Tag: manufactur

Automation + Jobs: Not a Zero-Sum Equation

Automation + Jobs: Not a Zero-Sum Equation

There’s been no shortage of hand wringing over the job costs of automation—and it’s not without cause. Automated devices are increasingly replacing people in all sorts of occupations. Just as a long list of other technologies have done before. Because dramatic workplace transformations do not occur often, it’s easy to see such shifts as zero-sum occurrences and overlook the new options presented as the familiar ones fade away.

The last time such a major shift took place was during the transition from an agricultural-based economy to an industrial-based economy. And though the tractor and other automated farm equipment did put […]

Coping with AI revolution

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts the artificial intelligence revolution will eliminate 3.5 million simple jobs.

U.S. online commerce player Amazon has recently opened a grocery store where customers can walk in and grab what they need and leave without having to go through a checkout line. Customers simply tap their smartphones at the turnstile as they walk into an Amazon Go store that logs them into the store’s network and connects to their Amazon account through an app.

Korean retailer Lotte Department Store also has employed a similar payment system in an outlet in Bundang on the outskirts […]

Manufacturing, Automation, Jobs, and the Future

Manufacturing, Automation, Jobs, and the Future

A conservative financial/economics newsletter I read pointed me to this article.

Some highlights:

The U.S. has lost 5 million factory jobs since 2000. And trade has indeed claimed production jobs – in particular when China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. Nevertheless, there was no downturn in U.S. manufacturing output. As a matter of fact, U.S. production has been growing over the last decades. From 2006 to 2013, “manufacturing grew by 17.6%, or at roughly 2.2% per year While it has been easy to blame China or Mexico for job losses the truth […]

Prominent Scientists Attribute Job Loss To Automation, Not Foreigners

Prominent Scientists Attribute Job Loss To Automation, Not Foreigners

Stephen Hawking.Lwp Kommunikáció/Flickr For decades, it was practically considered conventional wisdom that foreigners are the cause for so many jobs lost in industrialized countries. It didn’t matter if it was jobs getting shipped overseas or foreigners migrating to developed nations, it was their fault that employment was being taken away. However, this might not be the entire story as even prominent scientists are now saying that automation might play a bigger role in job loss than anything else.

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking wrote an op-ed recently for The Guardian about the current and future dangers facing the planet. Among the […]

50% of All American Jobs Will Be Gone in 10 Years- What Will Follow?

50% of All American Jobs Will Be Gone in 10 Years- What Will Follow?

If the economy is doing so fine, then why are so many retail giants going out of business?

The old way of doing things is no longer profitable. Humans cost to much money to maintain in the work force. The need and means for automation to replace many/most workers is upon us. What will be the societal implications resulting from this unavoidable development? The Christmas Shopping Season Was a Disaster of Epic Proportions

The Christmas shopping season concluded over two weeks ago and retail report cards are coming and they are beyond bleak. There is currently a plethora of retail […]

The Robot Rampage

The Robot Rampage

Donald Trump tends to present the labor market as a zero-sum game: companies have shifted production to China and other emerging markets. He’s going to bring those jobs home.

Put aside for a moment how moving jobs back to a country with high costs gives companies an incentive to automate . There’s a bigger problem: After displacing U.S. manufacturing workers, robots are poised to do the same in developing economies, too. It will be hard to re-shore jobs that no longer exist.

It took 50 years for the world to install the first million industrial robots. The next million will take […]

Sayōnara, Humans: Japanese Company Replaces Its Workers with AI

Sayōnara, Humans: Japanese Company Replaces Its Workers with AI

34 workers at a Japanese insurance company are being laid off and replaced with an artificial intelligence (AI) system . Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance , seeking greater efficiency in calculating their payouts to policyholders, will soon replace many of its office workers with an AI system based on IBM’s Watson Explorer ("a cognitive technology that can think like a human").

In a recent press release , Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance stated an expected increase in productivity by 30% from their "Diagnostic document assessment automatic coding system."

The AI system will be used to read and understand medical certificates, hospital stays, surgical […]

Automation: Almost 50% of American jobs to dissappear

Automation: Almost 50% of American jobs to dissappear

Big Think | Aidan Quinn, Editor in Chief

A key platform for President Elect Donald Trump is to “bring the jobs back from China”. But what happens when the Chinese are already giving those jobs to machines? The jobs aren’t coming back:

One of the key drivers for Donald Trump’s shock victory during the U.S. election has been an anxiety about job security and the changes that the globalized economy has made across the globe. President Elect Trump capitalized on a ground-swell of dissatisfaction that middle-class Americans felt about stagnating wages and rapidly shrinking job opportunities, stoking anger […]

Ford CEO downplays Trump’s role in nixing Mexican plant, weighs in on tech, globalization and jobs

Ford CEO downplays Trump’s role in nixing Mexican plant, weighs in on tech, globalization and jobs

Alan Murray of Time Inc. interviews Ford CEO Mark Fields, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and Flex CEO Mike McNamara at CES today. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) LAS VEGAS — Ford was the latest company to find itself in the spotlight over issues of jobs and globalization this week, as the automaker canceled plans for a Mexican factory that would have employed nearly 3,000 people.

President-elect Donald Trump is getting the blame, but Ford CEO Mark Fields, speaking today the Consumer Electronics Show, insisted that the company made the decision for its own r Ford CEO Mark Fields at CES […]

US Manufacturers Add 17,000 Jobs in December

US Manufacturers Add 17,000 Jobs in December

By Bill Koenig Manufacturers added 17,000 jobs in December, ending a mostly down year on an upswing.

Durable goods manufacturers generated the bulk of the monthly gain. Such companies increased employment by 15,000 jobs last month, according to a breakdown by industry issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today. Non-durable goods added another 2000 jobs.

Within durable goods, the biggest gainer was fabricated metal products, up 5800 jobs. Other sectors posting job increases included motorized vehicles and parts (up 2900), primary metals (up 2200) and furniture (up 2300).Computers and electronic parts lost 900 jobs. The transportation equipment category, which includes […]