Shaping The Future / Create Innovation event. (Photo by Harold Cunningham/Getty Images) A significant part of Trump’s campaign centered on the angst of the white middle class and the ongoing loss of jobs in the Rust Belt. And that focus gave him his margin of victory.

Trump promised to bring those jobs back, a sentiment that resonated powerfully with the electorate. The problem is— as we’ve talked about previously— that at least 80–90% of manufacturing jobs were lost not to companies […]

Future-Proofing Manufacturing Jobs

In January, the Trump Administration made a promise to increase manufacturing jobs in America, and it ignited a surge in discussions, pundit predictions and opinion pieces about the industry’s ability to compete, grow and succeed in a new and uncertain future.

This conversation is important. After all, manufacturing is America’s economic engine: In 2015 alone, manufacturers contributed $2.17 trillion to the U.S. economy. Conservatively, based even on outdated definitions of what manufacturing jobs look like, manufacturing supports more than 18 million jobs. And manufacturers in the United States perform more than three-quarters of all private-sector research and development in America, […]

Personal Finance: Talk to the machine

Personal Finance: Talk to the machine

Bank of America received attention last month for announcing the rollout of fully automated bank branches. Three pilot locations will open this year, each about one-quarter the size of a traditional branch but with no one home. Think of a row of ATMs plus a couple of cubicles at which you can chat with a person via webcam.

This is the next logical progression in an inexorable trend: removing human interaction wherever possible. And it’s picking up speed. The most critical challenge for policymakers may not be Obamacare or tax reform, but how to retrain a workforce that is rapidly […]

How can India create Employment in the digital age?

How can India create Employment in the digital age?

The global window for export- and manufacturing- led development is closing Marc Saxer Delhi

Ever since the Second Industrial Revolution started to peter out in the 1960s, global capitalism has faced a crisis of demand. Ironically, the strategies put in place to restore profitability largely aimed at the supply side: 1) the Rationalisation of production through technological automation aimed at increasing efficiency; more recently the digital revolution as the latest attempt to tackle the consumption crisis by rationalising the consumptive and distributive apparatus. 2) the Globalisation of production by offshoring, profiting from cheap labour cost in developing economies; 3) […]

Labour augmenting or job destroying?

Labour augmenting or job destroying?

Credit: Pixabay. This post highlights some of the possible economic implications of the so-called “ Fourth Industrial Revolution ” — whereby the use of new technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to transform entire industries and sectors.

Some economists have argued that, like past technical change, this will not create large-scale unemployment, as labour gets reallocated.

However, many technologists are less optimistic about the employment implications of AI. In this blog post we argue that the potential for simultaneous and rapid disruption, coupled with the breadth of human functions that AI might replicate, may have profound implications for labour markets.We conclude […]

How robotics and skilled labor are shaping the future of manufacturing

How robotics and skilled labor are shaping the future of manufacturing

The future of manufacturing is top of mind right now, not just in trade publications, but in mainstream media, too. However, there has been a bit of a tonal shift.

In the past, when the press covered the loss of manufacturing jobs , it usually was presented as an isolated fact. That has started to change with the last presidential election and its focus on the effects of losing the manufacturing base, not just in terms of economics, but how it’s made some Americans question the way they define themselves and the country.

Recently, MIT labor economist David Autor dispensed some […]

Automated workforce Tax robots for stealing jobs?

Automated workforce Tax robots for stealing jobs?

It’s not yet clear whether, with the rise of artificial intelligence, workforce automation will lead to an overall rise or drop in human job creation. If death and taxes are the only two things that a person can count on, should the latter apply to robots as well, as they take over jobs traditionally done by humans?

That’s the argument put forward by University of Geneva professor and tax lawyer Xavier Oberson.

Oberson argues that as robots take over more and more jobs – particularly in the industry and service sectors – there will be a rise in unemployment […]

It’s time to tax the robots

It’s time to tax the robots

Credit: Pixabay Bill Gates has a modest proposal: Tax robots to slow the growth of automation and fund the kinds of important jobs our economy ignores, such as caring for children and the elderly.

In an interview with the website Quartz , Gates notes that when a human does $50,000 worth of work, that income is taxed and money goes to the government, but when a robot does the work, no tax is paid on it. So he argues that robots need to be taxed to make up for that lost governmental income — and also to slow down the […]