Tag: productivity

Festival of Work: Why job automation is an opportunity, not a threat

Festival of Work: Why job automation is an opportunity, not a threat

Garry Kasparov shared some insight into what the future workplace might involve. Image: CIPD Job automation was hotly debated by speakers at the CIPD’s Festival of Work conference this week, with many agreeing that it will replace many middle-skilled occupations. But this shouldn’t be seen as a threat to the human workforce, as Ashleigh Webber reports.

Until very recently, job automation and the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) would put swathes of the workforce out of work seemed distant concerns. However, with Amazon recently rolling out 200,000 robots across 50 warehouses and two NHS hospitals in London introducing software […]

Envisioning the future of robotics in the world of business

Envisioning the future of robotics in the world of business

A robot is a machine that is programmed by a computer to carry out different tasks which can be complex or simple in nature. Over the years there has been a positive trend in the robotics technology due to it benefits be it for surgeries or automated assembling of cars. This outward trend has therefore encouraged various big corporations to consider and implement this technology in their operations.

In order to understand and predict the future of robotics, we must first review, albeit briefly, the status quo. A reductionist approach to simplify the intricacies involved in robotics must be used; […]

PTC LiveWorx 2019 – Paul Roehrig of Cognizant on robots, AR, and the great jobs debate

PTC LiveWorx 2019 - Paul Roehrig of Cognizant on robots, AR, and the great jobs debate

Summary: I’m always a sucker for a robots-and-jobs debate. This time, I joust with jobs optimist and future of work expert Paul Roehrig. But Roehrig brought a LiveWorx twist, tying IoT, AI and augmented reality to the discussion. Paul Roehrig of Cognizant at PTC LiveWorx In my day one PTC Live Worx review, I honed in on views from PTC Augmented Reality customers . But it’s really the intersection of technologies (IoT, AR, AI) where the story gets fascinating. Nowhere is that more true than the future of work, a topic that gets a provocative look via the Cognizant […]

What Automation Means for the Gender Gap

What Automation Means for the Gender Gap

skynesher/Getty Images Within the next decade, rapid advances in artificial intelligence and automation will radically upend the labor market, replacing millions of jobs with new occupations that will require new technical skills. For women, the challenge is especially acute, because they will still face all the usual obstacles to gender parity at work.

BERKELEY – Recent trends, and the broader history of technological change, indicate that automation will usher in major shifts in labor markets over the next decade, displacing millions of workers but also creating millions of new jobs that require new skills. The McKinsey Global Institute, having documented […]

Advancing the Debate on Taxing Robots

Advancing the Debate on Taxing Robots

Ryan Abbott on left, moderator Gideon Lichfield, and Ryan Avert on right When Bill Gates proposed a couple of years ago that robots taking human jobs should be taxed, I confess that I wondered if Gates was as intelligent as I always thought he was. It seemed a somewhat nutty idea. Why should we tax something that leads to productivity—something our economy desperately needs? And what the heck is a robot anyway in the era of robotic process automation (RPA) and automation software of many other stripes?

The idea seemed so farfetched that I didn’t really take it seriously, but […]

6 Things Businesses And Governments Must Do To Prepare For A Robotics-Driven Future

6 Things Businesses And Governments Must Do To Prepare For A Robotics-Driven Future

Robots have already substantially changed how businesses are run. Yet, if you think robotics technology plays an important role in the workplace today, its place and purpose will likely be near ubiquitous in industries of the future. Machines will become increasingly better at carrying out the tasks performed by humans (see Fab Mate for instance) and even do things that are impossible for humans to do. As a result, the human resource structure of the average business will change.

To deal with the challenges of a world where robots will play such an outsized role, businesses and governments must develop […]

‘It was bound to happen’: Machines are coming to the Vegas Strip — and they may take jobs

'It was bound to happen': Machines are coming to the Vegas Strip — and they may take jobs

Ford wants to use walking robots to help self-driving cars deliver packages. USA TODAY

LAS VEGAS – The coming of the machines is inevitable. And this city knows it.

MGM Resorts International this year plans to install at Las Vegas resorts an unknown number of automated beverage systems programmed to mix hundreds of different drinks – all at the touch of a button.It’s a job that for many years depended on the hands of living, breathing service workers. But as the incoming technology moves closer to Southern Nevada casinos, rank-and-file union workers can’t say for certain whether machines will force them […]

This Lunatic Ten Hour Working Week Idea!

This Lunatic Ten Hour Working Week Idea!

Just when you thought you’d heard it all, along comes the Labour bigwigs backing an absolutely loony-tunes proposal for a ten hour working week.

PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW:

Doesn’t it sound so attractive, no-one will work more than ten hours a week and we can save the environment from the climate emergency and have a much better work-life balance in the process.The numbers in the report by Philipp Frey for Autonomy all crunch out right in the spread sheets and the formulas all add up.What it seems to be saying is that, if the country is economically much […]

Sweater manufacturers switching over to automated production system

Industry Desk: A technological shift has been taking place in the country’s readymade garment sector especially in sweater segment as manufacturers are switching over to an automated production system, industry people said.
The main purposes behind the shift are to grab the growing demands for value-added items, increase the productivity of their units and also avoid any untoward labor unrest that took place over wage issues.
A good number of sweater units have already installed the required machines for automation, while some are installing and others are actively considering it, industry insiders said.
The sweater factory workers get their […]

Explaining the labor share: automation vs labor market institutions

Guimarães, Luis and Gil, Pedro (2019): Explaining the labor share: automation vs labor market institutions.

This is the latest version of this item. Abstract

In this paper, we build a theoretical model to study the effects of automation and labor market institutions on the labor share. In our model, firms choose between two technologies: an automated technology and a manual technology. In this context, the labor share reflects both the average wage level (versus output) and the distribution of firms between the two technologies. Our model offers three main insights. First, automation-augmenting shocks reduce the labor share but […]