Tag: productivity

Robots are hurting your paychecks, study finds

Robots are hurting your paychecks, study finds

Debate over impact of robots in the workforce Automation has “significantly contributed” to a decrease in the portion of national income that goes to American workers over the past two decades, according to a new report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco .

Although the bank found that a decline in union membership,m increased outsourcing and offshoring and non-compete clauses that hurt workers’ ability to switch jobs are also contributing to a shrinking paycheck, automation is the primary cause.

Despite a strong labor market and consistently low unemployment, the labor share, or the portion of national income going […]

Ignore the fearmongers – robots will boost manufacturing jobs in Ireland

Ignore the fearmongers – robots will boost manufacturing jobs in Ireland

By Samantha Cummins-Byrne, Universal Robots

As Richard Bruton, Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation makes clear in his foreword to the ‘Making it in Ireland: Manufacturing 2020’ report, Ireland is a proud manufacturing nation. The sector contributes 25% of GDP, employs 205,700 people directly and 400,000 people across all skill levels when indirect employment is taken into account.

It may come as a surprise then that Ireland is falling well behind its European counterparts in the automation race. In terms of robot density, Europe has the highest level worldwide, with the manufacturing industry comprising over 105 robots per 10,000 employees. […]

Nothing is certain – especially robot taxes

Nothing is certain – especially robot taxes

Shutterstock So, the Green Party has just proposed a “robot tax” as part of its platform ahead of the federal election.

This is an idea that’s gained some fanfare over the last couple of years, as fears of automation taking over swaths of jobs play out in the news.

Most notably, in early 2017, Bill Gates said governments should tax companies’ use of robots as a way to slow the spread of automation and fund other types of employment, according to an interview with Quartz, a business news organization.“Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in […]

Robots are shrinking American paychecks

Robots are shrinking American paychecks

A new study has shown that robots are lowering the wages of American workers.

Two economists from the Federal Reserve of San Francisco have found that in the last two decades, the portion of national income going to workers has declined — meaning that wages are suffering.

The economists found that part of it is due to automation, with increased uses of robotics filling gaps in jobs and reducing bargaining power for workers. View Markets Insider’s homepage for more stories. Robots are eating into American wages.That’s according to a new study by economists at the […]

4IR in West Africa: What business owners need to know

4IR in West Africa: What business owners need to know

While small and medium business (SMB) owners in West Africa have seen the terms, ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ and ‘Industry 4.0’, or ‘4IR’ in the headlines and on the Internet, many assume that this trend will only affect larger businesses. Nothing could be further from the truth – the next wave of digital technology will be as meaningful and important to SMBs as the mobile phone and the Internet.

Let’s quickly recap what the history of the other three industrial revolutions before looking at the fourth: The first industrial revolution in around 1785 was about using steam- and water-powered machines to […]

Cellphone Tower Workers in Demand, Others Not So Much

(TNS) – Concerns that robotics, automation and artificial intelligence will displace entire job categories are on the rise. But what occupations have actually fallen in and out of favor in Colorado this decade?

For example, the number of survey researchers in Colorado has dropped by four-fifths since 2009, while the number of cellular tower workers is up eight-fold, according to an analysis from CommercialCafé and Yardi Systems.

“Most of the mundane tasks previously done by researchers ? like data scrubbing, localizing questions for different countries and programming surveys ? have been taken over by machines, leaving more time to focus on […]

The World Needs a Digital Blue-Collar Workforce

The World Needs a Digital Blue-Collar Workforce

Credit: Hero Images/Getty Images A.I. and automation continue to take ground, populist concern is growing that these new technologies will replace the effort of their human counterparts, and with it, the workers’ livelihood. Of course, this is nothing new. Gutenberg’s printing press revolutionized the distribution of ideas and slowly sidelined calligraphy — first to the category of an art form and then to a peculiar hobby. Textiles fell to the machine in the 18th century before Henry Ford’s assembly line organized workers for mass production, only to slowly replace them with robots.

Behind all growth marches gradual innovations that increase […]

AI assists human intelligence – it doesn’t replace it

AI assists human intelligence – it doesn’t replace it

Technological developments bring forth visionary predictions of questionable value. This reminds me of an opinion in the Talmud that prophecy in our times had degenerated into the occupation of fools – such as predictions of flying cars or swarms of drones delivering merchandise.

But here we turn our attention to a serious subject. Given the increasing power of “artificial intelligence” software, will automation replace human workers at a rate that leads to social instability? I don’t think so. In fact, the question implies a mistaken notion of what artificial intelligence does.

There is hardly an area of industrial activity that has […]

In Colorado, growth industries include manicurists and cell phone tower workers. Surprisingly, some once-important tech jobs are dwindling.

In Colorado, growth industries include manicurists and cell phone tower workers. Surprisingly, some once-important tech jobs are dwindling.

DISH team members Bryan Bren, left, a mobile tower deployer, and Monty Groff, right, director of engineering set up a COW, or Cell On Wheels tower, near the DISH Riverfront Call Center on July 30, 2019 in Littleton. 0

Concerns that robotics, automation and artificial intelligence will displace entire job categories are on the rise. But what occupations have actually fallen in and out of favor in Colorado this decade?

For example, the number of survey researchers in Colorado has dropped by four-fifths since 2009, while the number of cellular tower workers is up eight-fold, according to an analysis from […]

The future of work will be far less frightening when there’s more women in AI

The future of work will be far less frightening when there’s more women in AI

The future is here. Open a web browser. Pick up a newspaper. Search for stories about artificial intelligence and the future of work. While scholarship on the topic is getting increasingly nuanced , you’re still likely to confront dire warnings about how smart machines are coming to take our jobs . Like, all of them.

Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk says mass automation is “ the scariest problem ” facing society because “what’s going to happen is robots will be able to do everything better than us … I mean all of us.” AI pioneer and venture […]