Tag: mobility

New jobs for the brave new world

New jobs for the brave new world

Representational image: A student makes a robot during World Robot Olympiad in Kolkata The transformation of the Indian Information Technology (IT) sector from a $5 billion industry contributing just over 1% of India’s GDP in the late nineties to a $150 billion behemoth currently, making up almost 8% of India’s GDP, should arguably be the biggest success story of modern Indian economic history.

The huge talent pool of low cost, skilled, English-speaking engineers encouraged every global technology giant to set up their services and back-end operations in India. Currently, the Indian IT industry directly and indirectly employs a population of […]

End of jobs

End of jobs

A friend, who was an office-head, once recounted a poignant story about his stenographer. A vendor had come to his office to demonstrate the use of a speech-recognition software that would allow a note to be dictated directly to the computer. After the vendor had left, the steno asked him, “Sir, does that mean my services are no longer needed?” Stenographers are no longer recruited in any office.

In 2014, a writing software called Quill was developed by an American company; it could convert numerical data into a written story, accomplishing within seconds what it took experienced analysts weeks of […]

Janet Street-Porter: What happens when robots take over nurses’ jobs

Images of trolleys laden with suffering people in corridors, old people hooked up to drips on beds in cupboards — not pictures emerging from Syria, but the latest crisis to hit the NHS.

Waiting times in A&E are unacceptable, with hospitals operating at full capacity; dozens of beds are occupied by people who have nowhere else to go.

When even the Health Secretary — the normally unflappable Mr Positive, Jeremy Hunt — admits things are problematic, it’s probably not the best time to publish a report claiming that robots could take over nurses’ jobs.According to experts at the independent think tank […]

How The Coming Wave Of Job Automation Will Affect You

How The Coming Wave Of Job Automation Will Affect You

Submitted by David Galland via The Passing Parade

One of the more interesting mental exercises related to predicting the future involves trying to fathom the impact the rise of robots will have on humanity.

We can be quite sure that in the proverbial blink, robots will be doing all the war fighting . After that, what’s the point? But does that then lead to the sort of robotic apocalypse so well envisioned in Terminator ?I also suspect it’s only a matter of time before the idea of sex bots goes from being an “eew” sort of thing to a […]

Robots can’t solve the crisis in the NHS – we still need workers with empathy

Robots can't solve the crisis in the NHS – we still need workers with empathy

Nurses on the frontline of the health service have empathy with patients. Could ‘chatbots’ really replace them? Images of trolleys laden with suffering people in corridors, old people hooked up to drips on beds in cupboards – not pictures emerging from Syria, but the latest crisis to hit the NHS .

Waiting times in A&E are unacceptable, with hospitals operating at full capacity; dozens of beds are occupied by people who have nowhere else to go. When even the Health Minister – the normally unflappable Mr Positive, Jeremy Hunt – admits things are problematic, it’s probably not the best time […]

Will automation take away all our jobs? | David Autor

Here’s a paradox you don’t hear much about: despite a century of creating machines to do our work for us, the proportion of adults in the US with a job has consistently gone up for the past 125 years. Why hasn’t human labor become redundant and our skills obsolete? In this talk about the future of work, economist David Autor addresses the question of why there are still so many jobs and comes up with a surprising, hopeful answer.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers […]

Will automation take away all our jobs? | David Autor [w/ subs]

Will automation take away all our jobs? | David Autor [w/ subs]

00:00:13 – Here’s a startling fact:
00:00:15 – in the 45 years since the introduction of the automated teller machine,
00:00:18 – those vending machines that dispense cash,
00:00:21 – the number of human bank tellers employed in the United States
00:00:24 – has roughly doubled, 00:00:26 – from about a quarter of a million to a half a million. 00:00:29 – A quarter of a million in 1970 to about a half a million today, 00:00:32 – with 100,000 added since the year 2000. 00:00:36 – These facts, revealed in a recent book 00:00:39 – by Boston University […]

Robots will destroy our jobs – and we’re not ready for it

The McDonald’s on the corner of Third Avenue and 58th Street in New York City doesn’t look all that different from any of the fast-food chain’s other locations across the country. Inside, however, hungry patrons are welcomed not by a cashier waiting to take their order, but by a “Create Your Taste” kiosk – an automated touch-screen system that allows customers to create their own burgers without interacting with another human being.

It’s impossible to say exactly how many jobs have been lost by the deployment of the automated kiosks – McDonald’s has been predictably reluctant to release numbers – […]

Digital Technologies for the Greater Good | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #DigitalTransformation

Digital Technologies for the Greater Good | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #DigitalTransformation

Adam Smith wrote about rational self-interest, which posits we work together for the greater good when it benefits ourselves. Does this concept translate to robots, automation and employment? I think it does.

I believe most of us would agree that replacing large numbers of humans with machines that result in wide scale unemployment and suffering is not in our rational self-interest. Having massive numbers of jobs terminated by the Terminator does not result in a safer, healthier civilization or vibrant economy; therefore, it is not in our best interest.

Just because something is possible, does not mean it is good. A […]

When robots take jobs, workers deserve compensation

When robots take jobs, workers deserve compensation

The largely forgotten fate of London’s watermen, who ferried passengers on the Thames for centuries before faster forms of transport stole their jobs, would seem of marginal relevance today. But the lessons of the past can often inform the decisions of the future. And as we fret about the rise of robots and the impact of artificial intelligence, the history of London’s water taxis can teach us something about how to ease disruption caused by new technologies. For many years, London’s watermen were the most numerous workers in the city. But complaints about their abusive practices forced parliament to […]